Gang of Youths, Wild Pink, Florence and the Machine lead favorite albums of 2022

When sifting the music of a given year, one must distinguish between "best" and "favorite."

I have no idea how to even begin judging the best music of 2022. But I know what moved me — to tears, toward gratitude and a sense of belonging. My favorite records of the year showed up right on time, grieving all we've collectively lost over the past few rotations around the sun; and they echoed the timeless, shaking a toward celebration of all that's innate, all that still remains.

Here is a brief look at my 10 favorite records of 2022, with a nod to those outside the list, just looking in.

1. Gang of Youths, "Angel in Realtime"

Recklessly earnest, abidingly soulful and with a heart as big as their anthemic choruses, Australia's Gang of Youths is known for its cathartic rock 'n' roll. On "Angel in Realtime," the band both plays at the edges of its sound — incorporating electronic adornments and cinematic effects — and pushes even closer to the heart of commitment, shame, regret and forgiveness, for oneself and others. Singer David Le'aupepe is a gravitational force, bringing anyone within earshot into his orbit and leaving them cleaner and more centered than he found them.

2. Wild Pink, "ILYSM"

Occupying my Number Two spot for the second straight year — 2021's "A Billion Little Lights" remains a gorgeous piece of music — Wild Pink creates a different sort of travelogue with their panoramic rock this time around. Moving through matters of life and death, fear and gratitude in light of a cancer diagnosis, frontman John Ross and his mates map out the terrain of the heart, then forge ahead with hard-won bravery and musical adornments, both grand and intimate.

3. Florence and the Machine, "Dance Fever"

Often, in the light of a certain, gospel-infused sort of sound, listeners and scribes breathlessly testify that the artist took them "to church." Florence Welch's latest flips and fulfills such a script, drawing us out into a wild, wooded sanctuary in which body and soul unite to come alive. These songs are poetic, priestly and — as the record's title underscores — travel from head to heart to feet, forming a new genre of dance music that is sweeping and spry.

4. Big Thief, "Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You"

One of the year's most ambitious efforts — 20 songs clocking in at around 80 minutes — is among the most personal and generous. Big Thief unites rock, folk and country tones in an arthouse fashion, evoking seminal early R.E.M. records. Framed by that sound, Adrianne Lenker delivers tone poetry that is introspective and charitable; we are all works evolving, these songs recognize, and while our "certainty is wild, weaving," naming our trials and errors is itself an act of growth.

5. Kendrick Lamar, "Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers"

Kendrick Lamar can do anything. On his first record in five years, what the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper chooses to do is excavate grief, pandemic politics, toxic love and the shifts in his own personal sympathies against a sound that lays back where others would push, shakes listeners when others might soft pedal and keeps us in the heat of every moment with him. Perhaps no recorded sound was more viscerally touching in 2022 than Lamar's deep breathing against a ringing bass line on album closer "The Heart Part 5."

6. Death Cab for Cutie, "Asphalt Meadows"

Easily the best Death Cab record since 2008's "Narrow Stairs" finds Ben Gibbard and Co. mourning something like innocence and brokering something like a peace treaty with a harder-won, splintered version of hope. The music perfectly matches Gibbard's meditations, offered while watching old movies or gazing through car windows; the sound owns a cool distance, yet often erupts in bursts of color and vision.

7. Dawes, "Misadventures of Doomscroller"

"... Doomscroller" is perhaps the most malleable, loose-limbed record yet from Dawes, a band that exercises care and control over every note. Letting these songs stretch, anywhere from five to nine minutes in length, allows the band to change tempos, shift feels and truly paint together in a sort of call-and-response with frontman Taylor Goldsmith's ever-insightful lyrics.

8. S.G. Goodman, "Teeth Marks"

The cuts on the Kentucky songwriter's latest travel a tricky, tremulous edge; Goodman sings and writes as someone who still believes in the world's potential — even while seeing evidence to the contrary. The gap between what is and could be shows up in these songs, manifest in visceral, jagged rock and warm folk worth burrowing into.

9. Alvvays, "Blue Rev"

Anchored by Molly Rankin's ever-impressive vocals and an impossibly dreamy union of guitars and keyboards, the third effort from this Toronto band goes out to the true romantics. A beautiful, benevolent cyclone, "Blue Rev" sweeps listeners off their feet, setting them back down tousled but more alive than ever.

10. Will Sheff, "Nothing Special"

On his first true solo album, the Okkervil River leader furthers his inclination for lush folk-rock shot through with colors from the day's last light. Sheff's songs surround the listener, changing the ambient temperature, asking them to consider — and reconsider — each age of their lives before understanding slips away.

The next 15

Denzel Curry, "Melt My Eyez See Your Future"; Marisa Anderson, "Still, Here"; Weyes Blood, "And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow"; Paolo Nutini, "Last Night in the Bittersweet"; Kevin Morby, "This is a Photograph"; Sharon Van Etten, "We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong"; Amanda Shires, "Take It Like a Man"; Open Mike Eagle, "Component System with the Auto Reverse"; Maggie Rogers, "Surrender"; Ezra Furman, "All of Us Flames"; Nick Cave, "Seven Psalms"; Father John Misty, "Chloe and the Next 20th Century"; Wilco, "Cruel Country"; Daniel Villarreal, "Panama ‘77"; The Beths, "Expert in a Dying Field"

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. Find him on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: 10 favorite albums of 2022 were timeless, right on time