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WDIY's Top 10 Albums of March 2023

Can you believe we're already a quarter of the way through 2023? Time flies when you're having fun with us at WDIY! To commemorate the moment, here's March's top 10 most played albums on our airwaves.

If you want to see your favorites on this list, or if you have a new hit you'd like to see on one of our personal top 10 charts, 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
Lucero
Should’ve Learned by Now
Liberty & Lament
February 24, 2023

The basis of Lucero’s sound has always been an interesting hybrid of southern rock and punk. While they have spent a decent amount of time experimenting and branching out, they have returned to their roots. Their 12th studio album finds the band circling back to what they do best; we’ve been given road trip songs and late-night drinking anthems that come from two-plus decades worth of less-than-advisable living, while also beginning to reckon with the lasting damage incurred from that lifestyle. Frontman Ben Nichols has found a sort of thematic maturity, writing about how marriage and first-time fatherhood are affected by being the leader of a band that spends 100 or more nights on the road each year. Turns out, though, he’s still got plenty of stories from Lucero’s younger days, and that’s mostly where Should’ve Learned by Now lands. They have even alluded to this record being them leaving their reckless youth behind and burning the bridges into a slightly more responsible adulthood.

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#9
Trampled by Turtles
Alpenglow
Banjodad Records
October 28, 2022

Produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Alpenglow is the Minnesota-based sextet’s 10th album. The album, named after the optical phenomenon that takes place when the sun casts a reddish glow across the mountains at dawn and dusk, contemplates the passing of time and how best to enjoy it before it's too late. For the whole record, 10 of the 11 tracks were written by lead singer Dave Simonett. Jeff Tweedy, beyond producing, also makes an appearance on acoustic guitar on four different tracks and provides background vocals on “A Lifetime to Find.” The majority of the songs on this record deal with longing to wander, maintaining roots, nostalgia, loss, and having the inner strength to keep what’s important in focus. Trampled by Turtles overall is attempting to clear new trails for acoustic and roots acts, redefining the string-music world. According to mandolin player Erik Berry, their goal has always been to be the “weirdest band at the festival.”

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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.

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#7
The Jorgensens
Americana Soul
Paramour Records
November 4, 2022

Led by dual vocalists and married couple Kurt and Brianna Jorgensen, The Jorgensens have been blending blues, folk, and jazz since they met in 2014. Kurt’s impeccable musicality combined with Brianna’s classically trained multi-instrumental resumé has created a band with the warmth and depth to attract the most loyal fanbase. With this newest album, they push the boundaries of tradition within these genres and show how compelling and relevant contemporary blues can be. The content of this album in particular shows how these two are truly soulmates, as well as highlights how interconnected the entire band is with their energy and music-making.

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#6
Freedy Johnston
Back on the Road to You
Forty Below
September 9th, 2022

Back on the Road to You is Freedy Johnston’s ninth album of new material and first since 2015’s Neon Repairman. This newest album started as a Kickstarter-financed project from the New York City-based artist who is originally from Kinsley, Kansas. It features Freedy Johnston backed by a four-piece band with added vocal support in key places from pals like Susan Cowsill, Aimee Mann, and Susanna Hoffs. As is his standard practice, Johnston wrote all ten of the tunes on Back on the Road to You. They encompass and embody the same witty lyricism and genre-bending tunes and melodies that his other albums have, keeping it consistent within his body of work.

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#5
Thee Sacred Souls
Thee Sacred Souls
Daptone Records
August 26, 2022

Produced by Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth, Thee Sacred Souls’ debut album is a warm and textured record, mixing the easygoing vibe of 1960s soul with the grit and character of early 1970s R&B. However, their breakout record was already set to be a showstopper; their first singles racked up more than ten million streams in a year and garnered attention from Billboard; Rolling Stone; Gary Clark, Jr.; The Black Pumas; Princess Nokia; and Timbaland. Despite being a young band both in experience and members’ ages, it feels and plays as if the drummer Alex Garcia, bassist Sal Samano, and singer Josh Lane have been playing together for a lifetime already. Hints of iconic music scenes like Chicano, Philly, Chicago, Memphis, and even Panama soul are easy to pinpoint, and while it’s tempting to toss around labels like “retro” with a deliberately analog collection like this, there’s also something distinctly modern about the band. “Every step of the way has just been so organic,” says Garcia. “Things just seem to happen naturally when the three of us get together.”

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#4
The Lone Bellow
Love Songs for Losers
Dualtone Music Group
November 4, 2022

The newest work from The Lone Bellow is an album about losers by losers. It’s a homage to the anti-heroes and the underdogs in the world, spare for the few songs that lead vocalist Zach Williams penned for his wife. Beyond that, the rest of the record was written in collaboration with fellow losers guitarist Brian Elmquist and multi-instrumentalist Kanene Donehey Pipkin, along with help from bassist Jason Pipkin and drummer Julian Dorio. In a departure from their past work with producers like Aaron Dessner of The National and eight-time Grammy-winner Dave Cobb, the Nashville-based trio struck out on their own for their new album. They dreamt up their most cohesive record yet with arena-ready rock anthems to the tune of their famous gorgeously sprawling Americana tunes the band lovingly refers to as “little redneck symphonies.” Recorded at the possibly haunted former home of the legendary Roy Orbison, the result is a meditation on the pain and joy, triumph and tribulation, and all of the simple pleasures that comes with being human.

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#3
Charley Crockett
The Man From Waco
Son of Davy
September 9, 2022

Charley Crockett refuses to be put inside a genre box, and his newest album helps to reinforce that idea. He is often called the “last bastion of traditional country music,” but he prefers to experiment with blues, soul, and other Americana musical elements to craft his own unique sound. In terms of "Man From Waco," this is the second time in three albums that he's honored Wacoborn honky-tonk country music legend James "Slim" Hand. Crockett met and played with Hand numerous times before the performer's June 2020 death. Their brief but impactful friendship has only contributed to Crockett’s mindset to stand out and beat against the current of trends, creating his own corner of the country music world to inhabit.

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#2
Alvvays
Blue Rev
Polyvinyl, Transgressive, and Celsius Girls
October 7, 2022

Immediately after the release of Antisocialites in 2017, Alvvays went on extensive tours both as headliners and as support while writing their third album, Blue Rev. However, it wasn’t an easy-going process to craft the new record, and while the pandemic is to blame, this band had a few interesting and unique hurdles; a thief broke into lead singer Molly Rankin's apartment and stole a recorder with several demos contained on it, and the day after, a basement flood destroyed all of the band's gear. They eventually regrouped in October 2021 in a studio in Los Angeles with producer Shawn Everett to work. They went on to play all of Blue Rev front-to-back twice in a single day, with 15-second breaks between songs and a 30-minute break between full album takes.

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#1
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Cool It Down
Secretly Canadian
September 30, 2022

Cool It Down is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It marks the group's first album since 2013's Mosquito and their first release through Secretly Canadian. While the band’s appearance and aesthetic might not be as art-punk and avant garde as they were on their 2003 debut album, they still command a stage and drive home a sound just like they used to. In the almost decade gap since Mosquito, the band experienced solo projects and family building as well as the same pandemic we all did, and they came out of the other end with an album that leaves space for the misery that comes with environmental ruin and societal collapse as well as looks forward to a hopeful and defiant future.

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