After an exciting new year full of new music, the Pep Music Board editors are ready to announce their favorite new releases from 2022. Jude Raba and Noah Flores did weeks of painstaking research into the past year’s artists, albums, and songs. They wrote in-depth pieces about their top picks and can’t wait to share them with you. 

Jude

This past year of music was a huge growing period for my listening taste. I found so many new artists, and genres, and revisited music I used to love to see if my taste has had a major shift. What I mostly found out is that I’m a very big fan of shoegaze or more somber-sounding types of music, with psychedelic rock, breakcore, drum & bass, different styles of rock, rap, hip-hop, and “vada vada”. It’s really hard for me to judge music objectively because I have weird taste in music, so my list is going to be pretty subjective.

My fifth favorite album of the year is Decide by Djo. I’m honestly not a huge fan of actor/celebrity music, to me, it often sounds like very bland radio music. But what critically acclaimed actor Joe Keery, mostly known for his work on Netflix’s Stranger Things, does under the persona of  Djo feels really special to me. When you first see how Keery presents himself with his solo-music project he’s unrecognizable. Often sporting a shaggy wig, or sometimes a wig representing a bowl cut, with sunglasses and a large suit while performing live at festivals or during promotional shoots/videos. Keery says he takes a lot of inspiration from artists such as David Bowe, Marc Bolan, and Devo for his unique look on stage. But talking more about the music, the album feels very much inspired by works from artists Tame Impala and Daft Punk. My favorite song off the album is “Fool”. I’ve always felt drawn to songs, or just media in general, that represent silly and strange characters. “Fool” encapsulated this feeling for me with its fun and upbeat instrumentals, accompanied by Keery’s expressive vocals and lyrics.

Out of all the new artists and bands that published their debut albums this year, my favorite would have to be Wetleg by the duo Wetleg. The British indie rock duo got their start in 2019 when they released their single “Chaise Lounge”, which later amassed over three million streams by 2021. Over the next year, they would continue to release four more singles until they released the full album on April 8th of this past year. The duo has quickly grown to become one of my favorite artists at the moment so I’m excited to see what they produce in the future. For my favorite song off this album, it’s hard to choose between “Ur Mum” and “Being In Love” so I’ll have to just choose both.

When this album was first released I wasn’t the hugest fan of it. The sound seemed very distant from the artist’s previous work so I was hesitant to give it another listen, but after a few re-listens Laurel Hell by Mitski definitely deserves a spot on my top five list. As I stated previously,  some tracks off the album differ from Mitski’s usual style of performing. Some tracks have a very synthesized-pop feel to them, while others tend to be indie rock. It’s a very different blend from what Mitski usually releases but I’m excited to see her try out new styles of music. Sadly, the reason the album even exists is due to Mitski’s contract with her record label, Dead Oceans, contractually requiring her to produce one final album after she previously decided to quit music after her fifth album, and honestly best, bury me at makeout creek. Although, it’d be nice to see her return to making music after her world tour, as she seemed to be enjoying performing again in videos shared by fans. My favorite track off the album would have to be “I Guess” which is pretty similar to most of her past work.

Like I said before, my list is highly subjective. I say this because my second favorite album from the past year is not liked by many people. i’ll be ok by sign crushes motorist is a slowcore, melancholic, and warm-feeling album. The album draws clear inspiration from artists like Duster, who inspired the name of the group through the song “Sign Crushes Motorist” from the album On the Dodge. As I said before, the album is not liked by many fans of the genre, being described on Rate Your Music (RYM) by members of the site as “rough”, “melodramatic”, and “unlistenable at worst”. However, many people, including me, enjoy the album. I really enjoy the melancholic sound that the album produces, even if it ends off with an almost unlistenable cover of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night”. Overall, I enjoyed the album regardless of its flaws. Music of this style comforts me, especially when I’m not feeling the best, so any new/unheard-of finds are always welcome to me. My favorite tracks off the album were “Better”, “Cold”, and “Left”.

