Funny year, wasn’t it? Sometimes it seemed like yesterday once more. The Beatles released a wistful, self-referential single using a 46-year-old piano noodle by John Lennon with Paul McCartney filling in on slide guitar for the other dead Beatle, George Harrison.

The Rolling Stones released their first album of original material in 18 years (see below), U2 re-recorded some of their songs without Bono bellowing all over them and Taylor Swift – the most successful musician in the history of forever – continued to re-record her back-catalogue and watch the songs top charts everywhere.

Further down the demographic, K-pop rolled on: Blackpink, which has a New Zealand-born member, were awarded honorary MBEs at Buckingham Palace by King Charles; NewJeans were the new name; three members of BTS, whose online fans are known as ARMY (Adorable Representative MC for Youth), went into the actual South Korean army. They’ll regroup in 2025 – that’s the distant future in pop music.

Beyond and between all that, some excellent albums appeared and sometimes went past people. Here, we single out 20 for your consideration but, as always, the best albums were the ones you liked most.

We liked these.

AFTAB, IYER AND ISMAILY: Love in Exile

Recorded before Arooj Aftab’s superb, Grammy-winning 2022 Vulture Prince but released only this year, the sublime voice of Aftab (of Pakistani parents, now resident in New York), jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and bassist/synth player Shahzad Ismaily made for a mesmerising, meditative album. Designed for deep and quiet immersion as it sits between world music, ambience and gentle jazz.

Now hear: Arooj Aftab; Vulture Prince (2023 reissue with an additional track featuring sitar player Anoushka Shankar)

AJA MONET: When the Poems Do What They Do

In the tradition of The Last Poets, Wanda Coleman and others in the jazz-poetry lineage, Monet from New York celebrates love, the Black American experience, culture and a wide swathe of musical styles, from cool jazz and classic Miles Davis to spiritual Afrofuturism. Quiet persuasion more than strident rage. Special.

Now hear: Durand Jones’ Wait Till I Get Over

BLUR: The Ballad of Darren

Mixing disillusion about the shallowness of fame with intimations of war and personal unease, Damon Albarn brought discomfiting lyrics to astutely crafted songs which, bar one, avoided overt rock and ended with a soaring Bowie-like ballad. Age and uncertainty suits them.

Now hear: The Golden Dregs’ On Grace and Dignity

BOYGENIUS: The Record

Like some Crosby, Stills and Nash colliding with the Breeders, this all-women trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus connected familiar dots from folk to alt.rock but brought an empowering feminism to songs notable for their harmonies, narrative depth (Cool About It) and barbed humour (Letter to an Old Poet). Undercurrents beneath the surface.

Now hear: The Veils, And Out of the Void Came Love

CLEMENTINE VALENTINE: The Coin That Broke The Fountain Floor

Gorgeous harmonies, string-enhanced romanticism with touches of Anglofolk and Celtic mythology all bound up in enchanting songs which swoon and soar as the ethereal sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon (formerly Purple Pilgrims) take a journey through time and mystic realms. Unique in our musical landscape.

Now hear: Ebony Lamb’s Ebony Lamb

DIMMER: Live at the Hollywood

Shayne Carter and guests re-address the essential Dimmer album I Believe You Are A Star but tease the songs – and others from his catalogue – out into colourful psychedelic soul. A classic album remodelled before hushed audiences at the Hollywood Theatre in Auckland.

Now hear: Vor-stellen’s Parallelograms

ERNY BELLE: Not Your Cupid

Captivating, cryptic folk-pop on a second album that brings in pedal steel and Indian instruments, eases towards electropop and signals an artist successfully reaching for what might once have seemed beyond her grasp. As we noted, she’s moving up and out into the wider world.

Now hear: Paige, King Clown

JANELLE MONAE: The Age of Pleasure

Sensual and sexualised R’n’B wrapped in pop, dance, Afrobeat, hip-hop and cleverly disruptive rhythms which – as the title tells us – celebrates hedonism, good times and feeling “phenomenal” but never sounds overwrought or as excessive as the world she invokes. The usual lengthy roll call of cowriters and producers but this is always Monae’s album.

Now hear: Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS

JOHN CALE: Mercy

At 80, the former Velvet Underground man still has a commanding voice and distinctive take, here like a more damaged Leonard Cohen contemplating mortality and the current world in the company of Weyes Blood, Fat White Family and the electronica duo Sylvan Esso. Strings, elegance, sin and redemption.

Now hear: Paul Simon’s Seven Psalms

LANKUM: False Lankum

Ireland’s gloom-folk Lankum are not an easy proposition and these often waterlogged songs of mutiny at sea, a traditional death ballad and murderous ways make for uneasy but compelling listening. Dark doings, ancient mariners and menacing characters afoot. Maybe they’ll bring more cheer to their set at next year’s Womad.

Now hear: Lankum’s The Livelong Day

MERMAIDENS: Mermaidens

Elements of 80s post-punk, indie-rock and pure pop all delivered on this likeable collection of memorable songs with a nudge towards an older demographic and yet still retaining elements of their psychedelic influences.

Now hear: Vera Ellen’s Ideal Home Noise

MITSKI: The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We

We said this Japanese-American makes art music rather than chart music and observed this seventh album offered “intelligence, grandeur, damaged beauty and, as always, the unexpected” as it moved from choral interruptions to transcendent country with pedal steel and weightless passages. One to discover.

