Here at PG, us editors are constantly (and willingly) submerged in the currents of new music. As a result, we may be highly at risk of fancying ourselves worldly eclectics, with ears attuned to what makes an artist singular or innovative. Of course, it can in fact be those artists that seem the most deserving of year-end recognition, but on the other hand, we do simply enjoy celebrating the music we like, and even love. And so, the following is a collection of our individual picks of the music that came out in 2023 that we liked, loved, and admired the most.
Luke Ottenhof - Assistant Editor
Fust - Genevieve
Genevieve came to me late in the year by way of a dear friend, and quickly raced to the top of my most-listened-to this year. The opening track, also the title track, is sawdust-flaked alt-country perfection—vocalist Aaron Dowdy’s gentle drawl is so pleasantly unremarkable and everyman-ish. Like “Genevieve,” “Trouble” and “Violent Jubilee” are just brilliantly drawn songs that somehow hang around for just the right amount of time. Few bands have the skills and intuition to interpret decades of influences and write tracks that still feel vital and compelling. As Genevieve evidences, Fust has both in spades.
Must-hear tracks: “Genevieve,” “Trouble,” “Violent Jubilee”
The Dirty Nil - Free Rein to Passions
It’s a big, loud, fun-as-hell punk-rock record. The Dundas, Ontario trio just keep turning out record after record of delightful, gnarly riffs and huge hooks. Free Rein to Passions brings a sharp thematic juxtaposition to that formula: Frontman Luke Bentham bounces between youthful anarchy (“Blowing Up Shit in the Woods,” “Stupid Jobs”) and grown-up nihilism (“Atomize Me,” “The Light, the Void, and Everything”). What’s it all mean? Bentham, Les Paul squealing through a Plexi stack, has an answer: “Shut up, baby: nothing at all.”
Must-hear tracks: “Blowing Up Shit in the Woods,” “Stupid Jobs,” “Atomize Me”
Shane Ghostkeeper - Songs for My People
Calgary’s Shane Ghostkeeper put out a thrilling indie-rock record with his band Ghostkeeper last year, then followed it with an equally exciting full-length of country music that two-steps handsomely between old-time honky-tonk arrangements and chemically altered psychedelic. The playing is sharp and the composition is just adventurous enough, but Songs for My People’s strongest asset is Ghostkeeper’s storytelling, like on “Hunger Strike,” sung from the point of view of his grandfather, who starved himself to death to be reunited with his wife. It sounds bleak, but through Ghostkeeper, it’s beautiful stuff: “Get yourself dolled up, honey I’m coming up!” he hollers on a celebratory, boot-scootin’ refrain.
Must-hear tracks: "Hunger Strike," "I Know How," "One More Name"
MSPAINT - Post-American
Hattiesburg, Mississippi’s MSPAINT is one of America’s most compelling acts, and one of 2023’s best success stories. Post-American, the band’s debut record, feels like Rage Against the Machine for a new generation: a brutal, confrontational, extremely activated smash-up of post-punk, new wave, dance, rap, and suddenly back-in-style ’90s alt-rock. But where Rage’s operative emotion was, well, rage, MSPAINT’s disgust with the world is balanced with earnest, desperate pleas for hope and joy and softness at the end of the empire: “I, I, I just wanna, wanna feel more alive,” vocalist Deedee bellows on the instant-classic chorus of “Delete It.”
Must-hear tracks: "Delete It," "Hardwired," "Flowers from Concrete"
Kate Koenig - Managing Editor
L’Rain - I Killed Your Dog
The meaning of “progressive” in music changes every day, and what might be objectively innovative can often arguably be more entertaining cerebrally than it is artistically. With I Killed Your Dog, multi-instrumentalist songwriter L’Rain has composed something that both fits the vanguard qualifier and proudly defies that pitfall. Carried by gentle vocals and amorphous, oceanic synthesizers, and touched at times by phrases and bursts of clean and distorted guitars, the album’s summed acoustic throughline is a fresh path through the realm of experimental music. And honestly, I love every beat of it. Shoutout to my dear engineer friend, Kevin Ramsay, who from what I can tell is legally required to recommend gold and only gold, for pointing me in its direction.
