The Best of Q1 2022
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We’re officially a fourth of the way through 2022 (or at the end of “Q1,” as those in the ~industry~ call it), and we’ve been blessed with an absolute glut of incredible new music. In lieu of the monthly roundups we did throughout 2021, I’ve been keeping an ongoing thread of my favorite releases over on Twitter which has helped me keep up on the neverending supply of new music. Now that we’ve crossed this natural beat a quarter of the way through the year, I figured what better time than now to sit down and take stock of my favorite albums released thus far? Here are ten outstanding records from the first few months of 2022 that have already managed to leave an impression on me despite our relatively short time together.
Anxious - Little Green House
Run For Cover Records
It’s easy to listen to Anxious and compare them to Title Fight. Ever since the Pennsylvanian rock group unceremoniously dissolved in 2015, people have always been searching for the “next Title Fight.” While that comparison is ultimately meant as a compliment, Little Green House feels like so much more than superficial worship of a bygone era. If anything, I find myself comparing this band to Adventures, a short-lived yet highly-influential pop-punk side project with just the occasional tinge of hardcore.
Little Green House opens with a flat-out ripper in “Your One Way Street,” a song that kicks off with a killer drum fill and charges forth with a muscular chord progression. The vocals vault from a heartfelt croon to a full-throated scream, eventually falling into a beautiful harmony for the chorus. It’s a two-minute sample platter of everything the band has to offer, wrapped in immaculate production and a self-assured presentation. The hits keep coming with the spring-flavored “In April” and the poppy “Growing Up Song.” Side A closer “Wayne” is a mid-album pit-stop before the raging “Speechless” drops the listener back into the full-throttle embrace. Choices like this lead to the album’s peaks and valleys feeling very well-placed, all of which resolve with a gentle landing on the closing track, “You When You’re Gone.” Little Green House is a fantastic debut that’s clean, catchy, and feels as if it came straight out of the golden age of Run For Cover.
Band of Horses - Things Are Great
BMG
Pitched as a return to form, Things Are Great not only evokes the folksy indie rock of the first two Band of Horses albums but also stands on its own as a pleasant, laid-back excursion for the modern age. It’s the musical equivalent of a soft reboot where you don’t need to concern yourself with the official canon, studio rights, or any other needless behind-the-scenes details. All that matters is the collection of ten songs that sit before you and how much they rule.
Back in November, I lamented how often Band of Horses gets lumped in with terribly-aged “Hey Ho” Lumineers-type music while also arguing the deeper virtues of Everything All The Time. Maybe it's just because that deep dive is still fresh, but I can see multiple obvious parallels between the band’s first album and their latest. You’ve got a few free-wheeling singles in “Crutch,” “Lights,” and “In Need of Repair” that coexist beautifully alongside slightly more heady stuff like “Aftermath” and lackadaisical porchside kickbacks like “In The Hard Times.” Things Are Great is everything I could want from a Band of Horses record, and it feels like this release could genuinely stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the group’s first couple of LPs, even if it still feels like the newer younger brother.
Beach House - Once Twice Melody
Sub Pop Records
Look, do I really have to sell you on a new Bach House record? I obviously love the band, but you know exactly what you’re getting into here. A 90-minute affair split into four parts released over four months, Once Twice Melody is the type of album you can throw on and fully submerge yourself in. From the anthemic title track to the trap-drum “Pink Funeral” and the hypnotic “Over and Over,” there’s more than enough to sink your teeth into here. Once Twice Melody is a gold and glossy wonderland perfect for late-night smoke sessions, mid-day make-outs, and everything in between.
Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There
Ninja Tune
I can’t remember the last time I heard an album like Ants From Up There… In fact, I may have never heard an album like Ants From Up There. The second LP from Black Country, New Road was preceded– and nearly overshadowed –by the news that lead singer Isaac Wood was departing from the band mere days before the album’s release. While this certainly shifted how Ants From Up There was received and interpreted, I can’t think of a better note to end one’s career on than this collection of songs. This record is heartfelt and heartwrenching, finding a group of young creatives at various crossroads in their personal and professional lives. The lyrics are poetic and abstract yet hit upon extremely personal struggles. The songs bend and wind in unexpected ways, expanding and contracting under the weight of their own anguish and celebration.
I wrote about this record (in my own incredibly abstract way) back when it was first released, and in the time since then, it has become symbolic of so many things to me. Closely tied to what is now a fully-fledged relationship with someone I feel incredibly lucky to know and love, this album means more to me than I can possibly put into a few-hundred-word blurb. This album speaks to me in ways that I never knew I needed and now represents something much bigger than the songs found within its walls. I love this record, I love my partner, and I feel lucky to have these memories and emotions tied to a single work of art so concretely. Much like the album itself, these feelings are bigger than any one song or sentiment. Ants is an insurmountable work that brushes up against the inarticulable in a way that has helped me understand my own life and love on a deeper level.
Camp Cope - Running with the Hurricane
Run For Cover Records
It’s been four years since How To Socialize and Make Friends, and I am glad Camp Cope is back. Captivating as ever, Running with the Hurricane centers around the trifecta that made the group’s prior work so compelling; Georgia Maq’s iconic voice, Kelly-Dawn Helmrich’s bouncy basswork, and Sarah Thompson’s steady drumming holding everything together. It’s a triad that has driven this band apart from every other pier in their field and resulted in some of the most distinct output in the indie/emo sphere.
Running with the Hurricane follows similar beats as previous Camp Cope LPs, buoyed by the stunning opener “Caroline” and the explosive, rolling heartland rock of its title track. The band winds through relationships, strife, and loss throughout the intervening seven songs, eventually landing on the cathartic “Sing Your Heart Out,” which I am man enough to admit that I openly sobbed to. Camp Cope is a band unlike any other, with a voice and a sound as outspoken as the members themselves. It’s good to have them back.
