Mike Davies’s Top 10 Albums of 2022
You can read all of our latest year-end reports lists here. We have more top 10 lists to share, along with our top 100 albums of 2022. Enjoy the recap; the album titles below all album review links, and there is also a link to buy albums (most of which link to Bandcamp).
Here are Mike Davies’ top 10…
Mary Gauthier – Dark enough to see the stars
Her first new music, which borrows its title from a Martin Luther King speech, reaffirms Gauthier as one of America’s finest songwriters, whose focus is more on the personal than the political while paying tribute to those who have lost during the pandemic gone, and what celebrations they left behind, reflecting on the satisfaction she had found after her years as an alcoholic and addict.
Buy the album
Emma Guzman – a little less than alone
Her third album, at just 19 and shaped by her transition into queer adulthood, Guzman blends indie-folk and Americana with powerful imagery and songs that balance self-loathing and compassion for the outcasts and underdogs. The new Courtney Marie Andrews.
Buy the album
Garrett Heath – The Lost End
A mix of stripped down acoustics and fuller instrumentation, sometimes with band influences, focuses on the economically troubled small town of Rust Belt America where he grew up and the people he knows, a cover of John Hartford’s In Tall Buildings alongside his penetrating comments.
Buy the album
Janis Ian – The light at the end of the line
She says it’s her last solo studio album, and if so, she ends on a high note comparable to her classic Between The Lines, with songs that defiantly celebrate her survival in business, pay tribute to Nina Simone, jazzy memories New York commemorate the move and offer light in the darkness. She even gets funky and embraces rap to resist misogynist oppression of women.
Buy the album
Monument – Monument
The Bristol-based duo’s debut album inevitably saw them as UK Simon & Garfunkel, with their delicate balance of contrasting vocals, fragile folksy melodies and songs about unrequited love, alienation, loss and longing. Comparisons can be tedious, but I think Paul and Art would be honored.
Buy the album
Angeline Morrison – Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience
Possibly the most important album of the year, Morrison delivers a career-best collection of original songs drawing on real-life stories, events and experiences of a diaspora that has no voice in the British folk tradition and explores slavery, racism and exploitation.
Buy the album
Alison O’Donnell – Hear the voice that sings for everyone
Dublin native O’Donnell, now 70, takes a fresh look at old traditions with themes ranging from cheating wives to starvation ships and figures from Irish history, sometimes blending the jazz folk of Pentangle, sometimes Irish folk, the roots of cabaret and even the Balkans reflect colors, her powerful vocals reminiscent of Marianne Faithful, Norma Waterson, Nick Cave, Anne Briggs and Shirley Collins.
Buy the album
Julian Taylor – Beyond the Reservoir
An album that charts his transition from rebellious youth to growing up and adulthood with accompanying themes of identity, hope and redemption while addressing America’s dark history of slavery and cultural disenfranchisement, with a particularly haunting track marking the discovery of an unmarked mass grave from 215 indigenous children affects an Indian residential school.
Buy the album
Michael Weston King – The Battle
His first solo work in over a decade, exploring his folk and country roots and drawing on poignant and often painful personal experiences, most notably a song about the death of his mother-in-law, along with commentary on George Floyd and Trump America commemorating him is one of the best songwriters in the country.
Buy the album
Luke James Williams – Our blood is red
Another of the year’s best debuts, Williams hails from Cambridgeshire and has a sound and style reminiscent of Luke Jackson and a similar vein of social commentary on his lyrics, mixed with songs about self-blame and broken relationships, often laced with ironic, are laced with black humor . His blood is really rich.
Buy the album