Now hear: Jazmine Mary’s Dog

NATALIE MERCHANT: Keep Your Courage

A return to form by the former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman, who here opens with an attention-getting, uplifting gospel-soul ballad (with horns and singer Abena Koomson-Davis) then calls down Aphrodite to bring her love, covers a typically dark song by Lankum and later celebrates the poet Walt Whitman. Orchestration, intensity and filled with hope and love.

Now hear: Vanishing Twin’s Afternoon X

THE CIRCLING SUN: Spirits

Local jazz with reference points in the spiritualism of John and Alice Coltrane, the expressionism of Sun Ra, Latin energy and with touches of psychedelic soul-funk. A rare combination but no surprise from the accumulation of inventive talent on hand – drummer/producer Julien Dyne and saxophonist Cameron Allen from Avantdale Bowling Club among others.

Now hear: Dave Wilson’s Ephemeral

THE ROLLING STONES: Hackney Diamonds

At last – after many false flags – people could say “their best since Some Girls” (which came out in 1978) with some assurance. The lead-off single Angry lowered expectation but what followed was an album of energy, classic Stones tropes borrowed from blues, rock and country, with songs as memorable as their best work in the 70s, which is where this was mostly located. It’s only rock’n’roll but we liked it, loud.

Now hear: Magic Factory’s Deliver the Goods

TINY RUINS: Ceremony

The ambitious folk-pop of Hollie Fullbrook has long been recognised (Taite and Silver Scroll awards) and with Ceremony, which moves into accomplished folk-rock and mainstream pop, she and the band draw big ideas from small things observed, imagery from the natural world, and celebrate the universal as much as the personal.

Now hear: Sparklehorse’s Bird Machine

TOM LARK: Brave Star

Dream pop, summery Pacific yacht rock, a touch of country and a Lennonesque ballad make for a repeat-play album of the old style: distinctive songs and moods woven together by Auckland singer-songwriter/producer Shannon Fowler, aka Tom Lark.

Now hear: Rodney Fisher and the Response’s Art School Dropout

US GIRLS: Bless This Mess

Pop of all kinds – slick MOR soft-rock, smooth R’n’B, disco grooves and drum machines – but, for Meg Remy, pictured heavily pregnant with twins on the cover, they were just the hooks before she reeled you in with lyrics about relationships (damaged or distant), childbirth and hope amidst the strange dislocations of recent times. Smart stuff on every level.

Now hear: Donna Dean’s Kisses and Other Things

YOUNG FATHERS: Heavy Heavy

Drop the needle at different points on this album by a rambunctious Scottish trio and you’d think it was a weird compilation of Celtic funk, grinding post-punk rock, Dylanesque wordplay, experimental music, South African sounds mashed up, soul music … Yes, it’s that unpredictable, that good and that much fun. But also deadly serious about race and culture.

Now hear: Ringlets’ Ringlets

VARIOUS ARTISTS: The Endless Coloured Ways; The Songs of Nick Drake

For decades, musicians, fans and writers have tried to persuade the indifferent public of the genius and influence of Nick Drake, who died aged 26 in 1974 leaving just three albums. This double album tribute with bold interpreters including Aldous Harding, Liz Phair, DC Fontaines, Nadia Reid, Ben Harper and many others should finally do the trick. Great songs often unexpectedly reshaped.

Now hear: Terrible Sons’ The Raft is not the Shore

Recovered and released

As expected this year, a slew of albums were reissued on vinyl, among them locals Golden Harvest, Tadpole, Home Brew and the Proud compilation. But something else happened, vaults were explored and albums from the past we’d never heard of suddenly arrived.

Here, we single out just three very different albums rescued from the crypt.

JOHN COLTRANE WITH ERIC DOLPHY: Evenings at the Village Gate

The young saxophonist/flute player Eric Dolphy wasn’t in John Coltrane’s band for long but together they pushed the boundaries of post-bop jazz. At this 1961 performance they stretched My Favourite Things (from The Sound of Music) out to 16 minutes and, on the only known live recording of it, explored Africa for more than 20. With pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones and bassists Art Davis or Reggie Workman – jazz was going further out and the players deeper inside.

Also released for the first time is Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Max Roach and others on Live Revisited, creating bebop on recordings in New York from 1945, 1947 and 1951.

BOB DYLAN: The Complete Budokan 1978 (Live)

Earlier in the year, Dylan released Shadow Kingdom, where he and a small, drummer-less band revisited songs from his back-catalogue and presented them in a new way. He’d always done that, as evidenced by this 4-hour collection of his live concerts in Japan on the tour which brought him to Western Springs that year. Some said, with his big swirling band – playing an instrumental version of A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall or the flute-coloured Mr Tambourine Man for example – that he’d gone Las Vegas or was making a sop to pop. Across the 4-CD or 8-LP versions are explosive rock and country-coloured classics. Not for hardcore fans but kinda mad-sax fun with overwrought backing singers. Two views of Dylan for 2023.

GRIM LTD: Shakin’ It Up At The Nicoberg

This extraordinary document captured the final gig of an explosive, short-lived Palmerston North band (1965-1966) which stepped straight past Beatles pop and headlong into furious anarchic R’n’B-driven rock in the manner of the Pretty Things, the early Stones, the Who and the long-forgotten Downliners Sect. On the rowdy evidence here, they left the La De Das in their wake. A well-recorded gig rescued and redelivered. You wish you’d been there.

Their spiritual, garage-band grandchildren can be heard on Ratso’s 2023 album Live in Otautahi.