Laughing Stock of the Year 2022
You’ve seen the rest…
Welcome to edition 33, the final LS of the year, the big one, the ‘look at all this cool stuff we like from the year of our lord 2022’. (Add it to our half year one for even more fun). Editors Connah and Rich are joined by regular contributors Sam and Will to showcase 10 or so music based things they each enjoyed over the past 365 earth days. Dive in, let the #content permeate you, find something new and exciting to keep you warm, you deserve it.
Laughing Stock Album of the Year - Coby Sey Conduit
Released in September, we’ve been luxuriating ever since in this thrilling, complex, incredibly rewarding full debut from South London’s Coby Sey. Frequent collaborator with the likes of Tirzah, Mica Levi and Dean Blunt, Sey steps not into so much into the limelight, but more into the shadows, creating a sometimes suffocating, dense collection of night time and early morning jams, incorporating elements of trip hop, techno, avant-jazz, RnB, spoken word, and industrial sounds. If it sounds a lot, it is, but not in an overwhelming way - each track fits into Sey’s carefully curated aesthetic whilst standing proudly alone too. Highlights ‘Night Ride’ and ‘Onus’ exemplify this; one a slug of industrial beats, one almost soothing, but both shot through with spoken word and sparky electronics. An album that rewards repeat listens, an album wholly unlike anything else released this year; a proper stunner, dive in.
All my albums have a similar sound running through them, in hindsight, and thinking about them here. So, start with Plonk and then work your way through. 2022 the year everyone forgot about the previous two. The year we burnt and froze. The year of having nothing to vote for, finally. The year where some great music was released and parties happened.
Huerco S - Plonk
Hands down the album I listened to the most this year. Hypnotic and, arguably, Huerco S at his best. A timeless classic that can be absorbed in all situations: driving, working, walking, early morning, late at night. I’m still waiting to hear Plonk XI out in a club. That song, in particular, I imagine has the potential to mess with the floor completely.
Kali Malone - Living Torch
The pairing up of Shelter Press with GRM due to the passing of Rehberg in 2021, releases this suitably record by the impeccable Kali Malone. Never fails.
Diagonals - Born Under A Rhyming Planet
Everything we released on DDS is great, as we all know and, if you don’t, then browse here. This one seems to mangle everything that is on this list into one and comes with a great album cover too. Hard to pin it’s year of origin or location if you knew nothing about listening to blind; something that makes it beautiful
TLF - Sweet Harmony
Latency Records are firm favourites at LS, we’re probably that predictable whereby it's like ‘oh wow, another Latency Record’. Then again, this one feels unlike their previous releases and is a cracker full of layers. Well worth listening to again and again.
Actress Remix of Carmen Villain
Yeah, Actress back to his best with this one. Never want it to end.
Shackleton
A return to Honest Jon’s for Shackleton with this brilliant EP. Well worth listening to too for Mark Ernestus' version.
Kalahari Oyster Cult
Everything Kalahari has released this year. To be honest, I’m late to following the label without realising they released that Nathan Melja tune a few years ago. The records sound really nice, each a continuous head nod.
Rainy Miller - Desquamation (Fire, Burn. Nobody)
Exciting times for Manchester continue with the release of Rainy’s album. A bleakness expanded into something beautiful. Rainy’s well worth catching live too, if you can.
Moin - Paste
If you’re going to listen to post hardcore then it is best coming from Raime. If you don’t know, Raime is responsible for one of my favourite albums of the decade from the 20s with Quarter Turns Over a Living Line.
Pangaea EP
A mover than came to notice through the Hessle Crack Magazine cover mix. Both tracks on the EP are proper big room anthems.
Laila Sakini - Paloma
Laila’s best release to date. A future classic that continues to grow and grow the more you listen. Great to see Sakini’s work grow into this release.
Shinichi Atobe - Love Of Plastic
Not gonna lie, this one came out right at the start of the year and I only remembered through my Apple Replay, their version of Spotify Wrapped. And since, I have been listening to the great record it is.
