As 2023 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year, it's time to take a look back and remember all of the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists over the past year. Many Nonesuch artists and their recent Nonesuch releases have made year's best lists and are up for Grammy Awards. So here, in words and music and in chronological order, is a look back at the year in Nonesuch music, in gratitude.
As 2023 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year, it's time to take a look back and remember all of the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists over the past year. Many Nonesuch artists and their recent Nonesuch releases have made year's best lists and are up for Grammy Awards. So here, in words and music and in chronological order, is a look back at the year in Nonesuch music, in gratitude:
JANUARY
The new year began with the January 12 release of “Carpenter,” a song by Vagabon, aka Lætitia Tamko, co-produced by Tamko and Rostam, and her first newly created solo music since her 2019 critically acclaimed self-titled album. It would also be the first song from her new album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, which was released in September. “‘Carpenter’ is about that humbling feeling when you desperately want to be knowledgeable, you want to be advanced, you want to be mature, forward thinking, and evolved,” Tamko says. “It’s about being confronted with your limitations. It’s about that A-HA moment, when a lesson from the past finally clicks and you want to run and tell someone who bore witness to the old you, ‘I finally get it now.’”
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Rachael & Vilray
I Love a Love Song!
I Love a Love Song!, the second album from Rachael & Vilray—Lake Street Dive singer/songwriter Rachael Price and composer, singer, and guitarist Vilray, was released on January 13. The album includes eleven new songs written by Vilray plus the 1930s classic "Goodnight My Love" written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel. It was produced, engineered, and mixed by Dan Knobler and features arrangements from Jacob Zimmerman. Rachael & Vilray’s music’s “easy-swinging mini-big-band arrangement is as cozy as it is sophisticated,” says the New York Times.
I Love a Love Song! is among AllMusic's Favorite Jazz Albums of 2023.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant
Wuthering Heights (Kassa Overall Remix)
The forty-fifth anniversary of the release of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights,” on January 20, brought Kassa Overall remix of Cécile McLorin Salvant's critically lauded interpretation of the classic song, from her 2022 Grammy-nominated album, Ghost Song. Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap.
FEBRUARY
Brad Mehldau
Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles
Brad Mehldau’s live solo album Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, featuring interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison, was released on February 20. Although other Beatles songs have long been staples of Mehldau’s shows, he had not previously recorded any of these tunes. The album, recorded in September 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris, ends with a David Bowie classic that draws a connection between The Beatles and pop songwriters who followed. "A great improvising pianist takes on The Beatles," says Mojo in its four-star review. "An inspired set that reveals new ways of hearing pop classics."
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Hurray for the Riff Raff
SAGA (Acoustic)
Hurray for the Riff Raff—aka Alynda Segarra—performs an acoustic version of “SAGA,” a song from their acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut album, LIFE ON EARTH, in a single released on February 17.
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On COOKUP, released February 24, Sam Gendel and his friends and collaborators Gabe Noel and Philippe Melanson interpret R&B and soul hits originally released between 1992 and 2004 by Ginuwine, 112, Aaliyah, All-4-One, Soul 4 Real, Beyoncé, Joe, Erykah Badu, Mario, SWV, and Boyz II Men. "COOKUP marks another chance to convene with my good friends Phil Melanson and Gabe Noel," says Gendel. "For this occasion, we hovered over a particular flavor: jams that we grew up with. We sculpted in sound our collective memories of this music. Meshell Ndegeocello [featured on vocals on the track "Anywhere"] took the 112 to another dimension (shoutout wayne12)."
COOKUP is among AllMusic's Favorite Jazz Albums of 2023.
MARCH
Cécile McLorin Salvant
Mélusine
Cécile McLorin Salvant’s album Mélusine, released March 24, is a mix of originals and interpretations of songs dating as far back as the 12th century, mostly sung in French along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyòl. They tell the folk tale of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday after a childhood curse by her mother. "Anyone who thinks they already know the full extent of Cécile McLorin Salvant's artistry should listen to Mélusine without further delay," exclaims Jazzwise. "It's a remarkable recording in several respects. Beautifully recorded, Salvant continues to confound and delight at every turn."
