All 52 Record Club Albums of 2022, Ranked (*ranked based on how I feel about each album now, not how I felt about it when I wrote the corresponding review)
(**tried not to repeat any opinions I already described in the review itself)
(***I linked to each of my reviews, but in many cases, maybe even most cases, there were better reviews written that week, so check out
the archives to see some of the better work PoYB's contributors put forth the past 52 weeks)
(****Should go without saying at this point, but my opinions about any album are not a reflection on the person who picked the album in the first place, and indeed, if you picked an album and I didn't like it, then that means you are challenging me and us and yourself with something otherwise unfamiliar or unloved, and I tend to appreciate those picks more than safe fun 4/5 album picks in the grand scheme of things)
52. Smart Kids by McGruff the Crime Dog
It's not about the destination, it's about the journey, man. The destination: some fucking asshole cop wishing that all drug users were dead. The journey: we got all our friends together to give this dog a verbal smackdown, and then collectively gave over $1000 to charity, thanks to matching efforts by Sunny and Sean and Lamson. So yeah, defund McGruff and all that, but also, I'd like to think that this shitty fucking album perversely caused Record Club to step up its game and have its best week ever.
51. Thats What They All Say by Jack Harlow
Tony Lanez, who features on this album's "Whats Poppin (Remix)," was convicted on all three gun charges last week, including assault with a deadly weapon. He's
still on that remix, because Jack Harlow is a slimy little coward. I hate Jack Harlow for a lot of reasons—primarily, because his music is dogshit—but this Lanez shit is just the cherry on top of the shit pie. Let me never hear or hear about Jack Harlow again.
One might
argue I was too harsh. I would argue I wasn't harsh
enough. This is bad music. Vibes are the fuel of the algorithm.
After reviewing
Wondering, I attended a birthday party that featured Gina as the live entertainment. She was great! My kids really liked it! I still think the idea of children's music is stupid and I hate it!!!
One day there's going to be a huge pop hit on the radio and Cautious Clay is going to be a credited writer on that song and there are going to be various Buzzfeed articles like "Who is Cautious Clay: An Explainer" and we're going to think "holy shit remember when we listened to this guy for Record Club?" and then after hearing that big hit song for the 100th time I'm going to think to myself "yup, this is still the worst song I've ever heard in my life."
Basically
this article, but for "The Sign."
46. Simple Pleasures by Bobby McFerrin
In 2022, I worried, and I was happy. TAKE THAT, BOBBY MCFERRIN!!!
45. Go Plastic by Squarepusher
I'll be honest, I haven't listened to this album since we covered it last January. I'll always admire it for being accessible noise, somehow, against all odds. And yet, still... it's just noise.
44. Dance Fever by Florence + the Machine
You would think the phrase "dance fever" would indicate an album full of fun upbeat dance hits. In Florence's hands, "dance fever" is the fever you have from not wearing your mask while dancing. It's the next morning, sick as a dog, unable to get out of bed.
"Free" is pretty good though.
43. Time Skiffs by Animal Collective
Remember that time you were already in the 2020s / said fuck it / got up and lived the late-'00s with me instead?
42. Bless This House by Mahalia Jackson
Time has and will continue to remember Mahalia Jackson as one of the most important musicians in American history. Fuck all that god shit though.
41. The Family Tree: The Roots by Radical Face
I don't think being forgettable is the worst sin committed by any RC album this year. I didn't hate this album at the time, but I certainly had no desire to check out the other two albums in the
Family Tree trilogy. Not every concept album can be memorable, I guess.
40. Dropout Boogie by the Black Keys
If this is what mainstream rock 'n' roll looks like these days, then I remain completely neutral on the idea of mainstream rock 'n' roll.
39. With Love and Squalor by We Are Scientists
The main takeaway from pretty much every reviewer on this album is that We Are Scientists are generic. I'm here today, in this blurb, to tell We Are Scientists that that's okay. It's okay to be generic. It's easy to want to sound like other bands when those other bands were good, or at least good to a certain subset of the population. I was in that subset. I think in a different life, I would've loved We Are Scientists.
