We haven't done one of these since last year! Get it?
We're taking one last look at our album rankings for 2023 before we jump into celebrating the new year and starting new charts for 2024!
Want to hear something specific for the new year? Feel free to call WDIY's studio line with a request at 610-694-8100 x1 or leave your picks on our Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, or Threads pages.
#10
Nellie McKay
Hey Guys, Watch This
Hungry Mouse Records
August 28, 2023
Nellie McKay has been graced with a reasonable amount of success in her lifetime; since her debut record ‘Get Away from Me,’ she has released a number of well-received albums and collaborated with a long list of other famous singers and performers. Her music has been used on radio, in TV shows, movies, and even on Broadway. And she’s even something of a hometown hero, splitting her childhood and teenage years between Harlem and the Pocono mountains (while having dual citizenship here and in London). Keeping that in mind, this is her first release in a whopping 13 years and shows her history and life experience better than any biography can. The album was recorded with a parade of musical comrades in Charleston, West Virginia and with some credits of being recorded in Saylorsburg and East Stroudsburg here in Pennsylvania.
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#9
Lucinda Williams
Stories from a Rock n’ Roll Heart
Highway 20 Records
June 30, 2023
The triumphant 15th studio album by the American singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams comes as a sort of victory lap: in the past three years, the legendary rocker has survived a tornado, a pandemic, and a stroke. Even though she can’t play guitar as a result of the stroke, she refuses to go down without a fight. She played more shows in 2022 than she has any year since 2017, except now she has a support team for touring and collaborating on songwriting instead of doing it all on her own. Her newfound love of being in the studio and working with other creatives has influenced her workflow so much that the sequel to this record is already done and set to release sometime in 2024.
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#8
Cat Power
Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert
Domino Recording Company
November 10, 2023
In May of 1966, Bob Dylan played a concert in England that went down in history. In November of 2022, Cat Power recreated his performance. She took the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall and delivered a song-for-song recreation of one of the most fabled and transformative live sets of all time. Bob Dylan’s performance held at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (AKA the Royal Albert Hall Concert due to a mislabeled bootleg) involved him switching from acoustic to electric midway through the show. In her own interpretation of that historic night, Cat Power (otherwise known as Chan Marshall) gave a spellbinding and authentic performance that honors her personal hero’s legend and impact on history while still bringing her own sound and vibrancy to his music.
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#7
Rodrigo y Gabriella
In Between Thoughts...A New World
ATO Records
April 21, 2023
Some of us picked up new hobbies during the pandemic, some of us took some time off and rested, or maybe even were deemed an essential worker and labored the whole lockdown. For lead guitarist Rodrigo Sánchez, he found a new belief system. Without turning this into a college-level philosophy course, his new spirituality of nondualism means everything we are and everyone around us are connected by one single consciousness. New spiritual beliefs also lead us to a bit of a newer sound for these two. They have expanded beyond their traditional two-guitar and usually stripped down sound in favor of something more electronic, also more orchestral, and overall experimental than before. Sánchez also dons an electric guitar this time for the entire record while Gabriela Quintero holds down the proverbial fort with an acoustic guitar still. This was self-produced in Ixtapa, Mexico, and is the duo’s first full-length album in four years and sixth album in their career.
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#6
Bruce Cockburn
O Sun O Moon
True North Records
May 12, 2023
O Sun O Moon is the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn's latest studio album. Recently released, it’s a collection of 12 original songs that demonstrate songwriting and guitar-playing skills from more than 55 years of artistry and mastery. Along with the musical chops, Cockburn also uses his wisdom and age to write almost exclusively uplifting songs that tackle topics from politics and human rights to the environment and spirituality. Right before his triumphant 78th birthday, he reminds us why he is so well loved. Since his self-titled debut in 1970, he has won 13 Juno Awards, 22 assorted gold and platinum records, an induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, been made an Officer of the Order of Canada, among many other accolades.
