I usually like to start these by recounting the “universal” events of the year like my own shitty little State of the Union address. I default to this style of introduction because it’s easy, and the end of the year seems like a natural time to look back and reflect. I also have no idea who reads these, so starting with some universal touchpoints feels like as good a way as any to get us all relating to each other. Talking in generalizations also allows me to establish the tone of the past 365 days in broad strokes, which sometimes offers a nice springboard into the music. This year, I’d like to break format and talk about the biggest thing that happened to my life in 2022: I fell in love.

At the beginning of the year, I was in a rough place. COVID numbers were climbing, I was in a rut with my job, and stuck in the depths of a gloomy Portland winter. Pretty soon, I started talking to someone who I quickly became infatuated with. Someone funny, and beautiful, and caring, and intelligent, and exciting. Someone who’s written for this blog, actually. By February, I wrote about this blooming love as it coincided with the release of Black Country, New Road’s sophomore album Ants From Up There. It’s still one of my favorite things I’ve written all year, maybe ever.

This relationship has shaped my year and granted me a unique perspective as I moved through the music of 2022. I kept up on new releases not with monthly roundups as I did in 2021, but through quarterly collections of my favorite records. Each step of the way, I filtered everything I heard through the love and experiences of this relationship, sharing songs and moments with someone who’s just as big of a music nerd as me. It’s been incredible.

Speaking of, it’s also been an incredible year for music; a true bounty of incredible records every single month. I’d spend my Fridays saving albums and building out playlists of new releases tracked from my unwieldy 20-page-long Google Doc. One by one, I’d make my way through each week’s saved albums, grateful for the amount of fantastic art that’s only a click away. Some music landed, some didn’t. Some of it might land with me further down the road, but who knows. At the beginning of 2022, I started a Twitter thread featuring a last.fm chart and a little roundup of the albums and songs that I loved most from the past month. Like the hyper-obsessive geek I am, I kept that thread going all year, and now it’s shocking to look back at how much great music there was to enjoy in 2022.

If we’re being completely honest, my full “album of the year list” is at least 50 to 70 releases (even longer if we’re talking about songs), but I have a tradition, and I must uphold it. I cannot write about every album I loved this year because it would be hundreds of thousands of words long. Instead, I must distill, condense, and talk about my absolute favorites. That’s what this is—the top ten of 2022. I hope you love em.

10 | Ethel Cain - Preacher’s Daughter

How would you describe yourself to others? What are your defining characteristics? How can you boil your life down to just a few bullet points or pivotal moments? Most importantly, how does that narrative of self change based on who you’re presenting it to? Throughout the one-hour and fifteen-minute odyssey that is her debut album, Hayden Silas Anhedonia does just that. Using the character of Ethel Cain, a sort of gothic, tattooed Floridian Disney Princess, Anhedonia frames herself through religion, family, and sexuality, reflecting on the version of herself she presents to the world and the one she sees in her head. While it’s never said outright within the album, her point of view as a trans woman elevates these topics far beyond their standard mileage, making the sense of internal conflict even more profound in the process. Tropes of escaping your hometown on the back of some hot dude’s motorcycle or being a popular high school girl are given additional depth and character when seen through the eyes of Ethel Cain. Whether presented as breezy summer pop, climactic guitar solos, or horror movie screams, the world conjured up on Preachers Daughter is one of the most potent and spellbinding I’ve heard all year.

9 | Summerbruise - The View Never Changes

You might be reading this thinking, ‘who the hell is Summerbruise??’ Well, my friend, Summerbruise is an indie-ish emo-ish rock band from the far-off land of Indiana. They’ve put out a couple of releases, but The View Never Changes is their latest and their best. Centered around singer/guitarist Mike Newman’s sharp-as-fuck lyricism, the songs walk a razor’s edge between clever and depressive. Newman spends most of the record’s 24-minute runtime psychoanalyzing himself, questioning who he is, and trying to figure out why his brain works the way it does. After criticizing himself from every angle, he uses those around him as mirrors to hypothesize how they conceive of all his faults… I realize I’m not making this sound very fun, am I?

Sure, this sounds like a lot to lay on a listener (admittedly, pretty standard issue for most emo music), but luckily the band realizes this and finds ways to counterbalance these relatable confessionals with peppy instrumentals and bits of humor that keep things light and upbeat. While the record starts with this barrage of self-criticisms, halfway through, the band turns their gaze outward to shitty scene narcissists in a way that feels like our narrator going, ‘maybe I’m not the only problem here.’ After getting all of that out of their system, Summerbruise spend the back half of the release talking about how much they love their friends, partners, and life itself. It’s the album equivalent of digging yourself out of a hole and realizing that life is better on the other side.