Mélusine has been nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals for the album track "Fenestra," arranged by Godwin Louis. The album has made best-of-the-year lists from Downbeat, Slate, Mojo, Jazzwise, Boston Globe, AllMusic, Record Collector, Treblezine, Presto Music, and Spotify, and NPR Music named the title track one of the year’s best songs.
APRIL
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
White Rabbit
"I have loved the story of Alice in Wonderland since I read the book as a kid and played the Queen of Hearts in my school play," singer, songwriter, and guitar player Molly Tuttle says of her and her band Golden Highway's take on Jefferson Airplane's 1967 hit "White Rabbit," released on April 7. "Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane is from Palo Alto, CA, just like me, and this song gives me the nostalgic feeling of growing up, but recording it also pushed my band forward into new territory musically. This is the first song I have arranged, produced and recorded from the ground up with the band members that I've been on the road with all year. Each band member brought ideas to the table, making this a truly collaborative effort."
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Natalie Merchant
Keep Your Courage
Keep Your Courage, released April 14, is Natalie Merchant’s tenth solo studio album and the first of new material since her 2014 self-titled record. An eclectic album, produced by Merchant, it features lush orchestrations throughout, two duets sung with vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis of Resistance Revival Chorus, contributions from the Celtic folk group Lúnasa and Syrian virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, and horn arrangements by jazz trombonist Steve Davis. There are nine original songs by Merchant and an interpretation of a song by Ian Lynch of the Irish band Lankum. The vinyl LP edition includes four bonus tracks from earlier albums, previously unreleased on vinyl.
Keep Your Courage has made year’s best lists from Folk Alley and WFUV.
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Thomas Adès’ Dante—a ballet score in three acts based on Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia—was recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel in concert at Disney Hall for this premiere recording, released April 21. Dante was first performed at the Royal Opera House as part of Wayne McGregor’s The Dante Project for the Royal Ballet, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and with designs by visual artist Tacita Dean. “In any new shortlist of great ballet scores by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten, and Bernstein, Dante must newly be included for its musical invention alone,” exclaims the Los Angeles Times. “There is not a second in its 88 minutes that doesn’t delight. All of it is unexpected and wanted.” The collectable limited vinyl two-LP edition includes artwork by Dean and photography from the Royal Ballet’s performance.
Dante has been nominated for three Grammy Awards: Best Orchestral Performance, Best Contemporary Classical Composition, and Producer of the Year, Classical, for Dmitriy Lipay. The album has made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Boston Globe, Presto Music, and AllMusic.
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Hurray for the Riff Raff
LIFE ON EARTH (Deluxe Digital Edition)
To commemorate Earth Day, Hurray for the Riff Raff released a digital deluxe version of their acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut, on April 21. Along with the album's original eleven songs, the deluxe edition has seven additional tracks, three of which are previously unreleased: an acoustic version of "POINTED AT THE SUN" and two originals from the Life on Earth sessions, "LET HER IN THE SKY" and "RESISTANCE ROCKERS," the Kelly Gallagher–directed video for which can be seen here:
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The Magnetic Fields
i (gold vinyl)
Available on vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day 2023, April 22, The Magnetic Fields’ 2004 Nonesuch debut album, i, was the long-awaited follow-up to the beloved 69 Love Songs. This limited-edition LP is on 140-gram, gold-colored vinyl. Singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt was in full possession of his acerbic wit on i, and the album features lyrics ripe with melancholy and bittersweet imagery. At the time of release, the Guardian wrote: "Merritt is an incomparable lyricist capable of balancing arch wit with painfully acute observation. The most exciting dissector of modern love around."
MAY
Emmylou Harris
Stumble Into Grace (cream-colored vinyl)
To mark its 20th anniversary, Emmylou Harris’s album Stumble Into Grace was given its first-ever vinyl release, in a limited cream-colored vinyl edition, on May 12. On this, her second album of original material, following her Nonesuch debut album, Red Dirt Girl, Harris is joined by guests like Linda Ronstadt, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Gillian Welch, Jane Siberry, Buddy Miller, Daniel Lanois, and Malcolm Burn, who produced the record. Newsweek declared: “Her stellar voice takes on new depth when tied to songs this personal.”
