boygenius – the record (Interscope Records)
Memphian Julien Baker first teamed up with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus back in 2018, but the 2023 version finds the trio mapping grander horizons. With a sound big enough and produced enough to conquer the world, it still retains much of Baker’s intimacy, as all three artists offer confessions of love and transgression. The new album encapsulates a Gen Z zeitgeist: “You were born in July, ’95, in a deadly heat …”
Cloudland Canyon – Cloudland Canyon (Medical Records)
This latest from Memphis’ best kept synth secret is becoming a sleeper hit of sorts, especially the bubbling, burbling “Two Point Zero,” pairing pounding beats with wistful melodies like classic New Order. Chris McCoy called one track “a bouncy castle of ’80s synth pop,” saying another “drips with the narcotized seduction of Warhol-era Velvet Underground.” Extra points for Elyssa Worley’s guest vocals on “LV MCHNS” and others.
Chad Fowler, George Cartwright, Kelley Hurt, Christopher Parker, Luke Stewart, Steve Hirsh, Zoh Amba – Miserere (Mahakala Music)
Chad Fowler’s unique Mahakala imprint, focusing on sonically unrestrained music, is both composed and freely improvised, and here he’s joined by onetime Memphian Cartwright and others, including Tennessee’s rising “free jazz star” Zoh Amba. The dynamics and emotional arcs that develop, with Hurt’s haunting vocalizations matched by piano, saxes, flutes, guitar, and rhythms, are deeply moving for deep listeners.
Candice Ivory – When the Levee Breaks: The Music of Memphis Minnie (Little Village Foundation)
Ivory’s found the perfect producer in guitarist/bassist Charlie Hunter. Both regularly push back against jazz orthodoxies, and this ostensible roots album is really a work of alchemy, conjuring Afro-Caribbean rhythms, virtuoso blues guitar, and gospel pedal steel in a seance with Memphis Minnie. Some are stripped-down acoustic blues, some are stomping jams, but all are dominated by Ivory’s powerful and nuanced voice.
Tyler Keith – Hell to Pay (Black and Wyatt)
Keith has a way with a phrase: The words of the title song roll off the tongue like fallen fruit. That’s just what these big, pile-driving rock songs need. And pairing steamy Southern tones with the primitivism of the Ramones allows the words’ meanings to breathe. Most importantly, you get plenty of chant-worthy choruses over ace guitar riffs.
MEM_MODS – MEM_MODS Vol. 1 (Peabody Recording Co.)
Sounding like a lost ’70s soundtrack, this album ranges from Augustus Pablo-like dub to funk bangers to smoldering Isaac Hayes-like ballads. Ear-catching synth sounds abound. Naturally, a trio of veterans like childhood friends Luther Dickinson, Steve Selvidge, and Paul Taylor are adept at “studio painting,” but this also finds these players pushing themselves, especially Dickinson, who focuses on bass and keyboards. Peabody’s first release in decades.
Moneybagg Yo – Hard To Love (CMG/N-Less/Interscope Records)
This Memphis icon continues to pull apart at the seams of his own myth. While the hit “Ocean Spray” celebrates the joys of being out of it in a world of botheration, he checks himself with tracks like “No Show” with the words “I fill my body up with drugs ’fore I even eat/Percocets, Xans, codeine, you don’t wanna see what I see.”
Optic Sink – Glass Blocks (Feel It Records)
Unlike many synth artists who construct tracks “in the box” of a computer screen, Optic Sink composes and performs on actual hardware in the moment, as three post-punk humans recording their basic tracks live. This sophomore album adds bass to drum machine beats from Ben Bauermeister, as Natalie Hoffmann’s dry, disaffected vocals, old-school synth lines, and guitar flourishes add richer soundscapes than the group’s debut.
Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band – Evolution of Fife and Drum Music (Rising Stars Records)
Sharde Thomas (playing, singing, and co-producing with Chris Mallory) takes her grandfather Otha Turner’s music to new heights with this rhythmic tour de force. Mixing tuneful choruses, heavy beats, deep funk, and even touches of Afrobeat’s cascading guitars with their fundamental “drum corps in the yard” sound, this group is forging a whole new genre right in our backyard.
Elder Jack Ward – The Storm (Bible & Tire Recording Co.)
When Memphis’ longtime pastor passed away this April, he had just left this masterpiece in his wake. In true Bible & Tire style, the gritty, swinging “Sacred Soul Sound Section” backs his original songs, but the most captivating sounds come from Ward’s own family, especially when Johnny Ward steps out with “Payday After While” — the track suggesting that his kin will carry his message on.