Year-end lists seem to engender a lot of grousing from journalists and I imagine part of that is being on the receiving end of a year-end email deluge from publicists, as well as a (commendable!) aversion to ranking art. But I quite like them, because they remind me about music I am likely to love but which fell through the cracks when it was released. In that spirit, here’s a list of ~15 albums released in 2022 that I think are great. There were five albums I really had on repeat this year and I’ll start with those because they’ve become dear to me, but as always that’s an observation about me more than about any of these releases.
I also am sure that I’m forgetting some releases.
I’m lucky to know a fair number of the people who helped make the albums below. Your work kept me company, gave me inspiration or comfort, made me think, made me move, and gave me material to expand the minds of my students. So please know that this amazing music means the world to me and I feel grateful to have heard it.
Five Most Played of 2022
Miles Okazaki - Thisness
Blackbraid - Blackbraid I
Loraine James - Building Something Beautiful For Me
Klaus Lang and Trio Amos - Tehran Dust
Horse Lords - Comradely Objects
Other Killer Music
Kivie Cahn-Lipman - Sumna
Nick Dunston - Spider Season
TAK Ensemble + Ashkan Behzadi - Love, Crystal, and Stone
Makaya McCraven - In These Times
Steve Lehman - Xaybu: The Unseen
Qasim Naqvi, Wadada Leo Smith, Andrew Cyrille - Two Centuries
Angelica Sanchez Trio feat Michael Formanek, Billy Hart - Sparkle Beings
Jake Blount - Didn’t It Rain
Marc Hannaford - These Worlds Are All In The Same Place
Laura Cocks - Field Anatomies
Iceberg - Final Thaw
Anthony Cheung - All Roads
Nick Podgurski and Zachary Paul - Secret In The Heart
Josh Modney - Near To Each
Judd Greenstein and yMusic - Together
Maya Bennardo - Four Strings
Liturgy - As The Blood of God Bursts the Veins of Time
Retribution Body - Baphomet