Two “Orange County Punk Rock Legends” stole my number-one spot this year with The Garden’s newest album, Horseshit on Routes 66. The twins sport their own special genre of music which they call “vada vada”, a genre characterized by an absence of boundaries that transcends genres, which is definitely prevalent in their latest release. The brothers also produce their own solo projects called Enjoy, Wyatt’s project, and Puzzle, Fletcher’s project. The amount of style, personality, and strangeness that comes out through the sound of their music, the lyrics, and the performance is what has made me fall in love with anything Vada Vada. Seeing them perform live this past November with some friends was probably the best night of my life. Their stage presence, the crowd, and hearing the music live are experiences I never want to forget. Not to mention, Machine Girl opened for them and I got elbowed in the face during the mosh which made my night. Overall every track on the album is amazing, but my favorites would have to be “What Else Could I Be But A Jester” and “Chainsaw The Door”.

Overall, this past year I’ve had the pleasure of listening to so many different types of sound in so many different ways and places. It’s also the year I started collecting physical music which has been a really fun hobby of mine. I hope this next year is even better than the last, and I’m sure that’s going to be the case as the first release of this year that I listened to was The Rotten Opera by Puzzle. Hope everyone had a great year.

Noah

2022 was the year of one artist – Isis Gatson – also known as legendary Bronx rapper Ice Spice. Other than that, other artists made some good albums. I heavily enjoyed MIKE’s Beware of the Monkey, Charles Stepney’s Step on Step, SZA’s SOS, Earl Sweatshirt’s SICK!, Samara Joy’s Linger Awhile, and Ichiko Aoba’s Amiko (Original Soundtrack), among many others. Sadly, I couldn’t write about all of them, so here are my favorite five albums of 2022.

Returning from a three-year hiatus after 2019’s hard-hitting ZUU, Denzel Curry crafts the most intentional and vulnerable album of his career, Melt My Eyes See Your Future. Its opening track, “Melt Session #1”, is my favorite.

Easily one of the best instrumental albums over the past few years, Knxwledge continues his prolific run of fully self-produced projects in 家​.V1. 家​.​V1 is the producer’s first foray into the genre of House music as he deviates from his usual R&B roots. Knxwledge’s striking mix of retro video game samples with familiar House grooves makes this the perfect album to have on in the background while studying. “mysterious_” is my favorite track.

The Mysterious British collective Sault, helmed by producer Inflo, published 5 full-length albums on November 11th as an “Offering to God” on their website. Untitled (God) is definitely the most fitting of the bunch to that claim. Sault traverses across gospel, progressive rock, R&B, folk, hip hop, and more to craft one of the most sonically diverse releases of the year. The album opens with “I Am Free”, a Meletron-infused cut that sounds like it could’ve easily fit on any of the classic late 60’s Beatles records. “God Is Love”, the track that follows, tries its hand at Billy Bass-esque 70’s funk basslines that set the stage perfectly for its incredibly catchy verses. Sault again switches gears, pulling into the realm of traditional gospel and folk music on its third song, “Love Will Free Your Mind”. Time and time again, Sault constantly pushes the boundaries of what cohesion within an album typically sounds like, showing that you don’t need to replicate the same exact sound in order to craft a project that makes sense thematically.  It’s super refreshing to hear an album about faith and religion that doesn’t follow the traditional Contemporary Worship Music standards, instead taking real musical risks. My favorite song is “Safe Within Your Hands”.

And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow finds Natalie Mering discovering a sense of hope after the calamity found in 2019’s Titanic Rising. After focusing so much on her feelings of anxiousness towards the future and what it brings, Mering answers the question of impending doom with love and gracefulness instead of wrath. The second installment of the forthcoming trilogy long LP-set is far from a disappointment, further solidifying Mering’s place in musical history as one of the most innovative artists of the 2010s and beyond. “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”, my favorite song on the album, follows the patterns of past legends like Joanie Mitchell and Carole King in a heavenly ode about the beauty of suffering.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar is one of my favorite albums of all time. It’s difficult to give the album justice in just a few words, and if you haven’t listened to it yet, I recommend you do so as soon as you can. A landmark of hip-hop and really one of music as an art form. My favorite song is “Savior”.

Hopefully, Ice Spice releases a full-length next year, but until then, I’ll be listening to whoever else comes along.

We at the Pep Music Board look forward to this next year of new releases. We hope to keep up with monthly articles talking about our listening starting in February and get a playlist together that compiles each of our picks. We have some fun series of articles planned for the rest of the year and we hope that our readers enjoy what we push out. Hope you all had a great year!