Minneapolis-based musician, producer and Fog frontman Andrew Broder has had a busy year. He was instrumental in helping create acclaimed albums by Lambchop (The Bible) and Joe Rainey (Niineta), and he released The Show Original Soundtrack, featuring his music from the Alan Moore series that featured collaborations with Little Dragon, serpentwithfeet, Moor Mother, billy woods, and more. (Listen to that album below.) He was also just in NYC and Philly for Lambchop shows.
We asked Andrew if he’d tell us about what new music he listened to this year. “Admittedly, the thing I listened to the most this year was Jazz & Traffic 88.5fm in Minneapolis so shout out to them,” he tells us, “but i did also sometimes, listen to some new music. So here’s what I thought when I listened to it.” His list includes The Smile, Billy Woods, Aldous Harding, Claire Rousay and more. Check out what he has to say about the whole list below.
ANDREW BRODER – FAVORITE MUSIC OF 2022
1. billy woods / Aethiopes & 2. Elucid / I Told Bessie
I think Aethiopes is woods’ finest work, just incredibly vivid storytelling, novel-like details, it’s hard but not humorless, artful but not pretentious, painful but not wallowing. And Preservation really killed it on the production here, so detailed and hand-made feeling, I love the jarring little spiky shit poking in and and out, the looseness and dusty quality fits the harrowing petty crime, corruption and bleak humor. Just a beautiful, epic rap record.
Elucid is such a beast of a poet, I love how he strings together short phrases in such unique and surprising burst structures, it’s very surreal and stream of consciousness but still grabbing you by the throat and spitting. Not trying to be acrobatic necessarily, more guttural, heart-rending writing here. Each line is like a little polaroid you found on the sidewalk and want to figure out the back story. Impasse is really something, all the production on the record is great, but really kicks into high gear on the 2nd half.
3. The Smile / A Light For Attracting Attention
Hey the boys are back! Thom Yorke still writes really beautiful songs. It’s nice to hear them done this way, limited palette, funkier drumming, just some guys rocking and having a good old time making tunes, piece of cake. “Free in the Knowledge”…man, I gotta say, it gets me. I like when he goes big, you know? He’s good at nailing the big picture human shit, Moon Shaped Pool had some doozies too like that, that just really get you in the heart. Happy these guys never fell off.
4. Mali Obomsawin / Sweet Tooth
Holy shit! This is a crazy record, some of the best new jazz music I have heard in a minute. Mali is from the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak and writes these tunes that are fiery, catchy, beautiful and far out all at once. The group playing here is sweet and locked in, I love how the use of folk melody feels so original here, alive and poking you in the chest, feels like Ayler marching vibes sometimes but I also hear Henry Threadgill kinda loud, fun pushy stuff in it too. So good and on a righteous mission.
5. Aldous Harding / Warm Chris
She just rules. One of my favorite songwriters, so elegant and unforced, never boring and finds such cool angles to write about people and relationships from. The title track just breaks your heart with the pure singing, so intimate.
6. Claire Rousay / Everything Perfect is Already Here & 7. Lia Kohl / Too Small to be a Plain
Many of us over the last couple harrowing years, have gained a deeper appreciation for very basic, simple comforting moments of our day to day existence and have been trying to linger on them with a deeper sense of gratitude and mundane awe than we used to before all the shit went down. These records remind me of that, of how a little sound can mean so much, can stabilize you in the midst of an awful, exhausting day, how you can comfort yourself with small sounds, small gestures, brushing up lightly against something soft, hearing someone’s laugh, a bird sing, or just hearing a few notes on a piano. I love Rousay’s and Kohl’s approach to “ambient” music because rather than trying to put you in some inhuman, cold space, this is assembled, it seems, with the notion of care at its core. Not in some bullshitty wellness-y way, but real care, observance and connection, just little fragile parts of life blowing gently past you, wanting you to stop and catch them.
8. 700 Bliss / Nothing to Declare
What a cool pairing! Love hearing Moor over some more uptempo club stuff, talking her shit, it’s very exhilarating and the humor in here is not lost on the listener. The beats are edgy and unconventional, very sick production by DJ Haram and all in all this is just kinda feels like a show I wanna be at on mushrooms.
9. Cheba Wahida / Jrouli
I’ll be honest and say I just saw someone I like post this on Twitter and checked it out randomly – so glad I did! Holy shit this record is intense and super funky and raw. I love it. This is Rai music from Oran, Algeria and it’s got swagger and raw street style that is very infectious. The dirty auto tune and hypnotic samples and bass… feels like the best block party you were never at, cuz your actual life is boring.
10. Not Listening to a lot of New Music
It’s true. And I don’t feel bad about it to be honest. I love music, I think about it probably 60-75% of any given day but I am also not that feverish about always needing to stay up on the newest shit. I try, sort of. I look at my little websites, kinda. I click thru sometimes on stuff my friends post about. But I also really enjoy just listening to the radio. Or having my friends play me stuff IRL and we enjoy it together. Or listening to Zelda music because my son likes it, or just not listening to anything and talking to myself. It’s fine. You don’t have to love everything or know everything and, in fact, there is nothing wrong at all with really loving, like 3 albums per year and really getting to know them. Or listening to Thelonious Monk all the time just cuz it’s fuckin soothing and we all need soothing. There is so much recorded music out there, and insane amount, you can never hear it all. I like listening to older records, there’s a lot to get out of them. As a producer, I don’t love feeling like in a rat race to keep up with all that is new, I always want to follow my own ears.