Alphabetically arranged by artist, the nominees were…

Hi, I’m Fat Casey Kasem and welcome to another Top Less-Than-Ten list! And no, that isn’t a coaster that got sorted into the middle row by accident.

As part of my annual series of year-in-review entries, some of which I procrastinate much longer than others, I remain one of six people nationwide who still prefers compact discs to digital downloads. My hangups about vinyl would require a separate essay unto themselves. My new-album splurges are rare because: (a) it’s increasingly tougher for new music to catch my ear as I grow older and more finicky; and (b) my favorite yesteryear acts died, stopped recording, or swiveled in directions away from me. That usually means missing out on what majorities loves, thus further dropping me down the bottomless wishing well into total irrelevance as chronicled on this very website a couple times per week.

Of the seven acts represented in the following list, five are acts who’ve been recording over 25 years; the other two were under 50 at time of release. Yes, as previously established, I’m old. Anyway, this comprises all the brand new studio albums that I acquired last year, omitting any pre-2023 finds or gifts. It can be fun to walk past the cool-collectors’ vinyl bins to the way-back by the T-shirt rack and pick through what passes for in-person CD sections today, though I’m seeing diminishing returns as those get smaller and dustier, sometimes not even alphabetized.

Anyway, minus those, on with the countdown!

7. Foo Fighters, But Here We Are. On their first album since the death of Taylor Hawkins, Dave Grohl retook the drum kit himself during the too-soon recording phase, understandably reflective as the band grapples with that staggering loss and what to make of their own remaining time. The moods swing wildly through their orphic journey through the Five Stages — from a full-speed pushback on the weight of memories (“Under You”, a close cousin of “Generator”) to angry second thoughts about a time-wasting relationship (“Nothing At All”), a soothing duet with his daughter Violet (“Show Me How”) suited for a CW-teen-drama coffeehouse stage, a ten-minute prog-rock eulogy called “The Teacher” too convoluted to be lip-synced in a Wayne’s World sequel, and “Rest”, a tender graveside service punctuated by a 21-guitar salute toward the heavens.

I’d like to rank this higher, but I docked them ten thousand points for the willfully disdainful, anti-reading, white-on-white case design across every square inch — front, back, spine, liner notes, and fold-out mini-poster of the near-invisible cover art. I listen to CDs while driving and need song titles accessible without risking other drivers’ safety while I’m squinting at an intentionally unreadable list, whether it was an indulgence of some art director’s faux-Beatle whims or a disciplinary move against us stubborn physical-media holdouts.

6. Christina Chong, Twin Flames. We met the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds costar at Dragon Con 2023, where her EP was among the autographable merch at her table. Of its four tracks, the first two are smoky-lounge chanteusery that isn’t usually my thing; the brisk, lite-rock “Cant Show Love” could fit snugly into the lower half of an ’80s Top-40 chart; but the politely independent “I Get to Choose” is only one or two electropop layers shy of being fully Pitchfork-ready. Nothing here tops “How Would That Feel”, her heartbreaker about an alt-timeline love lost from the season-2 musical “Subspace Rhapsody”, but at least we can confirm she didn’t learn to sing just to get through the one episode. And hey, it’s an autographed convention souvenir!

5. Rancid, Tomorrow Never Comes. Punk lives! Though arthritis make wall-punching hurt. 16 songs in 29 minutes, none hitting the three-minute mark, none needing to. Working yet again with Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz as producer, the still-prickly quartet stick largely to nonpartisan subjects like surprise betrayers (“Devil in Disguise”), musical immortality (“Live Forever”), doing crimes to stick it to The Man (the title track) and other forms of nod-in-agreement comfort-defiance. Catchy, shouty speed-anthems live on through Tim Armstrong and his mad-hermit beard, though I was unaware of his gross extracurriculars until [checks calendar] two days ago? Separating art and artists is getting exhausting and I’m wondering if liberal arts colleges and departments should include mandatory anti-sexual-predation seminars with every degree, online course or TED Talk.

4. Lol Tolhurst, Budgie, and Jacknife Lee, Los Angeles. A supergroup so un-commercial, I had to pre-order it directly from their UK label — the drummer/keyboardist from The Cure, the drummer from Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the producer who pulled off the neat magic trick of persuading R.E.M. to get listenable again before their breakup. Rather than invite a single singer and firm up a foursome, the unlikely trio brought an entire guest list that included Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie, Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, jazz-rapper Pan Amsterdam, The Edge (who left his guitar at home, as a sop to whatever U2 fans treasure “Numb”), and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, who snarks away on the title track, a loving, catacomb-pulsating roast of the city where all this was recorded. They had me at “two percussionists”; I fiend for live drummers in today’s A.I.-kitted dystopia.

3. John Mellencamp, Orpheus Descending. After years of missing out on his prolific output, I reconnected with one of Indiana’s favorite hometown singers starting with 2022’s Strictly a One-Eyed Jack. Though his latest sports a more literary title than usual, rest assured he’s still an ornery cuss and there’s little danger of him crooning eleven-minute odes to Greek tragedies from a leather office chair. “Hey God” charges right in with a guitar-and-fiddle squall that demands attention from above; the intensity ranges from the snarling F-bomb-drops in the title track to the forlorn piano of “Understated Reverence”; and the haunted disappointment in “The Eyes of Portland” and “The So-Called Free” lambaste a human race (and America in particular) who haven’t gotten any more charitable or empathetic toward their own peoples since Scarecrow. In the big wrap-up “Backbone”, he ruminates atop a sea of melancholy guitar-piano-strings in that wizened chain-smoker rasp about our collective failures as well as his own, but with a note of personal hope (“I’ll try to be better with what time I have left”) and a suggestion that we could correct our own cases well before we reach his age (if we should be so lucky or blessed).

