The Year in Culture – The Best Albums of the Year

2023's best television series, movies, albums, art shows, books, podcast, and more.

- By Craig Jenkins

1. Sampha, Lahai

The U.K. singersongwriter-producer's sophomore LP is a celebration of family and fatherhood but also an alluring development in the ongoing quest to blur the lines between compositions crafted with machines and music made on traditional instruments. It's a delicate musicology lesson about the sounds that connect cultures across continents couched in a contemplation of man's place in the cosmos.

2. Iris DeMent, Workin' on a World

DeMent reacts to the tumult we've seen since 2016 with a song cycle about mustering the bravery to love and fight for what's right even when it feels radioactive to do so. I'm going down to sing in Texas, where anybody can carry a gun, she huffs in a meditation on paranoia and Islamophobia. Her weapons of choice are wit and warmth.

3. Sufjan Stevens, Javelin

Dedicated to Stevens's late partner, Evans Richardson, Javelin balances songs touching on loneliness and resolutions to treat loved ones better, simplifying matters of the heart while consolidating contrasting musical ideas into a unique patchwork. He's revisiting the moods of past releases, but the Christian folkie who made Seven Swans couldn't hack the crispness of the electronic and orchestral breakdown that this album's faithful Everything That Rises explodes into at the end.