The View Never Changes feels like an adult’s approach to emo. It’s realist without being depressing, clever without being smug, and earnest without being overbearing. Albums like this are why I love DIY music.

8 | Anxious - Little Green House

Part of me recoils whenever people say, ‘I miss Title Fight’ or (worse) speculate about a legacy band of that caliber reuniting. Here’s the thing those people don’t get: it’ll never be as good. Bands like Title Fight, Hotelier, and Modern Baseball are lighting in a bottle. They assemble, often under totally unsustainable circumstances, and fuse together just long enough to make one or two incredible pieces of art before breaking apart. It’s fine to miss those bands, but to make missing them your personality just feels like some Boomer shit, especially when there are younger bands doing the same thing but better. Similarly, when people take a band like Anxious and herald them as the “next Title Fight,” it ends up feeling like a disservice to both acts. Anyone making those claims is missing the point of what made the original band great and obfuscating what makes the younger band unique.

Sure, Anxious sound like Title Fight, but they represent much more than the repackaging of a nostalgic punk sound; they are bottling up a specific brand of youthful energy and packing it into a record that’s great on its own merits. Little Green House has HOOKS and RIFFS and scream-along choruses galore. One spin of the Connecticut band’s debut LP will quickly reveal one punchy punk anthem after another. There’s a slower song thrown in here and there for good measure, but for the most part, Little Green House is a relentless and explosive album in the best way possible. Anxious don’t just sound like Title Fight; they’re better. They’re their own thing, and (especially given the standalone singles they dropped after the LP) I can’t wait to see where they go next.

7 | Short Fictions - Every Moment of Every Day

Shreddy licks, cutting lyrics, and a world crumbling in slow motion. That’s the recipe for the third studio album from Short Fictions, and it comes out like a three-star, three-course emo meal. Often drawing comparisons to classic fourth-wave acts like The World Is A Beautiful Place, Short Fictions bring a nerdy technical precision to their music as well as progressive lyrics that make them feel like the scrappy younger sibling to a specific brand of midwest emo. As shown on their last album, these guys aren’t going to whine about drama in their friend group or not getting the girl; there are bigger things to worry about.

Throughout their new record, the Pittsburgh troupe tackle things as granular as the realities of tour life and as grand as love and creating art in a capitalistic society. All of these things happening at once, all the time, is the true beauty of this album, as it is life. This push and pull between finding happiness and being ground down by the world we inhabit is (somewhat) resolved on the album closer “Don’t Pinch Me I’m Dreaming.” This final song ultimately provides a hopeful reminder that love can be a refuge that exists despite all the strife surrounding it. Things are just going to keep happening every moment of every day, so you better make sure you enjoy at least some of them.

6 | They Are Gutting A Body of Water - s

Here’s where I feel inadequate as a music writer. I don’t know where to even start with s. First off, how would you categorize this album? Shoegaze? Electronic? Noise Pop? I seriously don’t know how to conceive of this record, so let’s just start where it begins: with a whir of buzzy static on the titular acronymized intro. This distortion establishes the base level of noise that makes up the foundation of the album. Then you hear a single note, sustaining like a flatline. Gradually, the song layers on a proggy guitar riff, steady drum pattern, and thundering bass one by one. The instruments twist and swirl, contorting around one another until you find yourself at the center of this noise. You are paralyzed and mesmerized, and there you will remain for the following 30 minutes.

Throughout the opening barrage of tracks, s establishes itself as fully unpredictable. From the off-kilter lilt of “kmart amen break” to the Donkey Kong 64-Core of “behind the waterfall,” it’s impossible to know what’s coming next. Song after song, the band keeps throwing inventive riffs and eclectic samples into the mix, keeping the listener on their heels as they simultaneously attempt to recover from and make sense of the band’s restless internet-addled approach to shoegaze. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and based on how prolific and erratic the creative mind behind the project is, I don’t think I’ll ever hear anything like it again. This is great because s is a flawless standalone document that needs no addition, addendum, or follow-up. Despite how hard it is to define an album like s, it’s very possible that it just might be the future.

5 | Sweet Pill - Where the Heart Is

Topshelf Records had a banner year in 2022; amongst other things, they released a phenomenal shoegaze record, a couple of killer splits, and some untouchable pop-rock. They ushered all these records into the world while facing unexpected (and uniquely shitty) adversity when their distributor went bankrupt over the summer. Luckily fans rallied, and the label regained access to their own inventory by the end of the year. Even with major roadblocks like that, Topshelf had an unforgettable slate of releases in 2022, the crown jewel of which is Sweet Pill’s masterstroke Where the Heart Is.