JAMAL MOSS - Thanks 4 The Tracks U Lost
This made the midpoint of the year list, here’s what we said:
Jamal Moss on Modern Love was always going to be something to pay attention to. Actually, Moss himself is always someone to pay attention to. This is a future classic. A beautiful record of house head-nodders with emotive chords. One for the summer.
Mister Water Wet - Significant Soil
In the vein of Huerco S, on his label, Mister Water Wet’s album is a great one to read to, bath to, listen to.
Thank You Mimi
One of the greatest voices, one of the greatest drummers, in one of the greatest bands. Mimi Parker will be immensely missed :(
The Dawn of the Renaissance Crashes into Harry’s House
Last year I lamented the lack of a truly great (or even ‘that’ll do’) pop album from any of the A-List stars, it felt like no one properly delivered on the scale of, for instance, Dua Lipa in 2020. I’m please to say that my call to arms seems to have been answered, and done so with aplomb (I know Beyoncé subscribes to LS). The Weeknd kicked things off early doors with the perfectly hedonistic Dawn FM, Harry Styles and Charli XCX contributed to the fun in summer with the sophisticated lounge pop of Harry’s House and the ‘why does anyone bother when Charli’s doing this’ Crash, before Queen Bey returned with the genuinely thrilling Renaissance. And we’ve only just been delivered the SZA album. The big guns are back, and they are ablaze (not you though Drake). Well done everyone, more please (apart from you Drake, have a year off m8).
Romance ‘Once Upon a Time’
Who thought that an anonymous producer warping Celine Dion songs into weird and wonderful slowcore textures could be one of the most beautiful, engrossing albums of the year? Put your hand down, you’re lying.
(In other Celine Dion news, kudos to Julia Jacklin for coming on stage to ‘My Heart Will Go On’ at her Ritz gig in November, sparking one of the most heart warming crowd sing alongs of the year).
You’re Getting Cynical, That’s Not Like You
If Harry Styles’s ‘As It Was’ was my defining ear worm of the first half of the year, then Alex Turner and co’s ‘There Better Be A Mirrorball’ takes the crown for the back half. I was utterly obsessed with this a soon as I heard it; those sumptuous strings that are held back until the perfect moment, that melody that feels like it’s always been present, the swirling organ line, Turner’s iconic latter day croon and all too relatable lyrics, it has everything and then some. I got in a lil drunk one night in October before The Car came out, and played this six or seven times in a row whilst waltzing around my living room with a glass of red wine singing ‘don’t get emotional, that ain’t like you’ at my cat whilst getting a bit emotional. Yes, I live alone.
Heavyweight Champion of the World
I have seen many great things at The White Hotel this year (shout outs to Iceboy Violet, Klein, LoneLady, Laila Sakini, Lee Gamble, Helena Hauff and that Rainy Miller show in particular) but in June the very excellent Modern Love label topped them all with a 20th birthday party featuring Andy Stott, Jamal Moss, Demdike Stare, and a very rare UK appearance from Leyland Kirby, aka The Caretaker. It’s almost impossible to describe one of his legendary live shows, taking in Simply Red karaoke, Britain’s Got Talent clips with Sweet Caroline sing-a-longs, the Corrie theme tune, and his gorgeously sad, fragmented, decaying memory music; but mostly it was truly memorable for standing shoulder to shoulder with Blackhaine and a packed room at 2.30am hollering along to ‘My Way’ whilst a warped Mick Hucknell spread across the screen in the background, and a sunglassed middle aged man with a ‘Bound for Glory’ t shirt stood on stage, in his imagined boxing arena, mimed along. Absolutely extraordinary.