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#5
Samantha Fish & Jesse Dayton
Death Wish Blues
Rounder Records
May 19, 2023
The first-ever collaborative album from Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton (not counting their 2022 EP) and produced by the legendary Jon Spencer, “Death Wish Blues” is born from a shared passion for pushing the limits and bending the rules of blues music. Death Wish Blues melds their eclectic tastes into a tracklist of songs both emotionally potent and wildly contagious that helps fulfill their shared longtime mission of opening up the blues genre to entirely new audiences. It was recorded during a 10-day period at Applehead Recording & Production located in Woodstock, New York. This is Kansas City native Samantha Fish’s 12th album as well as her fourth collaborative one. As for the Texas native Jesse Dayton, along with an impressive resumé of guitar features for the stars, this is his 17th album to date.
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#4
Van Morrison
Accentuate the Positive
VIRGIN RECORDS
November 3, 2023
This is the 45th studio album by the Northern Irish singer-songwriter. Yes, 45th album. What do you expect from someone who’s been making music and performing since the 1960’s? This is also his second album in 2023, following hand-in-hand with Moving On Skiffle, released in March. Just like its older sibling, Accentuate The Positive sees Van Morrison returning to one of his fondest childhood musical memories. While the last record was obviously all about skiffle (check out some of our older monthly articles to read more about it since it has been featured before), this time is all about rock n’ roll. Growing up in Belfast after World War II, Van Morrison was immensely inspired by the heady sounds of 20th century blues and rock n’ roll. The timelessness of rock n’ roll accompanied with Van Morrison’s musical prowess has left us with something memorable, simple, expressive, and sincere. Contributors to the album include the late Jeff Beck and vocals from Chris Farlowe and Taj Mahal.
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#3
Eli “Paperboy” Reed
Hits and Misses
Yep Roc Records
October 20, 2023
Eight albums deep in a nearly two-decade career, the earliest tracks on Reed’s Hits And Misses were made as early as 2009, following Reed’s career-launching album, ‘Roll With You.’ The latest recordings were one in 2020, just before the release of his critically acclaimed album of Merle Haggard songs, ‘Down Every Road.’ Now, after all this time, we have a remastered collection of originals and covers from a variety of decades and genres. Due to how spread out the production was, the 11-track album even has features previously only available as 45 rpm singles at the merch table during Reed’s international tours. It all kicks off with Eli’s spin on Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades,’ and continues with covers of Steely Dan's "Do It Again," Bob Dylan's, "To Be Alone with You," Merle Haggard’s “I’m Gonna Break Every Heart I Can” and more.
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#2
Son Volt
Day of the Doug
Transmit Sound
June 16, 2023
If you’ve learned anything from these monthly articles, it should be that musicians found a wide variety of unique ways to cope with the 2020 pandemic lockdowns that ultimately affected their music. The methods used for distractions also usually did not lead to a very positive outlook on things, and a lot of those sentiments have continued through the following years. But for Son Volt’s frontman Jay Farrar, he chose something purposefully more lighthearted as his COVID distraction which led us to this release. Son Volt’s somewhat recently released Doug Sahm tribute album features fresh takes on a dozen lesser-known songs by the Tex-Mex musical prodigy. The 12 songs span Sahm’s solo career and his work with Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados, and the intro and outro are phone messages that Doug himself left Jay Farrar over the years. But the songs themselves aren’t complete copy-paste covers; the band maintains their own unique sound and musicality and breathes new life into these tributes.
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#1
Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives
Altitude
Snakefarm
May 19, 2023
Between re-opening the Ellis Theater in his hometown of Philadelphia, collecting pieces of country music history and raising funds for a museum to house them, and being inducted into seemingly every music hall of fame that exists, it’s been over six years since Stuart released a new record. This Country Music Hall of Famer, five-time Grammy-winner, and AMA Lifetime Achievement honoree returns to his professional roots with a new record. exploring a cosmic country cowboy landscape populated by the iconic tropes from the Western movies we all love. Marty Stuart captures the sound of the desert landscape with a sweeping, spacious, wide-open sound that truly puts it in close proximity to just downright mystical. The songs on Altitude were inspired by and mostly written during Stuart’s 2018 tour in support of Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of the Byrds.
