If you’re only just now joining us: this is part two of my list of my favorite forty albums of 2023 thus far, presented in reverse alphabetical order. Thanks for reading!

View part one of the list here.

Here are links to stream a playlist of these selections via Spotify and Tidal (Bandcamp links are provided below for all records).

Rob I. Miller – Companion Piece

Release date: May 12^th
Record label: Vacant Stare
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, jangle pop, singer-songwriter, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Rob I. Miler’s debut solo album came out mere months after an excellent record from his main band, Blues Lawyer (also appearing on this list). One listen to Companion Piece makes one hear why these songs fit more under Miller’s own name. For one, it’s a full-on breakup album, with the album’s eleven songs focusing intently on a disintegrating relationship. And, befitting of the solo nature, Companion Piece is a lot more humble-sounding than All in Good Time’s relative polish, mostly recorded at home by Miller himself–but Miller is still the same songwriter, and his pop instincts are no less potent on Companion Piece. (Read more)

Leor Miller’s Fear of Her Own Desire – Eternal Bliss Now!

Release date: May 19^th
Record label: Candlepin
Genre: Experimental pop, lo-fi indie rock, dream pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Leor Miller is a New York-based singer-songwriter who’s been making noisy, hazy rock music on her own for several years now. Her latest, Eternal Bliss Now!, is mostly a guitar-based album, but it’s not one that lives entirely in the world of indie rock. I can hear how Miller has been inspired by non-rock genres (hip hop, electronica, and hyperpop, per her bio) in presenting these songs, even as she approaches them from an indie rock perspective. As disparate as the influences are, Miller remains laser-focused on interpersonal connectivity and other big but interconnected subjects throughout the record. (Read more)

Brian Mietz – Wow!

Release date: April 21^st
Record label: Sludge People
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Brian Mietz is a subtly great pop songwriter–he’s one of the best modern practitioners of “bummer” power pop, as seen on his underrated 2020 album Panzarotti. With his latest album, Wow!, Mietz remains skilled in pop songcraft–these ten songs sound laid-back but emotional, and Mietz keeps the melodies simple, but he isn’t opposed to building around them a little bit, with several songs on the record sounding surprisingly busy. Songs like “Caller” and “Buried Alive (Too Tired)” sound incredibly effortless, but “Cranefly” and “Steal Some Time” lose nothing in their relative complexity. (Read more)

Greg Mendez – Greg Mendez

Release date: May 5^th
Record label: Forged Artifacts/Devil Town Tapes
Genre: Indie folk, slowcore
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Greg Mendez is, loosely, an indie folk record with some classical pop touches and some moments (like the organ-and-vocals “Sweetie”) that sound a little Jeff Mangum-influenced–but mainly, the album sounds like whatever Greg Mendez thinks serves the songs best. It’s subtle, quiet, and not openly concerned with being immediately liked, but it’s undeniably captivating. Mendez’s blunt assessments of thorny and complex interpersonal situations are where his songwriting shines–there are a lot of good songs about sad subject matter, but Greg Mendez is a truly masterful example of spinning ugliness into prettiness. (Read more)

Local Drags – Mess of Everything

Release date: March 17^th
Record label: Stardumb
Genre: Power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Local Drags is a power pop group from Springfield, Illinois, and their latest record, Mess of Everything, represents the best of the genre–big, catchy hooks abound on it. There’s just no other way of saying it; these songs are timeless. It’s another no-fat release on this list–twenty-four minutes, ten songs, and endless fun. It starts off with a few massive hits, but Local Drags also do the Midwestern thing of hiding the best couple of tracks (the note-perfect “Aloe” and the massive “Better Now”) at the end.

Jon the Movie – The Holy Parking Lot

Release date: January 25^th
Record label: Jon
Genre: Garage punk, progressive rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Digital

Jon the Movie (Long Island’s Jon Gusman) followed up last year’s A Glimpse That Made Sense EP with the project’s debut full-length album, and January’s The Holy Parking Lot does not disappoint. The hardcore-rooted Gusman created Jon the Movie to explore his other influences (ranging from lo-fi indie rock to mainstream alt-rock to straight-up progressive rock) and dubbed the endeavor “prog-punk”. The Holy Parking Lot pulls this off with wildly varying song lengths, shout-along vocals, blistering guitar work, and plenty of catchiness among the chaos. 