The Nightingale Said He Knew That Your Love Would Find My Love One Day
I had never heard of Julee Cruise until Boomkat tweeted about her death at the age of 65 in June, and linked to her 1989 debut album Floating into the Night. The track ‘Falling’ had been used by David Lynch, one of Cruise’s creative partners, as the theme for Twin Peaks, but aside from that familiar tune, this was all new to me; I was smitten. Her gorgeous, ethereal voice, the production that sounds like it could have come from any time from the 1930s onwards, the sheer beauty of ‘The Nightingale’, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t come across her extraordinary talent before. RIP Julee, and thanks for this absorbing body of work.
Voice Actor ‘Sent From My Telephone’
In which Stroom release a 112 song, four and a half hour strong doozy of an album by an unknown collective that somehow demands repeat listening even though you kind of have to spread it over a few days and try and remember where you got up to, and it’s kinda impossible to remember what your favourite track is. Immersive doesn’t even cover it, a lesson in patience rewarded, a lesson in total submission to someone’s vision.
Oliver Coates x Films
LS’s favourite cello wielding composer (sorry Boccherini) has recently made scoring films one of his main gigs, and we’re very here for it. This year he’s written the music for Significant Other, The Stranger, and best of all, the phenomenal debut film from Charlotte Wells Aftersun. His work transcends the films - I have seen neither The Stranger or Significant Other, but love the scores, and if you’ve seen the film it evokes the best memories from it. Alongside the 90s nostaligia tracks featured in Aftersun (Never Ever, Road Rage, Tender, Drinking in LA), Coates’ score perfectly encapsulates and compliments the themes of memory and loss in the film, and I can’t wait for the full thing to be released in the near future.
The Rise and Rise of Organ Tapes
From the moment I heard Tim Zha’s ‘Heaven Can Wait’ I was hooked. Few albums this year got me right in the feels like this one, yet it feels a bit slept on. His show at Soup as part of the N/OM showcase (also featuring great sets from YL Hooi and Sferic) was mesmerising too, a one man guitary, synthy symphony. A Talent.
Fuck The Rest
Well that escalated. Uniformly excellent albums and EPs released, incendiary live shows, thrilling DJ sets and B2Bs across The White Hotel and Soup, and a relentless work ethic in showing not only this country, but across the World too, that the North (West) is producing the best music and art around at this time. 2022 was theirs, and there promises to be much more to come in ‘23. Be upstanding for your ovation Rainy Miller, Blackhaine, Iceboy Violet, Finn, Michael J Blood, Tom Boogizm (Rat Heart), BFTT, Clemency, aya, and last year’s AOTY winners Space Afrika…unbeatable, one and all 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Top 10 albums
Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There
Romance - Once Upon a Time
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri - I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon
Organ Tapes - Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao
Florist - Florist
Finn - Everything is Alright
Michael J Blood & Rat Heart - Nite Mode Vol.1
Gilla Band - Most Normal
Kali Malone - Living Torch
Let’s Eat Grandma - Two Ribbons
Axel Boman
Electronically speaking, nothing spoke to me so consistently this year as Boman’s ambitious double album drop Luz/Quest for Fire. The physical and digital release of which slightly blurs convention, though both contain his signature masterstroke; house delivered through an immersive groove, with just a fluttering of melancholy. Luz gives that second aspect a wider birth, which gave it the edge for me. There’s an eclecticness to what each track brings but the dial never shifts from giving your ears a fuzzy embrace. This might be the perfect afters album you know.
Overmono at Glastonbury
Only really on my radar for their earworm remix of I Have a Love, I found myself faced with the frequent Joy Orbison collaboration duo under a dock off head at Glasto’s ICON stage and just got it. They delivered a mesmerising set of trance and tempo, Whilst 2022’s Cash Romantic EP holds up well I can’t look past hearing 2021’s So U Kno that night, an absolute stomping tune.
Kendrick’s triple swoop
I was asked to consider tracks, albums and live performances for this. I was pretty late in getting into him but in 2022 the undisputed king delivered on all three. I don’t need to say much you can’t hear from more qualified voices on Mr Morale & the Big Steppers or his transfixing Pyramid Stage set (though the former had a far better second half, the latter was mercifully succinct for a last big act of the last day vibe). But Mother I Sober is some song, so raw and moving. Like music being beautiful strung from a set of exposed nerves, with all his best spoken flourishes.
