Andrew Dansby’s 10 albums of 2022: Willie Nelson, Beyoncé and more
Write about music long enough and at some point, you realize your struggle to keep up with various trends is a losing one. Maybe this is my year for surrender. I usually try to avoid live albums and anthologies on such lists, but honestly, Willie Nelson’s “Live at Budokan” has been stuck on my turntable, and in a sense, he was young (younger) when it was recorded. … Just 51. As a consumer of album widgets not streaming widgets, these are the widgets that grabbed my attention and held it over the past year.
1. “Live at Budokan,” Willie Nelson
For a guy who spends most of his life on a tour bus, Willie Nelson wasn’t terribly well represented by a live album, having put out the serviceable, if underwhelming, “Willie and Family Live” more than four decades ago. But we’ve been fortunate to get two wonderful live recordings this year. “Live at the Texas Opry House” is a wonderful set from 1974, but this one from 1984 finds Nelson pulling from a deeper songbook that represents his crossover success in the 1980s. His guitar playing here is particularly plucky.
2. “Ali,” Vieux Farka Touré and Khruangbin
Malian guitar whiz Touré sought to honor his legendary father but didn’t want to simply replicate Ali Farka Touré’s songs. So he looked across the ocean for collaborators and found Houston’s Khruangbin, a shape-shifting band that proved the perfect coconspirator for drawing out new sounds and shadings in the elder Touré’s work.
3. “12th of June,” Lyle Lovett
After a 10-year quiet spell, Lovett returns with a new album that plays to his long-established strengths: an ability to make his country music swing while bending gently in the breeze between poignant and humorous, often swinging between the two in the span of three minutes. Here, fatherhood has helped him further suss out both modes, with a riff on the overrated nature of pants and, in the gorgeous title track, in which the songwriter ponders familial connection while considering his own death.
4. “Loose Future,” Courtney Marie Andrews
Andrews has gradually left behind her status as best-undiscovered-talent, but if you haven’t made an introduction, let “Loose Future” serve as a welcome. The clarity of her voice reminds me a little of Sandy Denny, and she writes with wisdom and wit in equal measure. Also, Andrews has another eight albums, so “Loose Future” is an invitation to the past. But start here. Rich as the catalog is, she has a bright future ahead of her.
5. “Renaissance,” Beyoncé
Pandemic albums can take different forms. There have been albums informed by solitude and others made in solitude. Leave it to Beyoncé to blow up the archetypes to make something epic. By making an unapologetic dance album, she speaks to both marginalized sounds from the past while also celebrating interconnectivity after a multiyear spell of separation.
6. “Still Kicking!,” Santiago Jiménez
San Antonio musician/club owner/man-about-town Garrett T. Capps had an idea so simple it was revelatory: Contact Santiago Jimenez, the 78-year-old legend from the famed conjunto family, and have him play a handful of old favorites that still resonate with him. As with the best of legends-looking-back recordings, this one is unfussy but bracing, old yet vibrant. An introduction for some and a reintroduction for others.
7. “… On Reflection,” William Basinski and Janek Schaefer
Basinski’s work frequently lands on the darker side of the ambient moon, which makes this collaboration with British avant garde composer Schaefer delightful for its lightness of touch. Little piano notes emanate like ripples on the surface of a pond. The pair beautifully balance electronic and natural sounds into a music that envelops a listener in a lovely environment.
8. “Weather Alive,” Beth Orton
Speaking of Sandy Denny … nearly a quarter century after breakthrough album “Trailer Park,” Beth Orton continues to deftly stir together folk and electronic music into a sound decidedly her own. Orton always sounded like an old soul. Here she creates a lush atmosphere with contemplative songs informed by past regrets, part weariness with just a touch of wistfulness, too.
9. “Nothing Special,” Will Sheff
As album titles go, “Nothing Special” doesn’t scream for attention for the solo debut by Sheff, frontman for Okkervil River, who tried burying his band six years ago with the song “Okkervil River R.I.P.” Sheff’s willowy voice is central to anything he does, so there’s no great departure here without the band. And the songs boast an understated lushness, as though Sheff is urging you to lean in and listen closely.
10. “Wet Leg,” Wet Leg
I keep waiting for the charm from the youthful energy of this album to wear off, but it hasn’t. I think it’s because this debut album makes many nods to the past while recasting it in a way others have had available but failed to realize. Wet Leg offers ’60s girl group and lounge elements crossed with ’90s grunge, and while the band’s sound is both of those things, it’s also not necessarily either of those things. Add the smart and cunning lyrics, and you have a band that strikes the weird balance between retro and forward-thinking.