One part mathy Pool Kids instrumentation and one part high-flying dramatics, Sweet Pill have crafted a unique blend of emo that fits just as well in the tappy Guitar Hero and Rock Band as it does on a bill with post-hardcore legends like La Dispute. The instrumentals are electrifying and heavy. The vocals are soaring and theatrical. Moments like adlibbed dog barks give the release the feeling of a bunch of creative people asking themselves, “wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?” and then bringing it to life without breaking a sweat. It’s inventive emo, which are two words that almost never go together. As gut-punch riffs and high-energy singalongs downshift into pensive observations and quiet reflections, the LP leaves on a crushing one-two punch that satisfies but leaves you salivating for more.

And if that wasn’t enough, Sweet Pill’s Audiotree live session released at the end of the year, is a dazzling technical display with a charm all its own. Watching the band create these sounds in real time only affirms that they are the real deal.

4 | Arm's Length - Never Before Seen, Never Again Found

Many of you probably think of me as the “emo music guy,” but that doesn’t mean I blindly love everything in the genre. For example, I liked the last EP from Arm’s Length just fine. Everything Nice boasted five cathartic emo songs that, I’ll admit, blended together a little. Even still, the band managed to end that release on a home-run grand slam with “Garamond,” one of my favorite songs of 2021. In the lead-up to the band’s debut album, I was a little worried their style would become tired or redundant when stretched over the length of a full LP. First listen, I found this to be true. Then I listened again. And again. And again. A week later, I found myself deeply rooted in the album, obsessed with nearly every track.

In a bizarre twist of events, one Sunday night, I was listening to the album and thought to myself, “I wonder if Arm’s Length is on tour?” I looked it up and discovered they were playing my town THAT NIGHT. A serendipitous occurrence that told me I needed to be in that venue. I threw on my jacket, headed to downtown Denver, and attended one of the best concerts I’d been to all year. From note one, the crowd was belting back every word of the band’s then-just-week-old album. I was blown away. That concert, combined with my growing love for their album, solidified Arm’s Length’s status for me. I finally saw the light.

As a record, Never Before Seen, Never Again Found does lots of what you would expect an emo album to do: there’s tapping, screaming, and talk of trauma. Most of the songs start with a wounded calmness but gradually work their way up to radical outpourings of emotion by the end. As these songs mount, they often revisit their own verse a second time, rendering the words first in a hushed croon, then in a strained yelp later on. This lends each song a half-and-half yin-yang effect that makes them a thrill to listen to. Once you become accustomed to the album’s overall arc, it quickly becomes one of the greatest of its ilk we’ve seen in a long time. A direct descendent from the likes of Home, Like Noplace Is There as well as clear inspiration from piers like Jail Socks and Anxious. There’s also a touch of post-hardcore that makes it feel like this record could have easily fit in on the roster of 2013-era Rise Records or Fearless. Essentially, Never Before Seen is every type of music I like in one place; no wonder why I’ve fallen so deeply under its spell.

3 | Ben Quad - I’m Scared That’s All There Is

For your consideration: Emo Album of the Year. That was the tweet, and it was funny because it was true. Ben Quad knew they could make that joke because they were right. I’ll admit this has been a very emo countdown up until now, but the tappy shit stops here because this is the emo record of 2022.

I’m Scared That’s All There Is has it all: tappy Midwest emo shit, hilarious samples, hydration encouragement, and a late-LP acoustic ditty that rolls into a closer with a group chant that bears the album title. All of that and more in 23 minutes, there’s literally nothing else you could ask for. The album never overstays its welcome and somehow still leaves you keyed-up despite how breathless and energetic it all is. Additionally, a standalone single released four months later, the Piebald-referencing “You’re Part of It,” offers a hardcore political-leaning post-script to the record that provides a glimpse into possible futures for one of the most exciting emo bands in recent years.

2 | MJ Lenderman - Boat Songs

DO YOU HAVE THE BOAT SONGS MENTALITY? Do you appreciate sports esoterica? Have you been to a wrestling match (or two) in your time? Do you and your girl have a shared favorite Jackass bit? If you answered YES to any of these questions, then brother, you might enjoy Boat Songs.

I first encountered MJ Lenderman’s work last year as the shreddy backup guitarist on Wednesday’s Twin Plagues. Interested to see how his solo output differed, I explored MJ Lenderman’s dual 2021’s releases Knockin’ and Ghost of Your Guitar Solo. From there, I fell deep down a rabbit hole of countrygaze artists centered primarily around Wednesday and MJ.