Warm Chris
She’s done it again. One of the great traits of Aldous Harding’s sound is that it remains impossible to accurately define. In fact, she seems to actively try and spurn it. Her lyrics are striking, peculiar, playful and somewhat disorderly. They invite futile attempts at interpretation. Intentionally or not she allows us to formulate our own, while her impeccably catchy and captivating melodies swirl around our heads. Her vocal range is supreme and veers more freely than ever on Warm Chris, where the folky surrealist elements (my pithy attempt at the above) are dialled right up and met with more vibrance. Make the soothing Fever or Lawn your entry level tracks. It may not be as complete or alluring as 2019’s Designer but it’s Aldous at her lively idiosyncratic best. The results of which are well worth gorging on. Nice of her to drop this treat having kicked the UK tour can 12 months down the road in March an all.
Girlhouse
Decent streaming numbers but lacking in anything accomplished beyond an EP, I’ve been steadily getting into Lauren Luiz’s self analytical dream pop track by track this year. There’s shades of Soccer Mommy’s and Tomberlin’s raw and sonic brilliance, particularly on the fatalist and paul blart mall cop (yep, that film). Drawing inspiration from when she’s “very sad, confused or angry at someone/something” Luiz, though 29, channels that ‘coming of age angst’ alternative sound so effortlessly well. A youthful relatability I’m not sure I can justify relating too much longer given I now own an AeroPress coffee maker and recently just about fought off the urge to SMS 6 Music.
Wrapped up in it all
I wrote about the tantalising but potentially toxic spider’s web of Spotify’s algorithm for Laughing Stock here. It’s a continued area of interest so to hear Four Tet was taking it on with typical cerebral and creative energy was a fun read. “If I’m going to engage with these platforms, I’m going to do it on my terms”. Forza that.
It’s Always Summer Somewhere
I knew I could get cricket into here one day. Bear with me though because whilst you’d be right to think it shouldn’t have a place in this list, ex-Maccabee Felix White’s personal ode to the game is somehow seamlessly told through the prisms of music and grief. Wity, poignant and full of humble anecdotes about emerging as a successful UK indie band in its most saturated era. Interwoven is White processing the loss of his mother to multiple sclerosis, as someone going through a similar scenario with a parent this year it felt like cathartic reading.
Here is a distinctly not ‘of the year’ but here’s some additional albums I’ve enjoyed and think readers will too
Panda Bear x Sonic Boom - Reset
Romare - Fantasy
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool it Down
Mall Grab - What I Breath
CMAT - If My Wife Knew I’d Be Dead
Tomberlin - I Don’t Know Who Needs to Hear This
Annie Blackman - All of It
And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow
I doubt you’d ever get tired of being constantly compared to Carole King and Joni Mitchell, but Natalie Laura Mering’s late year release has rightfully cast off those weights. She is Weyes Blood and Weyes Blood alone. Her last album, 2019’s Titanic Rising, was an ethereal meditation on environmental doom. Her latest record maintains this ethereality but turns to themes of loneliness and the human need for connection. It is a work of dizzying, enigmatic beauty and unquestionably my album of the year. Grapevine is my standout track, it’ll have you weeping by flickering candlelight.
You Want It Darker
The divine Luca Guadagnino-directed cannibal romance Bones and All features an array of stars, including its leads Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell. But none shine more than its sumptuous soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The sense of unease permeating throughout is punctured by guttural slabbering and ungodly cries, before ending on the soaring The Great Wide Open (Reprise). The score - like Maren (Russell) and Lee’s (Chalamet) nomadic characters - , tricks you into thinking you have reached its heart of darkness, but constantly lurches forward into and out of moments of intense brutality, evading restraint. This ability to switch between the deep dark and the gentle light is what makes this score irresistible. Whisper it, but it’s better than their work on The Social Network.