38. The Beach Boys' Christmas Album by the Beach Boys Christmas seems like 1000 years ago already.
37. Sob Rock by John Mayer
I'd rather listen to Toto than John Mayer. How kind of John Mayer to combine the two. Look, this might sound like sarcasm or whatever, but it's not. As I type this, I'm listening to a continuous loop of "Rock-a-Bye Baby" on a baby mobile because it's the only thing that will make Sophie fall asleep tonight. I'd kill for some Toto-esque John Mayer bullshit right now.
36. Fine Line by Harry Styles
Yikes, not a good year for Harry Styles, in my opinion. Good thing we listened to his better-than-expected-as-far-as-I'm-concerned 2019 album
Fine Line before he was exposed as a fraud (okay, okay, I'm kidding, he had the #1 song in America for like 57 weeks this year and everyone still loves him, what the fuck am I even saying, etc. etc.).
35. Humble Quest by Maren Morris
Stereogum ranked this as the
best country album of 2022. I'd argue that the third-best country album of Record Club 2022 is nothing to scoff at either. Still a little too pop-leaning for my (admittedly skewed) country tastes, but hey, at least Maren Morris was boss enough to
call some country music asshole's asshole wife "Insurrection Barbie," so that was cool. Big fan of this artist, no matter how lukewarm I am on the music sometimes.
34. Пушка by alyona alyona
I sincerely check on alyona on Instagram like once a week, just to make sure she is alright. As of this writing, she has updated with a new post nine hours ago with a freestyle rap. Whew. This is one of those instances where the context is some much higher than the craft that sometimes it's easy to forget the craft at all. But I won't deny that it's memorable.
33. El jardín de los presentes by Invisible
I haven't gone back to this album much because I am a coward and I am afraid of everything I don't understand.
32. A Philly Special Christmas by the Philadelphia Eagles
Okay, this was a weird one. Primarily because I have somehow bamboozled myself into thinking that listening to Christmas music after Christmas was a good idea. This will probably be the first time in Record Club history that I don't listen to the album of the week after Monday. I just can't fucking do it. I'm not a miser all year round like
some people, I promise you. I don't mind Christmas music during the Christmas season. But it's no longer the Christmas season, and so I found it incredibly difficult to touch this shit post-Boxing Day. You probably did too. That's my fault, fam.
Another weird thing is how ultra-specific the appeal of this music is. Not only is it a Christmas album, which turns off a certain percentage of the population already, but it's also a Christmas album that is created and performed by members of a sports team. This means that it's really only the fans of that particular team who are going to get anything out of this beyond another medicinal dose of seasonal hymnals.
I can't possibly blame you if you are a fan of some other football team (either due to the geography of your upbringing or because you hate your father or some combination of the two), and because of that, you stayed as far away from A Philly Special Christmas as possible. I would've done this same if Dak Prescott was singing on A Jerry Jones Christmas or whatever. Sports are fun because they are unimportant; I hope that all you non-Eagles fans used this as an opportunity to shit on a team you hate, instead of the reasonable option, which would be to ignore it completely.
The final weird thing about this Christmas album is that—either because I had a good Christmas, or because I do indeed fall into that niche area of interest (Philadelphian, Eagles fan, weird music aficionado)—it is really fucking good. Or at least really fun for me and about three million other people in one specific area of the Northeastern United States.
Okay, fine, five of the seven tracks are pretty standard holiday faire. Good singing by Jordan Mailata, decent singing by Jason Kelce, very, um,
passionate singing by Lane Johnson, but none of these guys are necessarily raising the bar on the standards. For example, "Blue Christmas" here is fun, but I'm really only digging it because this is Jason Kelce we're talking about, the same guy who wore a Mummer's outfit and screamed drunkenly into a microphone on the Ben Franklin Parkway in early 2018. If none of the words in that last sentence mean anything to you, then it's just some asshole singing an
Elvis song. But this is
our asshole, and so yeah, it's fun.