JUNE
Marking its 20th anniversary, Brad Mehldau’s acclaimed Jon Brion–produced album Largo was given its first-ever vinyl release, in a two-LP black vinyl edition, on June 16. Mehldau experiments with electronic instrumentation on this set of original and borrowed tunes, including Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” and The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence.” "Gorgeous and brilliant,” raved the Boston Globe. “Mehldau has crafted a new-jazz soundscape that bursts with pop smarts."
Jazzwise named Largo one of the year’s best reissues.
JULY
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
City of Gold
Singer, songwriter, and musician Molly Tuttle and her band Golden Highway’s second album, City of Gold, released July 21, follows their acclaimed 2022 record, Crooked Tree, which won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. Produced by Tuttle and Jerry Douglas and recorded in Nashville, City of Gold was inspired by Tuttle’s near constant touring with Golden Highway and their growth together as musicians and performers, cohering as a band. These 13 tracks—mostly written by Tuttle and Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show)—capture the electric energy of the band’s live shows by highlighting each member’s musical strengths. City of Gold also features special guest Dave Matthews on the song “Yosemite.
City of Gold is nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and has made year’s best lists from PopMatters, Folk Alley, Holler, No Depression, AllMusic, and WFUV.
AUGUST
David Byrne & Fatboy Slim
Here Lies Love
David Byrne & Fatboy Slim’s acclaimed 2010 album Here Lies Love was given its first vinyl release on August 11 to coincide with the 2023 premiere Broadway production. This double-disc song cycle about the rise and fall of the Philippines’ notorious Imelda Marcos was conceived by David Byrne; composed by Byrne and Fatboy Slim; and performed by a dream cast drawn from the worlds of indie rock, alt country, R&B, and pop, including Florence Welch, Cyndi Lauper, Steve Earle, Sharon Jones, Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Kate Pierson, St. Vincent, My Brightest Diamond, Nellie McKay, Martha Wainwright, Róisín Murphy, Santigold, and Byrne himself. “Ingenious,” said the New York Times. “Insidiously infective songs.”
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k.d. lang recorded the song that was Tony Bennett’s first no. 1 hit, “Because of You,” for CBS News Sunday Morning, in memory of her longtime friend, teacher, and musical collaborator. lang is donating her proceeds from the single, released August 17, to the Tony Bennett Legacy Fund of Exploring the Arts, the nonprofit he and his wife Susan Benedetto founded. Bennett and lang had recorded the song together for his album Duets: An American Classic. Dae Bennett, who mixed their Grammy-winning 2002 album, A Wonderful World, mixed this new recording. “‘Because of You’ was the last song Tony sang, just two days before he passed,” Benedetto said. “Hearing k.d.’s beautiful rendition of the song she and Tony sang together brings back wonderful memories and pays tribute to their friendship. As I mentioned to k.d., ‘If Tony were here, he would say only one word after hearing you sing that song, ‘Perfect.’”
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Rhiannon Giddens
You’re the One
Rhiannon Giddens’ You’re the One is her third solo studio album and her first of all original songs. Released August 18, this collection of twelve tunes written over the course of her career bursts with life-affirming energy, drawing from the folk music she knows so deeply and its pop descendants. The album was produced by Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June) and recorded with an ensemble including Giddens' closest musical collaborators from the past decade, a string section, and Miami Horns. The lone featured guest on the album is Jason Isbell on “Yet to Be.”
You’re the One is nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Americana Album and Best American Roots Performance for the album track “You Louisiana Man.” The album has made year’s best lists from PopMatters, Folk Alley, No Depression, AllMusic, WFUV, WMOT, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
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Portuguese fado singer Carminho's self-produced album Portuguesa, the sixth album of her career, released August 18 in the US, features fourteen compositions: several of her own songs as well as those of other writers, including traditional fado songs, through which she explores various combinations within the canons, reimagining the form.
Carminho performs her song “O quarto (fado Menor) in the Yorgo Lanthimos’ new Golden Globes–nominated film Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Mark Ruffalo. She released the full version of the song earlier this month.
