The Tallies: The Talon Staff’s Favorite Music of 2023

By TALON STAFF/ Organized by LARRY BONILLA

Friends and Fellow Patriots, welcome to “the Tallies!” This is a special Talon Staff review to tally up the music that made us cry, had us enchanted, and shaped our year. As Spotify Wrapped swiftly approaches (and will probably be out by the time you read this), I have decided to ask the Talon Staff to share some records that stood out to them and talk about what made them particularly special. The hope is to expose others — and each other — to music that we may not be familiar with. This has been a special year for music, and we are excited to see what comes next. Therefore, without further ado, here are the Tallies.

“UNREAL UNEARTH” by Hozier
Submitted by Breanna Bolle

Hozier is an extremely talented singer and songwriter. This album dives into the nine circles of hell as outlined in Dante’s “Inferno” and brings these themes into a new perspective and narrative. Even without knowing all the deeper meanings, Hozier’s angelic voice is enough to capture his listeners. My favorite song on the album is Abstract (Psychopomp).

Bolle also mentions that a few honorable mentions for her favorite songs this year are “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” by Taylor Swift and “This is Why” by Paramore.

“THE LAND IS INHOSPITABLE AND SO ARE WE” by Mitski
Submitted by Santiago Nuñez

Mitski has continued to reinvent herself as an artist over time, with each passing album serving as a reflection of what she’s learned over time. This record takes chamber pop and inserts Americana in a mixture that turns the roots of Americana on its head. Instead of ballads about the American culture’s beating heart, the album creates a space for Mitski to pour out grievances unique to a woman of color in the United States and the troubles of finding one’s true self surrounded by things that constantly tell you to change. The instrumentation is stripped back, unlike her previous works with an almost theatre-like atmosphere. Her way with words is still as sharp as ever, and she is able to describe the subtle nuances of human experience with such delicate precision. She almost describes every passing thought one has throughout the day, but which one is never able to process. She weaves together a masterwork of combining the traditional with the unexpected, leading the listener through a Western landscape of perseverance. The album holds you close with comforting arms, letting you know it’s okay to be uncomfortable, but showing you that the way forward is not as distant as it may feel.

“LIVE AT BUSH HALL” by Black Country, New Road
Submitted by Larry Bonilla

As tearingly painful as it is climatically raw and at points glimmeringly enchanted, “Live at Bush Hall” by the six-piece band Black Country, New Road shows fans that the band is capable of re-attaining the astounding heights found in their critically acclaimed sophomore album, “Ants From Up There.” They can even do it despite losing their frontman/vocalist, Isaac Wood. 

Known for their background in spoken-word rock with a post-punk flare, the band is also no stranger to incorporating orchestral elements into their music such as the saxophone, piano, and violin. In this addition to their discography, there are a glittering, yet visceral, set of songs with teeming vulnerability and exuberant personality. The songs possess the common theme of abandonment and reminiscence, and there are a multitude of moments which have absolutely gripped the hearts of fans like myself. Because of Isaac Wood’s departure, the burden of vocals have been divided between Tyler Cryde, May Kershaw, and Lewis Evans, each of whom demonstrate unique performances. All put together, this album is able to muster a distinct charm that will keep all the indie kids happy, and it certainly has me excited to see where the band goes.

“STOP MAKING SENSE (DELUXE EDITION) [LIVE]” by Talking Heads
Submitted by Karleigh Yancy

When speaking to a friend about “Stop Making Sense,” I mentioned that it really captured the neurodivergent experience. While this statement is true for most of Talking Heads’ work, this particular album is a masterpiece that demands to be witnessed. A live album, it was released in 1984 alongside the concert movie by the same name. It was remastered and re-released this year.

The concert starts off with David Byrne alone on stage, with stage hands building a set behind him. He delivers a twitchy, nervous rendition of “Psycho Killer,” accompanied only by his guitar and a drum track. As he makes his way through the set list, more and more of the band members join him, getting into full swing by the time they deliver a version of “Slippery People” that almost snowballs out of control by the end but never quite loses controlled chaos.

Byrne’s nervous energy present at the beginning of the show metamorphoses into pure and unadulterated adrenaline, as if he’s been given permission to be himself, and he goes absolutely nuts. He guarantees there’s never a dull moment, whether it’s taking SEVERAL laps sprinting around his bandmates, performing a slow dance with a floor lamp, singing in a voice that sounds like a muppet who just downed half a bottle of NyQuil, and — perhaps most memorably — vanishing for two songs, only to reappear in a gigantic grey suit. Stop Making Sense is truly a celebration of what happens when we stop worrying about how others perceive us, and instead ask the question, “What if I was a little weirdo instead?” And man, is it glorious. 

