This year is quickly coming a close, but before we celebrate the holiday season and the beginning of 2023, check out what was playing while our fans and followers were prepping for Thanksgiving dinner. These are the most played albums on WDIY for the month of November, so dig in!
We only have one more month of Top 10 Albums in 2022, so make sure you keep an eye out for the very last one. In the meantime, feel free to call WDIY's studio line with a request at 610-694-8100 x1 or leave your picks on our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram pages to tell us what songs and albums you want us to play.
#10
Belle and Sebastian
A Bit of Previous
Matador Records
May 6, 2022
Belle and Sebastian had originally planned to travel to Los Angeles to work on their first full-length album in seven years. However, the 2020 pandemic had different plans, and they instead stayed in their hometown of Glasgow and added another accolade to this album; this is now also their first album recorded in their home city since 2000’s. Due to the lockdown restraints, A Bit of Previous was self-produced and recorded by Belle and Sebastian (with contributions from Brian McNeil, Matt Wiggins, Kevin Burleigh and Shawn Everett), and stands as their most hands-on since The Boy With The Arab Strap. They tackle personal connections, getting older, and ironically enough, a sense of togetherness in their 10th album to date. Belle And Sebastian also pledged all income from the single If They’re Shooting At You from Bandcamp to the Red Cross in Ukraine.
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#9
Bonnie Raitt
Just Like That…
Redwing
February 25, 2022
Another return album from September’s Top 10 List, Bonnie Raitt is back in the ranks at WDIY. Six years since her last studio album, this veteran singer-songwriter and slide guitarist returns with a collection of robust rock that feels like deep dives into her older work. She started off the 1970s working in a folk-inspired blues style, changing ever so slightly with the times, and now she returns to her roots with her 18th studio album. On Raitt’s resume is a list of successful albums, political activism, eight Grammy Awards, her 2000 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, her Lifetime Achievement Grammy, and her being the first female musician ever honored by Fender with a signature series of guitars.
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#8
Tedeschi Trucks Band
I Am The Moon: I. Crescent
Swamp Family Music, LLC
June 3, 2022
The fifth studio release by Tedeschi Trucks Band is considered by many to be the most ambitious and yet somehow intimate work that rock and roll big band has ever made. It embodies an old-world epic in size and scale; this series contains four albums and 24 original songs inspired by classical literature of days old and the drama, isolation, and pain of the modern pandemic era. In May, 2020, two months after the band was forced off the road by lockdown, vocalist Mike Mattison sent an email to the rest of the band with some pandemic reading assignments. The poems and stories became the foundation of the lyricism for this record series. They dabbled in blues, funk, country, jazz, and gospel while collaboratively writing to craft this beast of a new release.
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#7
Andrew Bird
Inside Problems
Loma VIsta Recordings
June 3, 2022
Where Bird addressed social upheaval on the 2019 record My Finest Work Yet, his newest album titled Inside Problems is entirely concerned with matters of the mind and heart. He also sonically moves away from folk and Americana and is now nestled somewhere within indie pop to match the new lyricism. This multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter has kept himself very busy the past few years, which might be why his newest body of work feels more introspective than past works; following My Finest Work Yet, we were graced with a 2020’s holiday EP titled Hark!, a 2021 collaborative These 13, a recent acting credit on season 4 of Fargo, a Judd Apatow film score, and his first Grammy nod. All of that occurred, of course, in the confines of the pandemic. Even as Bird continued to work, he faced moments of isolation, stillness, and silence, just like all of us, that inevitably influenced his work, just like many artists nowadays.
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#6
The Sadies
Colder Streams
Yep Roc Records
July 22, 2022
The 11th full-length studio album for the Canadian alt-country band The Sadies was produced by Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry and was the final album with guitarist Dallas Good, who passed away in February 2022. With Dallas’ tragic passing earlier this year from heart complications, it was unclear if the band would ever record again. However, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Colder Streams is already being pegged as potentially the best album they’ve ever written. Sounding better than a live performance and lyrically profound, and acting as a goodbye letter to a paramount band member, this album will stand as a love letter to their friends from the dearly missed Dallas Good.
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#5
Soccer Mommy
Sometimes, Forever
Loma Vista Recordings
June 24, 2022
Even though this album gained in popularity at WDIY in the fall, Sometimes, Forever is the perfect anti-summer album; her third album is drowning in melancholy, introspection, and doubt that suffocates like hot, endless summer days. The Nashvillee-native Sophie Allison has channeled quintessential 1990s indie rock and blended it with modern internet-driven shoegaze similarly to how other twentysomething femme musicians have (think Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, but each with their own twist on it). This is her first collaboration with producer Daniel Lopatin, who also works regularly with The Weeknd and helped with the Uncut Gems soundtrack, and that can be heard best with how busy and dense the music is sonically without being overwhelming.
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#4
Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
Nightroamer
Thirty Tigers
February 18, 2022
A lot has happened in the four-year gap since Sarah Shook and the Disarmers put out their second studio album titled Years; a global pandemic that the band narrowly missed in terms of a recording schedule, a record label change, and Sarah publicly coming out as non-binary (they/them pronouns). The new album focuses more on hope and change and new habits, and definitely blends their hard country sound with more genres this time, like Britpop, disco, and of course, more punk. Shook has also been working on songs for a solo album set to come out later in 2022.
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#3
Spoon
Lucifer on the Sofa
Matador Records
February 11, 2022
This particular record has resurfaced on WDIY’s Top 10 List after a few months MIA; the last time we featured this album was in July! Lucifer on the Sofa is the 10th studio album by the rock band Spoon, which started production in 2018 shortly after touring. Production continued until 2020, but resumed and resulted in a finished album by 2021. A huge reason as to why the band couldn’t finish the album in quarantine like a lot of bands did during the pandemic was how they were choosing to orchestrate it; they realized they prefer the sound of recording as a live band versus recording separately and made that the focus of the new album.
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#2
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
Endless Rooms
Sub Pop
May 6, 2022
Written amid the pandemic and the devastating Australian wildfires, this band’s newest album fixates on class disparities, environmental destruction, and other political statements. However, their musicality has not changed since their origins, so the statements are paired with the usual 1980’s college rock vibes. Most of the album was written in quarantine, but they quickly isolated themselves in a house in Melbourne and started recording as soon as it was deemed safe. While they may not step on the soapbox with this newest work, they do make a well-appreciated effort to make a statement while maintaining their sound.
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#1
Shemekia Copeland
Done Come Too Far
Alligator Records
August 19, 2022
Finding a balance between rage and peace, Done Come Too Far continues Shemekia’s tried and true testimony about the issues that plague our world while celebrating the little things that keep hope alive. With her 10th studio album, she continues the story she began telling in 2019 with America’s Child and in 2020 with Grammy-nominated Uncivil War. She delivers to listeners hard-hitting musical truths through her eyes of a young American Black woman, a mother, and a wife. But she likes to have a good time too, and her music reflects that with her sense of humor also front and center. Guests on the album include Sonny Landreth, Cedric Burnside, Kenny Brown, Charles Hodges, Oliver Wood (of the Wood Brothers), Aaron Lee Tasjan, and Pat Sansone (of Wilco).