SEPTEMBER
Wilco
Sky Blue Sky (blue vinyl)
Wilco’s 2007 album Sky Blue Sky was being released in a limited-edition two-LP, sky-blue vinyl edition on September 1. The Gold-selling album made year’s best lists from Rolling Stone, Uncut, Mojo, BBC Radio 6 Music, and more. “Near perfect,” said Spin. Featuring the band that was assembled after the release of 2004’s A ghost is born, Sky Blue Sky was the first studio album from a lineup that has remained the same to today: guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, percussionist Glenn Kotche, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and avant-jazz guitarist Nels Cline.
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Yussef Dayes
Black Classical Music
On multi-instrumentalist Yussef Dayes’ debut solo studio album, Black Classical Music, released September 8, Dayes’ drum licks and Rocco Palladino’s bass are the anchors, aided by Charlie Stacey (keys/synths), Venna (saxophone), Alexander Bourt (percussion), and a host of features including: Chronixx, Masego, Jamilah Barry, Tom Misch, Elijah Fox, Shabaka Hutchings, Miles James, Sheila Maurice Grey, Nathaniel Cross, Theon Cross, and the Chineke! Orchestra—the first professional orchestra in Europe to be made up of majority Black and ethnically diverse musicians.
Black Classical Music has made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Rough Trade, BBC Radio 6 Music, Boston Globe, PopMatters, AllMusic, Loud and Quiet, Brooklyn Vegan, Treblezine, KCRW, WRTI, Qobuz, and Spotify.
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Darcy James Argue's Secret Society
Dynamic Maximum Tension
Composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble made their Nonesuch Records debut with the release of Dynamic Maximum Tension on September 8. The album pays homage to some of Argue’s key influences with original songs dedicated to R. Buckminster Fuller, Alan Turing, and Mae West. Cécile McLorin Salvant joins the ensemble for “Mae West: Advice.” Dynamic Maximum Tension’s eleven tracks, on two CDs, also include a response to Duke Ellington’s “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” titled “Tensile Curves,” among other originals.
Dynamic Maximum Tensions has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album and has made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Slate, Stereogum, and PopMatters.
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The Staves’ released “You Held It All,” their first new music since their 2021 album, Good Woman, on September 14. It was also the group’s first recording as the duo of Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, following their sister and bandmate Emily’s stepping back after the birth of her children. Produced by John Congleton in Los Angeles, “‘You Held It All’ is a song about understanding, and the knots we tie ourselves in when we don’t express our truth,” The Staves say, “and how much power and freedom there can be when we do.” The song is on the band’s forthcoming album, All Now, due March 22.
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On her album Sorry I Haven’t Called, released September 15, Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko) reinvents herself once again with the most playful and adventurous music of her career. Co-produced by Tamko and Rostam (Vampire Weekend, Haim), the album features twelve vibrant tracks she wrote and produced primarily in Germany that channel dance music and effervescent pop through her own confident sensibilities. “This record feels like what I've been working towards,” Tamko says. “It's completely euphoric.”
Sorry I Haven’t Called has made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Billboard, The Line of Best Fit, AllMusic, KCRW, Spotify, and more.
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“‘Dawning’ has multiple meanings for me,” composer/guitarist Yasmin Williams says of her first song on Nonesuch, released September 21, featuring Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss’ percussive dancing and provides an early peek at her new album, which the label will release in early 2024: “the dawning of my professional music career and a new love in my personal life, the dawning sky that appeared when I first started writing this song, and me smiling to myself with dawning recognition that I get to create music that I love for a living and share it with the world. This song represents a major shift in how I approach my music and expands the possibilities of what my songs can be.”
NOVEMBER
”The Gate,” released November 2, is the first track from guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson's new album, Cloudward, due January 19. The album features eight new compositions by Halvorson she performs with her sextet Amaryllis—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 albums Amaryllis and Belladonna: Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet). Laurie Anderson is featured on one track. "All the music on Cloudward was written in 2022 … when things started moving forward," Halvorson says. "Air travel had resumed, and we were once again cloudward … This band, for me, was quite simply working, both musically and personally, and the main thing I felt while writing the music was optimism."