I fell in love with Boat Songs specifically over the course of a humid four-day weekend in July on the Oregon Coast. At first, I was drawn in by the snappy CCR stomp of “You Have Bought Yourself A Boat,” then the swampy “Dan Marino,” and then the let-it-all-out yelps of “Tastes Just Like It Costs.” Maybe it was the saltwater in the air or just where I was at in my life, but for just a few days, everything felt perfect. I was at peace, and the whole time I had Boat Songs on repeat.

The thing about the Boat Songs Mentality is that anyone can achieve it. Everything doesn’t need to be perfect, and you don’t need to meet every one of the requirements I laid out in the opening paragraph; in fact, you can make up your own! You just have to feel it. If you haven’t yet had a Boat Songs Summer, I am speaking directly to you, the reader, hoping that you’ll be there soon because everyone deserves to achieve the Boat Songs Mentality.

1 | Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There

This year more than ever, I’m re-considering what an “album of the year” is. Sometimes it’s what album felt best, sometimes it’s the one you couldn’t stop coming back to, and sometimes it’s tied to a specific memory or feeling. With Ants From Up There, it’s an album that came out during a pivotal time in my life and draws its power directly from that fact. It’s also beautiful, technically staggering, and downright awe-inspiring. There was no way this list could have ended other than Ants From Up There.

To recap (and bring things full circle), the second album from Black Country, New Road was released at the top of the year, right as my crush was blossoming into a real relationship. I was still back in Portland and just starting to talk to this person who would go on to define my 2022. I was in love, but I didn’t even know it yet. Excellent timing aside, Ants is also an album about feelings and opening yourself up to the good and bad that come with life. That’s a message I desperately needed to hear back in February. As much as I loved (and listened to) Boat Songs, I literally fell in love while listening to Ants From Up There. That’s hard to beat.

Ants begins with the 54-second “Intro,” which enchants the listener with a repetitive series of notes clearly inspired by Philip Glass. From there, the LP launches forward in a classic 2000’s-indie explosion on “Chaos Space Marine” and further establishes its themes on “Concorde.” By the time the album’s pair of masterful 10-minute closing tracks rolls around, you’ve experienced every type of love, loss, rejection, and grief a young heart can handle. The scale ranges from careless crumbs left in bed to far-off space journeys on the other side of the Milky Way.

The pièce de résistance for Ants comes in the form of its closing track, “Basketball Shoes,” a song originally about shooting ropes to Charli XCX but actually about the totality of feeling. Throughout the song’s epic 12-and-a-half-minute runtime, the band makes use of every instrument, playing in the blank space and collectively building up to a cataclysmic exorcism of emotion. It’s the best song I’ve heard in years, despite the somewhat comical surface-level reading of the lyrics.

On a deeper level, “Basketball Shoes” is about the idea of performance, the concept of idolizing the other, and the creative process as a whole. It’s also a medley of everything that came before, summarizing the album and its themes over the course of an expansive three-act structure. Ultimately, the song is a message to the fans from lead singer Isacc Wood. It’s his send-off. It’s one final bow before the curtain call. Every time I finish the song, I feel like I need a minute just for my heart rate to come back down and my brain to return to my body. It’s legitimately transcendental.

Interestingly enough, Ants is viewed controversially in some online indie music circles, as if the band took a big swing and didn’t quite connect, but for me, the stars aligned on this album. To my ears, this record sounds like fresh-exploding love. It’s the feeling of your heart racing at every text and communication. It is pure, raw feeling of every measure pouring out and making you feel like a teenager again. The music also reflects these qualities, with Isacc Wood performing a vast, overwrought character that may or may not be an exaggeration of how he is in real life. Some people hear that kind of earnestness and shy away from it (or “cringe,” as the kids say), but on Ants, this performance is so committed and powerful that I can’t help but fully embrace it.

Ants is an album that helped me feel things for the first time in years. In some cases, for the first time in my life. Sure, it’s an album that came out as I fell in love, but in a way, it’s also an album that reminded me how to love. Or affirmed to me that I should love. I don’t know. I’m still processing it. All I know is I wouldn’t be here now without this record, and we should all consider ourselves lucky that it exists.

I firmly believe Ants From Up There is an album that everyone will need at some point in their life. I’m just lucky that it found me when I needed it most.

Swim Into The Sound

Swim Into The Sound

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Swim Into The Sound

Swim Into The Sound's 10 Favorite Albums of 2022

10 | Ethel Cain - Preacher’s Daughter

9 | Summerbruise - The View Never Changes

8 | Anxious - Little Green House

7 | Short Fictions - Every Moment of Every Day

6 | They Are Gutting A Body of Water - s

5 | Sweet Pill - Where the Heart Is

4 | Arm's Length - Never Before Seen, Never Again Found

3 | Ben Quad - I’m Scared That’s All There Is

2 | MJ Lenderman - Boat Songs

1 | Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There