Ray of Light
I trekked to the Albanian riviera over the summer to Kala festival with some of my best mates. Logistically, the festival didn’t win me over but Avalon Emerson’s Saturday night to Sunday sunrise set made the whole thing worthwhile. Amid the red glow of morning light against a backdrop of Balkan hills, she played an unforgettable 6 hours, ending on Madonna’s techno-pop banger Ray of Light. I still dream of that tangerine sky, the shy hum of the ocean and Madge’s line ‘And I feel like I just got home’ floating on and on and on.
Florist
I well and truly fell for Florist’s self-titled July release this year. Back in our summer favourites piece I wrote: “It’s an album which wears all the trappings of brown leaves and jumper weather but has the dog days of August at its heart. Backed by the pulsating chirp of crickets, you can almost hear the crackle of a fire and the smell of smoke. It conjures an image of humid nights and chillier mornings, dew on the ground and light peeking through spindling trees. Listen to it when you’re on your next twilight walk, or reading on a park bench, or drinking wine into the hours with your mates on a muggy evening.”
Quantity and quality
A distinct sense of industrious proliferation emerged from the Lo-Fi Rap community during 2022: Mach-Hommy released four albums; Pink Siifu released three; The Alchemist released two; Wiki brought out one despite releasing two last year; and that’s without mentioning the array of EPs between all of them. It speaks to the rich fountain of creative cooperation in the thriving New York-based scene: not everything sticks, but the abundance of energy and artistry amongst this group demands admiration and attention.
Will the real Animal Collective please stand up
Time Skiffs was a real return to form for the quartet, their best work since 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavillion.
R&R
Not everyone enjoys background music while reading, but my 2022 Spotify Wrapped Playlist is full of the mass, random array of tracks I have accompany me when I read. Highlights this year include: Nala Sinephro’s Space 1.8 (jazz-cum-science-fiction), Ann Annie’s By Morning (lovely, fireside ambiance with hints of country), and Caroline Shaw’s Evergreen (tender, dramatic strings from a contemporary classical icon).
After the Earthquake
There’s not much that hasn’t already been said about Stereogun’s number one album and Pitchfork’s number three album of the year (Alvvay’s Blue Rev), but I will say that I danced to After The Earthquake an inordinate amount of times in my kitchen this autumn. That last 30 seconds is like being injected by some synthesised concoction of teenage memories and faded dreams.
Walter Murch
Francis Ford Coppola’s criminally underrated masterpiece The Conversation had a re-release in theatres at the turn of the year. The Watergate-era thriller features a career best Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, a wiretapper, who struggles with the moral implications of his surveillance. It features one of film’s all-time great sound designs, with Walter Murch using synthesisers to create a soundscape foggy with half-spoken truths and paranoia. Murch gave a brilliantly insightful interview to Krotos Audio here.
Big Thief
At times, it’s difficult to size up the sheer ambition of Big Thief’s sprawling genius on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. It should be inaccessible, yet it’s anything but. Their catchy melodies, their humour and their warmth contribute to a perceived simplicity, but this is betrayed by the albums’ complex sonic range and Big Thief’s remarkable ability to sew it all together. Even more impressive is the ability to create a 20 track record without a single weak spot. At no point do you get bored; nothing is wasted. To scale new heights here, after 2019’s magical twin releases of Two Hands and U.F.O.F, feels astonishing. Proper imperial phase stuff.
Top 10 albums of the year:
Weyes Blood - And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow
Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
Alvvays - Blue Rev
Florist - Florist
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri - I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon
Kendrick Lamar - Mr Morale and The Big Steppers
Aldous Harding - Warm Chris
Nilüfer Yanya - PAINLESS
MJ Lenderman - Boat Songs
Mavi - Laughing So Hard, It Hurts
And so that’s it for another year, was fun wasn’t it.
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