Corrective Lenses: My favorite albums of 2022

My favorite albums of 2022, in no particular order. The numbers are just there to help me limit myself to 10. Speaking of which, "Lucifer on the Sofa" by Spoon is really good. (Spoon is always really good.) So's the latest by Sharon Van Etten. (Sharon Van Etten is always good.) I like the countryish album by Angel Olsen, too.

Ex-Void, "Bigger than Before" (Don Giovanni Records) -- Ex-Void is a new band led by a couple of people who used to be in Joanna Gruesome. I liked that band's '90s-derived guitar rock, but Ex-Void shows they've grown up a lot as songwriters. Really good tunes. Here's "There's No Other Way":
Papercuts, "Past Life Regression" (Slumberland Records) -- This is Jason Quever's seventh album as Papercuts, and they just get better and better. This one floats along in dreamy, melodic psychedelia with Velvet Underground guitars, strangely warped-sounding keyboards and hushed vocals. Here's "Lodger":
The Reds, Pinks and Purples, "Summer at Land's End" (Slumberland Records) - Speaking of hushed vocals: I think I listened to the R,P and Ps' "Uncommon Weather" more often than any other record in 2021, so I was eager to hear the follow-up. I paid for a pre-order some time in fall 2021, but the vinyl manufacturing industry is so backlogged right now that the record didn't show until summer 2022. By then, I had kind of moved on to other things. I had digital access to the album starting early this year, but it didn't grab me the way "Uncommon Weather" did. Sometime this summer, the vinyl finally arrived. The band's shockingly prolific leader, Glenn Donaldson, felt so bad about the delay that he threw in an all-new, nearly album-length EP on CD for everyone who had pre-ordered the vinyl. That CD got my attention, and then I started listening to "Summer at Land's End" again and fell in love with it. For all his album artwork, Donaldson uses photos of homes in San Francisco's Richmond District. Land's End is the area where the Richmond meets the bay and the Pacific. Summers there are blanketed in thick fog. The Reds, Pinks and Purples sound like that. Here's "Let's Pretend We're Not In Love":
The Beths, "Expert in a Dying Field" (Carpark Records) -- I keep thinking of the word "craftsmanship" when I listen to the Beths. Their brand of melodic, uptempo guitar-based rock isn't anything new; they're just shockingly good at it. The lyrics: smart. The guitar solos: awesome. The arrangements: skillful. The tunes: tuneful. This is the New Zealand band's third album, and it may be their best. I don't know if melodic guitar rock is a dying field, but the Beths are masters at it. Here's the title track:
Alvvays, "Blue Rev" (Polyvinyl Records) -- We're all losing our minds these days, but there's not a lot of music that sounds like it. On their third album, this Toronto dream pop band lets loose more than in the past. The shoegazey guitars and synths swerve off the road at times and the aloof Molly Rankin starts to lose her cool, in a good way. At one point, she's talking about a young woman having a baby on her own, and she drops a reference to a Go-Go: "Belinda says Heaven is a place on Earth, well so is Hell." Here's "Easy On Your Own":
Martha, "Please Don't Take Me Back" (Dirtnap Records) -- This UK band plays an uptempo guitar-based rock that should appeal to Superchunk fans. You'd better be uptempo and melodic when you've got an album with a title like this. Speaking of that kind of dark undercurrent to the exuberant sounds, here's "Baby, Does Your Heart Sink?" ("Baby, does your heart sink when I call? I know it does."):
Tony Molina, "In the Fade" (Summer Shade Records) -- I find Tony Molina frustrating because every song he writes sounds like it could win over your Weezer and Foo Fighters-listening friends if he would just write a third verse and make it past the two-minute mark. But for those 90 seconds while you're listening to one of his songs, you're convinced it's the best thing you've heard in a long time. Here's "Burn Everyone," one of the mellower numbers on his most recent collection. This could win over your cousin who only listens to classic rock:
Kelley Stoltz, "The Stylist" (Agitated Records) -- San Francisco's brilliant home-recording singer-songwriter gets kind of new wavey on his latest, even when he's singing about seeing the New Bomb Turks at an instore show in the summer of '96, like he does in "Your Name Escapes Me":
Robyn Hitchcock, "Shufflemania!" (Tiny Ghost Records) -- I would go to see a Robyn Hitchcock show if all he did was strum a couple chords and tell stories, but the guy continues to write great, surrealistic songs and put out great albums. Here's "The Raging Muse":
Wet Leg, self titled (Domino Records) -- Maybe one day, a few years from now, when we're past the hype and the buzz, we'll hear this record and remember that it's really good. Here's "Angelica":