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Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass
Kronos Quartet’s acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass was given its first-ever vinyl release on November 3, in celebration of the group's 50th anniversary. The two-LP set, produced by the composer, Judith Sherman, and Kurt Munkacsi, features violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud performing quartets No. 2 (Company) (1983), No. 3 (Mishima) (1985), No. 4 (Buczak) (1990), and No. 5 (1991), the first piece Glass wrote for Kronos. “It contains some of Glass's best music since Koyaanisqatsi,” said the New York Times. “His ear for sumptuous string sonorities is undeniable.” The Washington Post called it “an ideal combination of composer and performers.”
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Hurray for the Riff Raff
”Alibi”
”Alibi,” the first song from Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra)'s new album, The Past Is Still Alive (due February 23), was released on November 9. Segarra created the album during a period of personal grief, when they found inspiration in radical poetry, railroad culture, outsider art, the work of writer Eileen Myles, and activist groups like ACT UP and Gran Fury. They use their lyrics as a way to immortalize and say goodbye to those they have loved and lost, and to honor both the heartbroken and the hopeful parts of themselves. Though made in North Carolina by the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based Segarra and produced by Brad Cook, the record brings listeners to places far beyond, evoking vivid experiences of small shops and buffalo stampedes in Santa Fe, childhood road trips and Florida storms, struggles of addiction in the Lower East Side, and days-long journeys to outrun the cops in Nebraska.
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The title track to the Staves’ new album, All Now, was released on November 16. The album, produced by John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen), is due March 22, marking their debut album as the duo of Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, after their sister Emily’s departure. “There was a delayed reaction to trauma and these big changes out of your control,” Jess says of the period after the February 2021 release of their album Good Woman, as the band—like everyone—was forced to sit with their thoughts. Struggling after two years of deep solitude and pain, The Staves did what they know how to do best: they got back to writing with the idea of going back to basics and focusing almost solely on each other and their guitars as a starting point.
DECEMBER
"This is my reaction to being assaulted by information," composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire says of his Nonesuch debut album, Owl Song, released December 15, featuring a trio with two musicians he has long admired, guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley. "This record is me wanting to create a safe space. Part of the challenge was: Can I create something that's oriented around open space, the way some of the records I love the most do?" The New York Times says: "Akinmusire has been making some of the most intimate, spellbinding music of his career." Pitchfork has called his work "music that seeks peace not just despite a world of unrest, but within it."
Owl Song has made year’s best lists from the New York Times, Jazzwise, and Tidal.
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Adam Guettel
Days of Wine and Roses (Original Cast Recording)
The original cast album of Adam Guettel’s Broadway musical Days of Wine and Roses, with a book by Craig Lucas, stars Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James and was released December 15. This searing musical is based on the 1962 film and original 1958 teleplay of the same name, about a couple falling in love in 1950s New York and struggling against themselves to build their family. Days of Wine and Roses marks the reunion of Guettel and Lucas, who last collaborated on the six-time Tony Award–winning musical The Light in the Piazza. “Repeated listenings compound the amazement,” the New York Times says of Guettel’s work, which “has always offered that kind of challenge—initially leaving a feeling of: Beautiful, but wait, I need to hear it again—and those up for it have a way of coming away shining like Moses down from the Mount. The new score has the same effect.”
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Yussef Dayes
”Chasing the Drum - (A Colors Show)”
Yussef Dayes closed out a year in which his debut solo album, Black Classical Music, received critical acclaim and landed on several year's best lists, with the release of A Colors Show, in which he performs "Chasing the Drum" from the new album, on December 18.
AND SO, THE YEAR IN NONESUCH MUSIC
The above playlist can also be found on our Playlists page, along with our holiday playlist and many others we hope you'll enjoy.
There is, of course, more great music to come in 2024. Songs have been released and pre-orders are already available for Mary Halvorson’s Cloudward, out January 19; Gustavo Santaolalla’s Ronroco on vinyl January 26; Kronos Quartet’s Black Angels on vinyl February 16; Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Past Is Still Alive, out February 23; and The Staves’ All Now, out March 22.
Happy Holidays from everyone at Nonesuch Records!
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