Happy Spring! A new calendar switch means it’s time for a brand new Top 10 list from WDIY! As the weather warms up and the days get longer, check out what WDIY's on-air hosts have been playing most on our airwaves.
If you want to hear your personal favorites, 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
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.
________________________________________________________________
#9
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.
________________________________________________________________
#8
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.
________________________________________________________________
#7
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. 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.
________________________________________________________________
#6
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. 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.
________________________________________________________________
#5
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.
________________________________________________________________
#4
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. 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 drummer Alex Garcia. “Things just seem to happen naturally when the three of us get together.”
________________________________________________________________
#3
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.
________________________________________________________________
#2
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 and we’re used to from their debut in 2003, they still command a stage and drive home a sound just like they used to. In the almost decade gap, 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.
________________________________________________________________
#1
Van Morrison
Moving on Skiffle
Virgin Music
March 10, 2023
After two heavy-hitting albums of political ranting about lockdowns, Van Morrison appears to have got everything off his chest and gone back to his basics. His newest record is 23 covers of early country, gospel, folk, and blues songs that he first encountered at Belfast’s Atlantic Records during the skiffle craze of 1956–57. It only seems fair that such an old music genre and an old crooner cross paths again in 2023. This is, after all, the 44th studio album by the Northern Irish singer-songwriter. However, he adds a sense of refinement by swapping out some of the more DIY qualities with clever arrangements and his classic musicianship. The 90-minute record, despite the beastly length, feels like a moment of peace after two intense albums; Moving on Skiffle is light and lively, an easy record to enjoy.