2. Blink-182, One More Time. I skipped their last two albums sans co-frontman Tom DeLonge, who walked away after 2011’s Neighborhoods and concentrated on elevating his Angels & Airwaves side project to a capital-P Project, with sometimes capital-P Pretentious results. Not that I mind pretentiousness (I mean, look how I overwrite sometimes), but I also missed their last two albums in that same interim. Now bygones are bygones, and any lingering acrimony is undetectable in their found-family reunion, a lean 17 songs in 45 minutes (co-produced by the aforementioned Tim Armstrong) that mix ferociously tidy bangers with occasional contemplative stances. They’re at midlife-crisis age but still have a weakness for we’re-so-NAUGHTY juvenilia (“Edging”), but contrasted with Neighborhoods‘ compromised humorlessness, it’s almost a relief to know they’re relaxed enough around each other to devolve into tag-team frat-braggart mode like the old days. What floored me hardest was the title track, a heartfelt group confession of their internecine issues, the individual calamities they’ve dealt with (Mark Hoppus’ cancer bout, Travis Barker’s plane crash), and the regrets that took them years to reevaluate and let go. If they can keep exploring that vulnerability and sincerity together without succumbing to the temptation to go all-ballads-all-the-time, one day they might just grow all the way up.

(Irritated sidebar: buying the CD upon release meant missing out on two digital-only bonus tracks that were available at the time. Barely a year later, they’re already planning a deluxe re-release with still more bonus tracks. I am not buying it again this soon.)

1. Olivia Rodridgo, Guts. Is she popular enough that I don’t have to describe this as if you don’t know her? Apropos of her Q rating, I picked this up at Target, which now has the least worst CD selection of our area big-box stores, by which I mean they still carry one (1) handful of ’em. I’m stunned and giddy whenever singers and their mega-selling producers allow cranked-up, pottery-shattering garage-punk guitars past the studio’s metal detectors and hermetic seals without feeding them through a Radio Disney wringer. She’s less than half my age but already cleverer and more introspective than the more wrinkled macho punks beneath her on my chart.

Her second album bursts at the seams with an incisive, self-aware candor as she examines her everyday tightrope walk between common sense and broken impulse controls. She confesses she’s making stupid mistakes against her young-adult better judgment (“Bad Idea, Right?”), tires of her shortsightedness leading to being used (“Vampires”), and might as well never leave the house for fear of committing every possible form of embarrassment (“Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”, which I feel in my very bones). She’s still working on her metaphor game (“Lacy, oh, Lacy / Skin like puff pastry” might resonate if Lacy runs an artisan bakery), but cuts both ways with her knives in the brilliant “Get Him Back” (I had this on Repeat a lot), one-ups nearly every John Hughes soundtrack ever with the period homage “Pretty Isn’t Pretty”, and tries reassuring us and herself It Gets Better again and again in the sweeping finale “Teenage Dream”. Whether she believes it, or keeps telling herself that in hopes that she’ll feel it by the time she’s 30, is up for grabs. If she rocks her angst this hard now, just wait’ll she’s old enough to drink legally.

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Special shout-out for two CDs of re-releases that came out in 2023 and fell into my clutches, each worth checking out if you don’t already own their contents:

• Everclear, Live at the Whisky a Go Go — A crackling memento recorded at the famed, titular Hollywood club for us absentee fans who’ve yet to catch them in person. (They’re coming to Indiana in October, but at a venue down in Brown County, our state’s biggest leaf-peeper corral that crowds up beyond capacity every autumn. They’ll no doubt have a huge audience there, but good luck finding parking or accommodations anywhere.) Art Alexakis and his buddies bring most of the hits, and throw in a few surprises such as “Nervous and Weird”, which dates back to their very first EP thirty years prior, and a cover of Nirvana’s “Molly’s Lips”. For good measure the disc throws in two new studio tracks: a huggy encouragement ballad called “Sing Away” that goes in the same folder as “Wonderful” but doesn’t escalate to the same height; and the scalding “Year of the Tiger”, a post-pandemic screed about the time we lost, our debilitating anxieties, and the uselessness of certain cliques’ goofy hats.
• Taylor Swift, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) — Another Target purchase! The long-awaited re-release of my favorite album of hers, which probably makes me shallow or whatever, but still. The “From the Vault” section comprises just five unreleased song, so it all fits on a single disc, unlike previous Taylor’s Versions. They’re wreathed in synthpop lushness that matches the rest of the album (before later works got more sullen and/or vengeful as she went), but “Suburban Legend” sticks out with a sparkly machine-drum that belies her self-implications of relationship sabotage to escape a “nice guy” who was too clingy to dump her first. Among the original tunes, the differences are mostly negligible (is “Bad Blood” 5% softer now? saddening, if true), though I guess I could sit down with two CD players, don an accountant’s visor, and listen joylessly to both for nitpickery’s sake. I’d prefer not to. I just wanted my deluxe do-over with extra songs nine long years after initial release, and not one year later like some acts we could mention.

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…and that’s the musical year that was. Thanks for reading! Lord willing, see you next year, assuming American civilization is still standing after the 2024 elections!