The same goes for the reading of
The Night Before Christmas by Merrill Reese, but the barrier to entry is even higher, since it's, ya know, not really a song (can't defend this and then turn around and continue to talk shit on
BTS' "Skit," for example). But also, if you have never heard Merrill's idiosyncratic play-by-play calling on WIP during an autumn Sunday afternoon, then you're just gonna be confused by this. I laughed the first couple times, but even as a fan of Reese, I'll admit that I tired of it after a few listens more. I
told you three weeks ago, I have a very low tolerance for non-songs. But this is Christmas, you have to be more lenient with the bullshit.
Okay, but look—I can't imagine, not even Eagles haters, struggling to find anything to like in the final song, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." I hate to sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not exaggerating at all when I say I got the chills multiple times during this song. The whole sequence that leads from listening in on the Eagles' Christmas party, to Jason Kelce stopping that party to yell as loud as he can, to the crashing into the gang vocals in the locker room to the iconic chorus of this well-known song, it's just masterfully done. I sincerely cannot wait until Thanksgiving 2023 so that I can hear this song again.
But yeah, that's the thing—Eagles fans, Cowboys fans, whoever, I think we can all agree that this shit needs to be put to be for eleven months. It was fun while it lasted, though. Go Birds.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
Pretty decent, but I'm serious when I say that at this point, nine times out of ten I'm choosing Melody's Echo Chamber over Tame Impala these days.
30. Read My Mind by Reba McEntire
This album is probably way higher than it needs to be, and that is due to reasons that I really don't think you'd want to hear about agai
n. Okay Mrs. H., are you ready for a healthy breakfast? No! No! Bad Joe! Stop it! Stop it right this instant!
29. Free Your Mind! by Person(a)
Nate texted me the night before he sent his
Free Your Mind! review to make sure that I wasn't still in contact with Person(a), and thus make real the possibility that they might read our reviews. I can assure you that I would never do that to our Record Club members. Feel free to talk shit and face no consequences. It's not like we're Pitchfork writing a Lizzo review. And it's not like Person(a)'s Rebecca is anything like Lizzo. Rebecca seemed really nice. Lizzo thinks that if you write album reviews then you deserve to be unemployed. Let's not forget what really matters here.
28. Electric Warrior by T. Rex
I would've done a lot worse things to get Kev C. to finally
write for PoYB than listen to some B/B+-grade glam rock. I think we got off easy.
27. Aoxomoxoa by Grateful Dead
When you're exploring the studio albums of a band who are mainly heralded for their live act, then the bottom of the barrel is always a lot sooner than you think. This is the album that plays right before you hear the scrape.
26. Mirrorland by EarthGang
I promise you that 2023 is going to be my very best year when it comes to rap music in my lifetime. I'm going to listen to all the classics. I am going to come prepared for any hip hop that show up in Record Club during that time. I'm not going to have to use a terrible Diana Ross movie as a crutch in an album review ever again.
25. Don't You Fake It by the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Possibly overrated at the time. Possibly overrated now. But y'all call Wildwood, NJ "overrated," and I call you an asshole, so what the heck is "overrated" anyhow? Can an album be overrated just because I listened to it exclusively during a week in which I was staying at what I would consider a very
underrated beach town?!
24. Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos
I am confident that it'll be like 2026 and I'll find myself on a deserted highway somewhere in the middle of the night and
Little Earthquakes is just going to rock my fucking world. I'm looking forward to it.
23. fine thread by long odds
Perennial was better though
22. The Mollusk by Ween
If you thought actually listening to this album was a threat to your mental sanity, then imagine watching the irredeemably shitty 2021 children's film
Addams Family 2 and hearing "I'm Dancing in the Show Tonight" performed by beauty pageant contestants. Also, Uncle Fester is turning into an octopus, for some reason.
