The 15 best albums of 2023 so far according to NRC

taketonews

The best albums of the first half of 2023 have something in common: a large part was written and recorded during the corona crisis. A difficult period, especially for artists. You can hear that darkness a bit on many albums. But what you also hear is hope, joy, bang – a celebration of life. Also to be celebrated is the number of women on this list, which was compiled by music editors Rahul Gandolahage, Amanda Kuyper and Peter van der Ploeg. Not only is there a woman at the top, women are in the majority on the entire list.

Classic

15La Capella Nacional de Catalunya conducted by Jordi Savall Mozart: Requiem


Mozart’s Requiem Mass has already accounted for hundreds of shots and artistic approaches. Jordi Savall brings a contrasting vision here, which takes you from hell to heaven in a matter of minutes and then plunges you back into the depths. Savall does not look for the human in death, but captures the elusiveness of the afterlife. Never were death and life, heaven and hell so closely aligned. Take the ‘Confutatis’: the low voices sound malignant to Savall, as if enjoying the fiery sentence they inflict on the unfortunate. And then everything dissolves like a nightmare in the morning; brass and timpani fall away, leaving only a gallant violin line, above which sopranos and altos rise like mist. Read the whole review.

Pop

14Robin Kester Honeycomb shades


Honeycomb shades is a strong debut, layered and subtle, but not without elaboration. Sometimes light and wonderfully beautiful, but at least as dark and mysterious, with extremely tasteful instrumentation: from woolly Wurlitzer organ to sharp guitars, from playful omnichord to stately flugelhorn. There is even a ‘nightmare machine’. Kester’s voice often sounds subdued, with a lot of air, and at the same time clear and melodic. Take the fiery ‘Fries and Ice Cream’, which hums and hums and hides intense secrets in the lyrics. Or the swaying ‘Cat 13’, in which Kester sings that she’ll wait in the car, where she doesn’t have to run into strangers – or is it the cat she’s watching and moving around in?

Read also: Musician Robin Kester: ‘Some feelings you want to filter in the direct, bright light’

Pop

13Raye My 21st Century Blues


The impressive debut album My 21st Century Blues is Raye’s personal story – a modern electronic blues from a woman of our time. Between Amy Winehouse’s brooding, nonchalant abandon and Lady Gaga’s impish directness comes Raye. She wraps heavy subjects in sharp dance rhythms, dark synth layers, crackling beats or more thumping basses. Above all, there is her voice: a confident tongue-rolling flow in raps, pleasantly vintage soulful with high notes, to alienating electronically distorted.

Read also: After seven caged years, Raye (24) finally broke free from her label last year. ‘I don’t want to hide anything anymore’

Pop

12Loupe Do You Ever Wonder What Comes Next?


Also the debut album Do You Ever Wonder What Comes Next? is a miracle of disarming beauty and pop music that wins hearts. Guitarist Jasmine van der Waals is a virtuoso on the strummed jazz guitar. Bassist Lana Kooper effortlessly plays the parts of her great-uncle Edgar de Haas, who used to play with Miles Davis. And the trump card of this nicest new Dutch band of the moment is singer Julia Korthouwer. Her voice is as unique as an enchanting new pop sound can be. Read the whole review.

Classic

11Calefax An American Rhapsody


The new album by reed quartet Calefax meanders through American music history, starting with its most iconic work: George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in blue’. The beauty and fascination of the Calefax arrangements lies in their uniqueness, according to the time-honored principle of translation, imitatio and aemulatio: not faithfully translating and imitating the original, but adding something, and introducing new flavors to familiar music. to taste and discover. And this five can do that. Read the whole review.

Rock

10Boygenius The Record


Who says the love of your life can’t be a friendship? Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers as Boygenius address their most tender declarations of love to each other. Just like on their solo records, Dacus, Bridgers and Baker write about love with precision and sincerity – only love songs like ‘Without You Without Them’, ‘Leonard Cohen’ and ‘We’re In Love’ are not about romantic partners, but about Boygenius mutual friendship. As Bridgers said about the first time they made music together: “It was not like falling in love. It was falling in love.” Read the whole review.