Carly Cosgrove - See You In Chemistry
Wax Bodega
An iCarly-themed emo band. That’s the elevator pitch for Carly Cosgrove, and odds are you will either balk at that or be sold immediately depending on your age and tolerance for committing to the bit. While the band’s schtick is funny and novel, the good news is (beyond their song titles and the occasional veiled reference), your enjoyment of this album is not dependent on your knowledge of mid-aughts Nickelodeon sitcoms.
Going into this record, my main concern was the same with most emo LPs: will I like this for a full 40+ minutes? This genre is so entrenched in EPs, singles, and splits, and it’s pretty common for that bite-sized energy not to translate into a full-length record. I’m happy to report that Carly Cosgrove nailed it, though. Like any good emo band, the opening track “Sit ‘n’ Bounce” ignites with crowd-churning midwest guitar taps and clap-inspiring kick drums which immediately brings the energy up to a 10. Over the course of its 43-minute runtime, the band lays confessional and hyper-relatable lyrics about anxiety, mental health, and living in extremes over dynamic and ever-shifting instrumentation. See You In Chemistry is excellently sequenced, superbly written, even sticks the landing with an 8-minute closing track, a feat for any band, much less one this young. The result is an energetic and youthful debut that’s affable, affirming, and firmly committed to its vision.
Chastity - Suffer Summer
Deathwish Inc.
Much like Dazy, Chastity is a one-man project concerned with fuzzy grunge riffs and utterly immaculate hooks. Holding equal reverence for both Smashing Pumpkins and Jimmy Eat World, Suffer Summer is an album composed of breezy pop-punk tracks that gradually melt, giving way to the heaviness of reality. Each song boasts an earworm chorus, often in the form of a single infinitely-repeatable phrase, making it easy to belt along. Tracks like “Pummeling” feel as if they could have wormed their way into an early-2000s movie soundtrack right alongside the likes of heavy-hitters like “All The Small Things” and “The Middle.” Once the listener has acclimated to the sunnier sound of its first few songs, Suffer Summer takes some unexpected half-steps into neighboring genres and heavier topics, offering a fulfilling journey in just 34 minutes.
Cloakroom - Dissolution Wave
Relapse Records Inc.
Due solely to when it was released, Dissolution Wave essentially acted as the definitive close to my Obsessive Shoegaze Winter. I was in a dark place for a few months there, and this record felt like the perfect way to finally find closure and pull myself out of that spiral. A high-concept album pitched as a “space western in which an act of theoretical physics wipes out all of humanity’s existing art and abstract thought,” Dissolution Wave bears all the fuzzy, wobbly, soul-crushing riffs you can hope for from a shoegaze act as legendary as Cloakroom. There are catchy cuts like “A Force at Play,” bleary stoner rock tone on “Fear of Being Fixed,” and even some woozy countrygaze on “Doubts.” Despite its sky-high concept, Dissolution Wave remains an accessible shoegaze LP that offers an excellent case for the best of what the genre has to offer.
Drunk Uncle - Look Up
Count Your Lucky Stars Records
Look, I can’t help it; I love that tappy shit. There’s something about my brain where it hears good midwest emo and releases a truckload of dopamine without fail. Does that sound goofy and extremely on-brand? Sure, but who am I to question it? Luckily for myself and others like me, Drunk Uncle brings the riffage in spades on their debut album. Released on the legendary label Count Your Lucky Stars, Look Up already had all the makings of a classic emo record before it even dropped.
The album kicks off with a bouncy jostle and full-throated caterwaul. The tapping begins almost immediately, which, when paired with these remorseful wails, fills the Marietta-shaped hole in my heart. The sound remains remarkably consistent from the clappy lead single “Depakote” to the arid “Blue Skies,” but things take an unexpected electronic ascent mid-album. The band wanders from heartbreak to pensive ambient stretches before resolving tenaciously on the album’s horn-adored title track. It may be a modest 33-minute album from a band with a goofy name, but Look Up is pretty much everything I could ever want from an emo record. There’s no doubt in my mind that this album would be viewed as a classic within the genre if it had been released ten or even five years earlier. If there’s any justice in this world, Look Up will find its audience and eventually achieve that status in due time.
Proper. - The Great American Novel
Father/Daughter Records
The Great American Novel is a tome in album form. A densely-packed 15 tracks clocking in at just under an hour, the third LP from the Brooklyn-based indie rock group acts as a dispatch on life in America. Firmly rooted in its creator's perspective as a trio of Black creatives existing in primarily white spaces, this album is an unflinching dissection of everyday life in a country that alternates between indifference and outright objection to your existence.
This album is a sharp synthesis of countless vital topics, and a huge part of what makes it such an exhilarating listen is how wide-set the scope is. Songs navigate everything from the music industry and masculinity to meaningless sex and complicated family trees, all in concise and compelling ways. Amongst these topics, the band also weaves a throughline of heavier, more complex subjects like systemic racism, the prison industrial complex, and the idea of identity and belonging. These are all inextricable facts of life for the band members of Proper, which is reflected in these songs in a beautifully heartbreaking way. Musically, the range of genres on display is just as diverse as the lyrics, with sounds stemming from a baseline of emo-flavored indie rock but stretching to shreddy heavy metal guitar, pitch-shifted spoken word passages, pissed-off beatdown vent sessions, and System of a Down-style political takedowns. Somehow, The Great American Novel lives up to its name; an impressive, diverse, and powerful document that offers an essential perspective on topics that can sometimes feel too big to broach, much less compartmentalize into a single song.