21. Heaux Tales by Jazmine SullivanHonestly the only album I can think of off the top of my head that justifies the extended use of non-musical components. Also! I don't think I realized how baked into the Philadelphia music scene Jazmine Sullivan is before I wrote the review. A few months after we listened to this album, I was in a parenting group, and one of the moms mentioned Sullivan, and I was like, wait, is this the same one that we listened to in Record Club? Did you know she had a minor hit called "Bust Your Windows" in 2008?!
20. A New Chance by the Tough Alliance
Pam saw my
movie list the other day and had a reaction I could've predicted: "Why are all the movies I picked at the bottom of your list?" Besides the fact that that is simply not true (she chose six of the bottom 20), there's also this logic: if I thought I was going to like that movie, then I
would have picked it myself. Right? I don't think there is a 1:1 correlation at Record Club. I only personally chose four of the top 20 on this list. But I remember having this conversation with Pam around the time she chose the Tough Alliance for us to listen to. Like, why was I being so harsh with albums that I didn't pick? I don't think that's true either, but I think it was worth thinking about as I moved through the year. Why this kneejerk reaction to criticize? I feel like being positive is both a challenge and a worthy pursuit. And so I thank TTA for withstanding the unwarranted criticism as I try to improve myself as a music listener.
19. Where Were You When It Happened? by Monotonix
If by "it" you mean, "hearing the glory of Monotonix for the first time," then the answer is, "I don't know, probably on a SEPTA bus."
18. Version Galore by U-Roy
On the one hand, I was probably too forgiving about the fact that U-Roy is a taker, and how
Version Galore is mostly other people's songs with U-Roy toasting over them. On the other hand, the toasting is somehow enough for me to consider U-Roy a giver anyway. It just feels so goddamn
new, even though it is literally not.
17. Three Cheers for Disappointment by the Arrogant Sons of Bitches
ska4eva
16. Don't Be Cruel by Bobby Brown
New jack swing is so interesting to me. What a neat little time capsule of a sound. It was revolutionary at the time, but also had such a short shelf life, and the combination of those two means that it is irrevocably tied to a very specific time period, forever trapped in amber. There will be no new jack swing revival. Let us appreciate that for what it is, and sweep all that Bobby Brown messiness under the rug for now.
15. Young Enough by Charly Bliss
"It's gonna break my heart to see it blown to bits." I wonder now too if that can't be applied to music criticism in general. You know something about an album, you feel something that you can't quite put into words, and so the words that come out seem wrong, and then of course there are other words not coming out of your mouth at all, and they don't seem right either, and it ends up just muddying the whole experience. I hope Record Club isn't breaking too many hearts, as we blow it all to bits.
14. Gal Costa by Gal Costa
I won't deny it—Gal Costa's
death made me reevaluate some of the opinions that I shared in my review for her self-titled. It's really hard to read obituaries praising her work and not coming away changed by those opinions. I know it's a logical fallacy—no one is going to be nitpicky about her artistic work as she's lying in a coffin—but still, if I'm searching for ways to be more appreciative of the music that I engage with, then having the artist pass away is certainly an efficient way to do it. R.I.P. to our gal Gal.
13. Midnights by Taylor Swift
I haven't listened to
Midnights since we covered it in Record Club approximately 400 years ago, but from I remember, I can definitely say that this Taylor Swift girl is onto something, and that I hope she finds success real soon.
I don't ask for much, I don't think. I don't need Virginia Coalition to be an earth-shattering experience for me. I just need them to do one thing. Just one thing that is going to make me remember them. The hook on "Voyager II" was that thing for me. It's true that Virginia Coalition might come off like a knock-off Counting Crows or something, but to me, that one hook launches them into the stratosphere.
It's so hard to remember that our parents were once young like we were. It's even harder to imagine any scenario in which our parents were
cool. I don't even like to think about it, honestly. It's just too weird to consider. It's the same with aging pop and rock stars, though easier to digest. I was in second grade when Gwen Stefani was cool, so a bit too young to fully grasp it at the time, but still partially aware. That was a long time ago, and a lot has changed since then. So
Return of Saturn was a time machine, and I'm thankful for that. I could go back to when things were different, and people were cooler.