Interbellum – Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night

Release date: April 7^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, experimental folk, psychedelia
Formats: Digital

Beirut’s Interbellum is the project of Karl Mattar, and it’s quite impressive that he made the bulk of Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night himself, given how intricate and involved the album is as a whole. It’s a beautiful and frequently head-spinning indie-folk-rock-noise record, encompassing everything from charming and straightforward pop rock to acoustic folk songs to fuzzy, layered psychedelia. Early 2000s-era Microphones and Elephant 6 feel like touchstones for this album, but Mattar is at the helm for all of Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night, and his vision is a unique one. (Read more)

Guided by Voices – La La Land

Release date: January 20^th
Record label: GBV, Inc.
Genre: 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

I thought about not putting La La Land on this list, but then I listened to it again. Fourteen albums into their “new lineup”, this iteration of Guided by Voices still have a ton left in the tank. La La Land feels like a departure from GBV’s twin 2022 releases, a bit less muscular than Trembler and Goggles by Rank and Crystal Nuns Cathedral and a little more ornate and regal. Really, though, listen to the stretch from “Ballroom Etiquette” to “Slowly on the Wheel”–four completely different-sounding songs, all classic, all recognizably Guided by Voices.

Glow in the Dark Flowers – Glow in the Dark Flowers

Release date: April 14^th
Record label: Born Yesterday
Genre: Dream pop, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Glow in the Dark Flowers is the duo of Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko, who gained notoriety over the past decade for their work in Chicago group The Funs. The self-titled Glow in the Dark Flowers album is some very good sleepy, distorted late-night indie rock, with elements of slowcore, post-rock, fuzz rock, and dream pop, but without slotting neatly into any of those. The songs on Glow in the Dark Flowers glide forward and the vocals are right in the middle of it all, creating an album that’s immediate but one that rewards digging under the surface as well.

Fixtures – Hollywood Dog

Release date: February 24^th
Record label: Naturally/Bobo Integral
Genre: Power pop, 90s indie rock, post-punk, “noir pop”
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Brooklyn’s Fixtures are a six-piece band who’ve been around for a half-decade and have just put out their first full-length. On Hollywood Dog, Fixtures commit fully to a familiar-sounding but nevertheless distinct sound–they start off with the foundation of sturdy, guitar-forward 90s indie rock and blow it up with a 2000s indie-esque love of big choruses, auxiliary musicians, and several vocal contributions from various members. To put it one way: Fixtures contains multiple full-time horn players (trumpet player Riley Cooke and saxophonist Jules Block), and neither’s prominence feels out of place throughout the album. (Read more)

Eyelids – A Colossal Waste of Light

Release date: March 10^th
Record label: Jealous Butcher
Genre: Jangle pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Well, it’s new Eyelids season, so everyone get your vintage, blissful jangle pop-listening headgear on. The fourth Eyelids full-length (five if you count the half-live, half-odds-and-ends Maybe More) contains plenty of the massive, timeless-sounding pop rock we’ve come to expect from Chris Slusarenko and John Moen (“Crawling Off Your Pages” kicks things off with an all-timer), although A Colossal Waste of Light feels a little exploratory as well. Songs like the title track and “Runaway, Yeah” feature some of Eyelids’ best choruses, but they take relatively unexpected paths to get there.

En Attendant Ana – Principia

Release date: February 24^th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

En Attendant Ana eagerly slide pop song after pop song out toward the listener on Principia, their third album. Margaux Bouchaudon remains the band’s primary singer and songwriter, but the whole band give Principia its sound–the rhythm section keeps one foot of the record firmly rooted in post-punk, while the vocals, trumpets, saxophones, and shimmering guitars help push Principia into dreamy indie pop territory. En Attendant Ana are operating at a high level on Principia–it feels like the work of a band who we can expect to be a reliable source of good indie rock for a long time. (Read more)

Emperor X – Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor

Release date: March 9^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, folk punk, electro-folk, experimental rock
Formats: Digital

Emperor X’s six-song Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor EP is, more or less, what its title suggests–each of the half-dozen tracks is rooted in the transit systems of one of a city in the American Northeast, and all of them are, as Emperor X mastermind Chad Matheny says, pulled from “transit policy and 30 years of public infrastructure memories” from an American expat currently living in Berlin. Rest assured that Matheny is up to the task of wringing emotional resonance from songs grounded in transit policy. It’s a dispatch from somebody who’s lived and experienced what’s he’s singing about–he’s right there, riding the rails. (Read more)

