Mark Whitfield, AUK Editor – My top 20 songs of 2023: Part Two, 10 – 1

I was only saying yesterday that I am a tracks man these days and obviously ashamed of myself for my lack of willpower but honestly here in AUK Towers we can’t even get to the ballroom, there is just so much music everywhere. Little and often has become my mantra, and to those of you who complain our playlists are too “soft and samey”, er sorry, you might continue to be disappointed. Following on from yesterday’s look at numbers 20-11, here are my top 10 tracks of 2023.

10. Brad Paisley ‘The Medicine Will’ So what, you may ask, is mainstream country star Brad Paisley doing on an americana best of list? On a personal note, my day job involves looking at drug-related deaths and so a song which intelligently looks at the opioid crisis and how whole mainly working-class communities have been devastated by it (“They sell their lies by the bottle, Without an ounce of shame, A promise on a slip of paper, Guaranteed to dull the pain”)  did not go unnoticed.  But also because it includes the wonderful Union Station whose sound is so distinct that I could spot it within seconds the first time I heard this track. They transform even the most mundane song, of which this is definitively not, into something really special.

9. Dom Louis ‘Red Like Stone’ I had always thought this was a really good song since including it on one of our supporters’ compilations earlier this year, but only realised how good a song it actually is when I heard a recently recorded live version of it from Southern Ontario singer-songwriter Dom Louis. The song, about “love, loss, and the physical wear-and-tear brought from a life lived on the road” just sounds magical in that setting, but in the absence of him coming to a venue near you any time soon, you can singalong to the studio version and create your own atmosphere.

8. Mitski ‘The Frost’ Rosie, a member of the team I work in for my dayjob is basically just about the most zeitgeisty person that I know and makes me feel not completely ancient when she introduces me to artists who I connect with, despite being half my age (God why did you let me get so old?) Mitski briefly made number one in the UK’s official americana chart earlier in the year with her album “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” which this song is taken from, and her leftfield turn into country, which she has touched on previously, didn’t feel in the least contrived. It was a close run thing between this and her track ‘Heaven’ from the same record but hey, the time of year got it over the line.

7. Melody Walker & Mercy Bell ‘Jesus Was a Drag Queen’ Recurring battles with people over gender identity is waring, particularly when the most cavemanish attitudes sometimes come from people you think might know better, and/or comedy heroes. Sigh. While not being a Christian myself, I have always been a huge fan of Jesus since the days of an inspirational lefty RE teacher in school, basically for all the kinds of reasons listed in this song. To me, he absolutely would have the back of the trans community, and communists for that matter. It helps that musically this has such a good vibe to it, and highlights much needed inclusivity in the americana community.

6. Cordovas ‘Fallen Angels of Rock’n’Roll’ I always remember in the early days of running AUK when I was 7 years old, I interviewed Beachwood Sparks and they said they hated americana as a genre because it felt so turgid at times, and while I was duty bound to defend it your honour, I sometimes hear bands which I think “oh actually Beachwood Sparks would probably like this” and Nashville’s Cordovas are one of them, despite having been around for an age now. “The Rose of Aces” is just a lovely album which feels like it could have been recorded at any time over the last 50 years, and this the opening track is one of the feel-good songs of the year.

5.  Jeffrey Martin ‘Red Station Wagon’ This hit my radar after it was chosen by no less than three AUK writers when we pulled together our end of year lists chose it as their favourite song from 2023, which has never happened before. As his bio reads, one night in middle school he stayed up under the covers with a flashlight and a DiscMan, listening to Reba McEntire’s ‘That’s the Night that the Lights Went Out in Georgia’ on repeat until the DiscMan ran out of batteries, and that night he became a songwriter. It’s a magnificent album, as part of a sterling year for releases from our good friends over at Loose, and lyrically it’s genuinely gut-wrenching.

4. Bonny Doon ‘San Francisco’ How on earth I have managed to avoid Detroit’s Bonny Doon for all these years is beyond me, as they are bascially my perfect americana band despite the fact thay they have never bothered with the likes of us here at AUK Towers. Indie americana does tend to pass us by as a genre, in terms of what we’re sent at least, but “Let There Be Music”, released on their new home at ANTI- records, is a strong contender for my album of the year and opening track ‘San Francisco’ is just a lovely, lovely piece of pop with country-vibes. “I moved to the Bay Area in 2018 and for the first time in a while, we had one foot somewhere other than Detroit,” the band’s Bobby Colombo said in a statement. “We spent a lot of time on the West Coast, which found its way into the writing, and also provided some distance to reflect more deeply on our hometown. ‘San Francisco’ is both a nod to this personal chapter and also an observation about how places like San Francisco and Detroit are being transformed by capital, and how people are figuring out how to keep existing within that change.”

3. Ruston Kelly ‘Michael Keaton’ Right at the beginning of the year when this was released, I thought straightaway “this is going to make my end of year list” and then proceeded to not sleep properly for the next 3 nights because the whole song is such an earworm, which was ironic given the chorus mentions being awake at 3.35 in the morning (the second song in history to reference this exact time – little quiz question dear reader: what was the other?) The song in traditional Ruston Kelly style ponders on the question: “What if Michael Keaton killed himself in Multiplicity – Would that be genocide?” Not something I’ve ever considered before the year 2023.

2. Julianna Riolino ‘Queen of Spades’ So this is my other slight cheat of a song since the album this is from was released towards the end of last year, but ‘Queen of Spades’ by Toronto singer-songwriter only came out as a single in 2023, and it’s the highlight of an incredibly strong album which according to one writer sounds like “Dolly Parton hanging out in Laurel Canyon in 1972.” It was recorded live in the studio and the energy in each song sounds like it was – the accompanying video was shot after film-maker Blake Hannahson approached Riolino about making a video, and she came back with the idea for her song ‘Queen of Spades’ where she was digging her own grave. You will struggle to hear a better melody this year. With one exception…

1.  Starpainter “Even in a Car” Holy moly, I cannot begin to tell you how much I adore this song, not just my favourite song of 2023 but one which I’m sure I will end up thinking about on my deathbed. Starpainter are an Alberta, Canada-based “twangy rock band” as they call themselves, and make the kind of americana which pushes all my buttons. After first running the track on the site back in August, the band commented on our socials that the song was written “on a day when Lethbridge shut down because of a blizzard. One of those rare songs that just sort of fell into my lap almost fully formed – doesn’t happen very often to me.” I sometimes worry with songs like this that the band don’t actually like it as much as I do and I’ll die never having heard it live. My stupid Alexa keeps defaulting to Amazon Music so my Spotify Wrapped put this at number two rather than number one, but it’s just such a rounded, sad but warm piece of indie-americana that it has often brought me to tears. I should just say too that the whole album “Rattlesnake Dream” is just terrific and well worth seeking out. Beat that, 2024. (PS – don’t get them confused with Starsailor, as I once did whilst drunk, to avoid disappointment).