Music shouldn't be intimidating. Just dive right in, you'll be fine.
These are the weeks when Record Club does its job the best—not confirming that we love an artist we already love, which can be fun and exciting in its own way, but more so when we discover something new, something hitherto unknown, something that might not be everyone's cup of tea, perhaps, but still elicits some discussion, some fresh thoughts, some argument that is not beholden to any context or baggage, but exists entirely in this arena that we ourselves have built.
I know I got some shit for trying to choose some albums from some different parts of the world earlier in the year. But ya know what? Finding an album like
Taximen makes the whole fucking endeavor worth it, in my opinion. It was the act of musical discovery writ large. To find worthy music, you gotta wade through a whole lot of shit. But when you find something new and worthy, something that hits you hard and never lets go, well then all that wading through shit suddenly becomes worth it, and then some.
That's why we do it. That's the motivation. Amadou Balaké is the reward.
I always feel the compulsion to note on this list the winner of the "Most Listened To in the K*** Household" award. In other words—this was Pam's favorite RC pick of the year, and choosing dinnertime music is all about that teamwork, baby. I'm glad Record Club and my friends and my wife all have good taste.
I read a tweet recently (it was embedded somewhere besides Twitter) that was like "I have inside info about parts 2 and 3 of Beyoncé's
RENAISSANCE trilogy, part 2 is going to be all acoustic and part 3 is going to be a team-up with Jay-Z." There is a 90% chance that this tweet was bullshit, but in a hypothetical situation in which it ends up being true, then neither of the final two parts are going to be as successful as the first one.
RENAISSANCE worked like gangbusters specifically due to sound in which it both emulated and added to. You lose the house and disco, and you lose my interest. (But of course: who the fuck am I, etc., etc.)
Even though music like this makes me feel like a shoobie in my own fucking town, I still appreciate the ability to cosplay through a Philadelphia I'll never know. There were others who thought this was lame. I do not agree. I think this is cool. Some of the coolest music I've heard in a long time, folk punk genre tags be damned.
Looks like we got three new Ted Leo EPs
this year. This is good! Ted Leo is still kicking! After listening to
Hearts of Oak for the first time this year (and the 100th time this year), I need Ted Leo to live forever.
Stereogum released their annual list of
"Most Anticipated Albums." There are an insane number of Record Club artists mentioned in the article (like I said above—y'all have some good taste). The ranking isn't serious, but it
is ranked. And Janelle Monáe is at #90. Which, again, is not that serious, but before this year, that would've seemed right. After listening to
Dirty Computer, it's like, how is her allegedly upcoming album not at #1 most anticipated?! For real! How could she possibly top this? We need to know.
2. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not by Arctic Monkeys
Usually, the albums near the top of this list are all albums that I had never heard before Record Club featured them. The surprise at finding something I love is what propels them to the pinnacle of year's-end rankings. I wasn't surprised at Arctic Monkeys' debut album. I've known it since it debuted, and have unabashedly loved it just as long. The joy here isn't the discovery, like it is for so many other RC albums. The joy is instead in the opportunity to proclaim that well-established love to the masses.
1. Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy
Separate album from context, and you still have the classic-est of classic rock albums, an LP stacked from top to bottom with catchy guitar-led bangers, a collection of music that foregrounds the fun. There is no denying this. But I also cannot deny the context, and how inextricable it now is from Thin Lizzy's
Jailbreak. There's loud and raucous guitar rock, and then there's Sam and Stephan running down a loud and raucous 6th Street in Austin yelling about how they just heard some dude blasting "Jailbreak" on his revved-up motorcycle. It seems like Thin Lizzy were always all about the good times, but yo, in 2022, both during that specific April weekend and throughout the whole year, I discovered those good times for myself. There is no better soundtrack for the best night, whenever that night happens to show up at your doorstep.