“THE RECORD” by boygenius
Submitted by Santiago Nuñez

Everyone lives a different life from one another, but such acute descriptions of emotion as are found in “the record” can make it feel as though multiple people can live the same life. boygenius does an excellent job of making you feel like you’ve been living the same life as them — the only difference being the way one looks. Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker realistically have never met even 1% of their fanbase, but the outpouring of emotions they exhibit performing and recording the songs on “the record” can make it seem like an extension of all the emotions fans are unwilling to let out. The album shifts from a haunting condemnation of one’s own inability to hold intimacy to a ballad of coming to understand that a person can only give their best. The trifecta of lyrical ability and rich vocals strikes the soul hard with every passing rhythm, like a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on you as you lay in bed. The indie rock and folk pop influences are everywhere on the album; like a song you recognize but have never heard before, it features a sensible use of past sounds. boygenius helps you come to terms with the problems you ignore.

“O MONOLITH” by Squid
Submitted by Larry Bonilla

Anxiety-inducing, complex, exacting, and outright thrilling, Squid’s sophomore album “O Monolith” cleverly pushes the U.K. band forward across the experimental spectrum leading to artistic grounds.  

I was not a huge fan of Squid before this year. I knew of their contemporaries (BC,NR and black midi), but I couldn’t seem to get into their debut “Bright Green Field.” However, that changed when I first caught wind of one of their new singles for their new album this year, titled “Undergrowth.” With a rhythmic groove coupled with the band’s cynical and surrealist allure, which results in hallucinatory highs and ominously atmospheric lows, the song mesmerized me and made me wonder where the band would go next.

By June 9 of this year I was ecstatic to hear the entire record, and it did not disappoint. Par for the course with the five-piece band’s discography, this album parades fatalistic themes with the sometimes-distinct, sometimes-vague integration of socio-political anxieties (hence the title: “O Monolith”). This lyricism in conjunction with experimental ventures in sound, like unconventional time signatures and beats that range between rhythmic and chaotic, or often times both, makes the album stand as its own bizarre character. 

“SOFTCARS” by yeule
Submitted by Santiago Nuñez

Certain sounds come to define every era of music, but can an era be defined by something before it’s happened? yeule transports you to an almost dystopian aural landscape of abrasive and strangely online sounds. yeule makes an album made of the internet, almost catering the songs to an audience that spends too much time obsessing over the perception others have of them over the web.

No two tracks on “softscars” feel similar, and yet, they all fall under an almost eerie sound, the noises of isolation in the modern world. Stark and intentional contrasts between each track are indicative of the tumultuous online environment we are bombarded with every day. yeule can seamlessly switch between soft and whispering vocals to almost ear-piercing declarations of pent-up tension. The sonic atmosphere changes as yeule does, at times being more sporadic than the vocals themselves.

Every song captures a screenshot of the human experience in its most vulnerable, in its most upset, and even in its most beautiful — in the culmination of life and its journey. This album is truly a time capsule, the moment in human history where creativity and the internet become inseparable from one another, whether for better or worse.

“NOW AND THEN” by The Beatles
Submitted by Brynna Williamson

You have never, ever heard or seen any music like “Now And Then,” released by the Beatles on Nov. 2 of 2023. This is the culmination of an era, the last dying breath of a different time in history, the final goodbye from the world’s most famous band in history.

The song included everybody. John Lennon’s voice was used from an old recording (he died in 1980); twenty years later, George Harrison wrote a background score and played guitar; and thirty years after that, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came back together to sing and play instruments for the song. Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ famous producer George Martin, even continued his dad’s legacy to produce what is “the last Beatles song.”

While Peter Jackson (of “Lord of the Rings” fame) did, popularly, use AI to help “supplement” John’s voice, the controversial tool was used only to drown out background noise on John’s makeshift home recording and bring out his own sound— something that would generally be done in-studio anyway.

“Now And Then” is amazing enough as a concept and as a song, but the real beauty of the song is its finality. It’s not only history reaching into our time to wave a haunting goodbye, it is history aware of its own death. Whether you are a Beatles fan or not, the song is historic enough in its own right that you would be missing out not to have seen/watched it.

To think that I am blessed enough to be at a point in history when I can sit down and review a new Beatles song is beyond what I ever thought possible. I grew up listening to these cultural icons and thinking about what it must have been like to be alive then. Now, I’m part of history.

The video, too, for “Now And Then” made me cry. And I don’t mean pretty tears. It shows where the Beatles came from and how high they reached. And yet, with perfect cinematic flair, the video shows us their human and flawed sides. Young Ringo, smiling and without a care in the world, plays drums alongside a much-older and weathered Ringo. Paul McCartney stands to the side and goofs around as a wrinkled Paul sits in a chair and concentrates. Previously-unreleased photos fade in and out of the background, while John sings “And if I make it through / It’s all because of you.” Softly whispered lyrics such as “And if I make it through,” of course, add to the melancholy perfection that is this song, since history gently reminds us of John’s passing.

How can I review the perfect capstone to an entire era and generation of music? All I can say is that when the Beatles faded out of the last frame of their last song, they took a piece of my heart with them.