Deep State – Diary of a Nobody

Release date: April 15^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Alt-country
Formats: Digital

I hadn’t heard of Athens, Georgia’s Deep State before stumbling upon Diary of a Nobody, which, according to their Bandcamp page, seems to be their final album. Diary of a Nobody is a comfortable, rootsy sounding garage rock album led by singer-songwriter Taylor Chmura and also featuring Rosy Overdrive favorite Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck (Blunt Bangs, Little Gold). Deep State sound just as adept barreling through rockers like “Young People” and “Tired Medium” as they do in the laid-back “Secret Freezer”.

Dancer – Dancer

Release date: February 10^th
Record label: GoldMold
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Glasgow’s Dancer are a new group featuring members of bands like Order of the Toad, Nightshift, and Robert Sotelo, and their first record together, a self-titled EP, came out in February. The Dancer EP is a half-dozen tracks that straddle bright indie pop and sharp post-punk. I certainly hear traces of the members’ other bands on these songs, as well as fellow Glasgow band Life Without Buildings and indie pop godfathers XTC, but Dancer takes its various building blocks to make a distinct “Dancer sound” that sounds fresh and snappy over its six songs. (Read more)

Daily Worker – Autofiction

Release date: February 3^rd
Record label: Bobo Integral
Genre: Lo-fi power pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Digital

Harold Whit Williams has played guitar with Austin jangle pop group Cotton Mather since the early 1990s, but the Alabama native also makes music on his own as Daily Worker. Williams’ latest, Autofiction (which is part of a recent prolific spell), is a record of lo-fi, home-recorded power pop whose ramshackle charms only enhance his songwriting. Williams presents his songs casually, but not enough so to diminish their power–it reaches the level of many “big” psychedelic pop records, with only a fraction of the excess production those albums possess. (Read more)

Connections – Cool Change

Release date: March 24^th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Connections’ sixth album, Cool Change, took five years to come out (an eternity for a band who started off putting out multiple records in the same year), but it’s anything but a soft relaunch for the Columbus band. The new album has a bit of everything–a massive, five-minute opening statement of purpose with “In Space”, smooth power pop in “Slow Ride” and “Unsolved Mysteries”, and subtlety with “I Confess” and “You Are All I Need”. With a half-dozen records and a decade together under their belt, Connections remain at their peak. (Read more)

Buddie – Agitator

Release date: April 21^st
Record label: Crafted Sounds
Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

On their second full-length album (and first since lead singer/songwriter Dan Forrest relocated to Vancouver from Philadelphia), Buddie deliver eleven deep, fulfilling, and sharply-realized indie rock songs. Forrest remains a towering but approachable songwriter on Agitator, thinking in big-picture terms but never losing sight of the day-to-day and direct interpersonal minutia of his grand topics. Forrest’s gentle vocals are juxtaposed by the sweeping music that accompanies them, encompassing Built to Spill-esque 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, and power pop–delivered with an earnestness from the band that matches their frontperson. (Read more)

Blues Lawyer – All in Good Time

Release date: February 17^th
Record label: Dark Entries
Genre: Indie pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Blues Lawyer has expanded from the founding duo of Rob I. Miller and Elyse Schrock to a quartet on All in Good Time, their third full-length album. Subsequently, it’s a full-sounding power pop album, containing traces of dreamy jangle pop but shaken awake and enlisted into the service of making big indie pop anthems. Miller and Shrock are intriguing songwriters beyond their pop instincts: All in Good Time’s songs are full of hard-earned realizations about interpersonal relationships, but as uncomfortable or desperate as things get on the album, it always sounds fantastic. (Read more)

Bell and the Ringers – Bell and the Ringers

Release date: March 10^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, emo
Formats: Digital

Bell and the Ringers are a long-distance duo made up of Melbourne’s Lucas Bell and Toronto’s Brent Vipond, and their self-titled debut record evokes a very specific kind of 2000s-era indie-pop-punk. Bell and the Ringers has some heft to it–the balance that Vipond and Bell walk throughout the album is keeping the pop punk energy up while still developing the tracks (and, to be clear, they are successful in delivering an incredibly energetic record). What the duo put together here is enough to sell an intriguing, promising under-the-radar band. (Read more)

Go back to Part One here!