Pop

9Janelle Monae The Age of Pleasure


She used to walk into a room with her head bowed, eyes to the floor – now she sails in as light as a feather, with a self-assured attitude of who knows what. She’s not the same anymore, Janelle Monáe sings in ‘Float’, the opening of her album The Age of Pleasure. In fact, she is more fearless than she ever was. There are thousands of versions of her. “And we’re all. Fine. As fuck.” The Age of Pleasure is the album on which she is apparently even more liberated and therefore even looser and more explicit. This is one big fiery spring fever dream. Read the whole review.

Pop

8Naaz Never Have I Ever


Naaz is back and she has a lot to say. One of the most moving songs on her highly anticipated personal album Never Have I Ever is ‘Azadî’ (freedom), in which the singer gives words to the weight she carries: her limited freedom as a young Kurdish-Dutch Muslima, the clash of cultures, family ties. Naaz has a lot to shake off, and now there’s self-love (‘Just Try Again’). Moreover, she turns out to be a musical adventurer in cleverly constructed electronic folk pop. You can hear from everything that Naaz has made a lot of steps. Read the whole review.

Pop

7Someone Owls


Owls, the new album by British-Dutch Tessa Rose Jackson, aka Someone, is as enchanting as it is intoxicating. The narrative psychpop – she wrote many songs with composer Darius Timmer – bubbles with energy and adventure. Just like on her previous album, it is endless floating on a star journey: light-footed melodies, floating sound carpets, draped guitar layers, synth blips and tinkling sounds. Read the whole review.

Jazz

6Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily Love in Exile


Take your time. Because Love in Exile, the joint music project of Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab, recorded in New York with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, slams on the brakes. As in a time-lapse video with flowers slowly opening, you perceive details in the depths. Through minimal changes, small shifts, they grow into eye-catching elements. The elegant improvisations slowly sink in and become deeper with each spin. Read the whole review.

Pop

5Lana Del Rey Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd


Leave it to Lana Del Rey to get a polish on faded glory. Everything on her ninth album shows that the singer has not yet finished with her melancholy ‘Hollywood sadcore’. Dilapidated glamour, misty memories and of course her languid drawling hypothermic singing voice; Also on this long-awaited album, Del Rey gracefully plows through the heaviness of her existence in slowly spread out but intoxicating songs. Read the whole review.

Metal

4Bell Witch Future’s Shadow 1: The Clandestine Gate


The Clandestine Gatethe first part of the trilogy Future’s Shadow which will be perfected in the coming years and will form one huge song, is a new milestone in enormity that will demand the utmost from the listener. The music in this one and a half hour song is as slow as a glacier and as heavy as a planet, but there is tension between the notes. Only a few beats per minute, shifting extremely subtly with melodies, atmosphere and charged emotion. Definitely one of the best metal records of the year, even if you should see this music more on a geological time scale.

Read also: Bell Witch: music with the pace of a glacier and the weight of a planet

Rock

3Foo Fighters But Here We Are


The first Foo Fighters album since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins is an intense, pure, public mourning from a popular stadium rock band who shares a great personal loss with the fans, who in turn have lost someone. In every sentence, behind every swipe and in every drum roll you hear something that refers to loss, to finiteness. Or searching for grip, meaning and reason. You wish it didn’t take such a terrible tragedy, but But Here We Are is the best Foo Fighters album in a very, very long time. Read the whole review.

Classic

2Reinbert de Leeuw Der nightlife Wanderer | Abschied


Reinbert de Leeuw (1938-2020) was an icon of Dutch musical life. As a conductor and pianist, he was a tireless ambassador for the composers he admired, and could admire like no other. Although he is primarily remembered as a performer, De Leeuw was also a composer himself. The Radio Philharmonic Orchestra has brought together two of De Leeuw’s greatest works on an impressive album. These are not murmured considerations in the margins, but pontifical statements, obsessive and often thunderous sound sculptures that betray no doubt whatsoever. Full of drift, mystery and beauty. Read the whole review.

Pop

1Caroline Polachek Desire, I Want to Turn Into You


Caroline Polachek wraps grand themes in poetic texts full of wine, smoke, blood and natural beauty. A smoldering volcano, an overwhelming sunset, the angelic appearance of a sleeping lover. The dizzying dives she makes with her voice are impressive, as is the unique interplay of her sources of inspiration: from Spanish guitar to UK garage, and from drum and bass to trip hop. Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is already one of the best pop albums of the year: compelling, poetic, and completely unique. Read the whole review.

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