Must-hear tracks: “I Killed Your Dog,” “r(EMOTE),” “Uncertainty Principle”
feeble little horse - Girl with Fish
The art that is loved by young people, that which inspires those to whom the elation of discovery is the most abundant and accessible, is not just felt deeply in a state both liminal and ephemeral, but is integral to the culture of every space they occupy. In other words, I’m really glad that my 17-year-old former guitar student told me about Girl with Fish. Mostly, I find this lo-fi-bedroom-grunge-twee record comforting. It’s just music that I like, and it’s good to hear more of that. You’ll hear beds of distortion that provide a space for vocalist Lydia Slocum’s words to rest—words sung with a voice that sounds like it’s carefully trying to pick up a kitten, but also like it belongs to a friend who gives great advice. There are some subtle chiptune synths and others that sound like modulating wind-up toys, and even a bit of screaming. All of it adds up to feeble little horse’s intricately assembled lo-fi finesse.
Must-hear tracks: “Tin Man,” “Slide,” “Healing”
Bernie Worrell, Cindy Blackman Santana, John King - Spherical
Instrumental funk/blues is a far cry from the sounds I normally gravitate towards, so I implore you to take this recommendation seriously when I say this record pulled me in, whipped me around, and set me back down with a new haircut and somebody else’s irises. Featuring the late Bernie Worrell of Parliament Funkadelic on Hammond B3, Clavinet, and Mini-Moog, Cindy Blackman Santana on drums, and John King on electric guitar, the utter trips heard on Spherical were tracked in 1994 and unearthed by King from a box of old CDs and cassette tapes 29 years later. So, let’s all write King a thank-you note? Because from the intergalactic “Unfunkingstoppable” to the triumphant “Sonny’s Hand,” these grooves will squeeze you through an astral Rubik’s Cube, and you won’t even have to beg.
Must-hear tracks: “Stomp-time Shuffle,” “Auguries,” “Sonny’s Hand”
2024 Wish List
Hey, wish granted! Sleater-Kinney’s Little Rope is coming out in January. But on an entirely different note, where is Fleet Foxes and what are they doing? Excuse me, Robin, but please reroute your Shore Tour ’24 and make me a new album. Would also be cool to hear something fresh from BROCKHAMPTON.
Ted Drozdowski - Editorial Director
Anthony Pirog - The Nepenthe Series Vol. 1
Anthony Pirog is one of the most versatile, imaginative guitarists alive. His stage performances are thrilling and his recordings range from raging to sublime—whether with the Messthetics and Five Times Surprise, in a Tele tag team paying tribute to Danny Gatton (the Spellcasters’ 2019 album Music from the Anacostia Delta), or in interstellar overdrive—which is the mood often caught on this album. These eight duets and a solo piece are a primer in contemporary creative guitar, matching Pirog with Nels Cline, John Frusciante, Andy Summers, Brandon Ross, Wendy Eisenberg, and other cutting-edge 6-stringers, as well as the cellist Janel Leppin. These reverb-and-delay-soaked soundscapes travel from soothing to chilling, and offer an extraordinary education in the use of time-based and modulation effects, evoking the late master Sonny Sharrock’s quest to “find a way for the terror and the beauty to live together in one song.” Here, they are also breathing in sync.
Must-hear tracks: “Ripples,” with Nels Cline; “Aurora,” with John Frusciante; “Inflorescence,” with Andy Summers; “Glowing Gestures,” with Janel Leppin; and “Cirrus,” with Brandon Ross.Buddy and Julie Miller - In the Throes
Buddy Miller has been one of my favorite guitarists for nearly two decades, conjuring delightful and often unpredictable tones behind a wealth of artists, from Emmylou Harris to Alison Krauss and Robert Plant to Levon Helm, Elvis Costello, and dozens more, as well as on his own solo recordings. But some of this most entrancing work has been with his wife, Julie, who is as distinctive a singer and songwriter as they come. Their latest album is an example of the kind of magic that occurs when two artists who love each other also share the love of music. It’s delightful, warm, wholehearted, and, at times, wholeheartedly odd in a good, playful way. Gospel, romance, truth-telling, and raw strangeness power their collaboration, and through it all Buddy’s guitars are proof that roots music needn’t be tame or predictable to be authentic, and authentically brilliant.
Must-hear tracks: “I’ve Been Around,” “In the Throes,” “The Painkillers Ain’t Workin’,” and “The Last Bridge You Will Cross.”
PJ Harvey - I Inside the Old Year Dying
Set in Dorset, a coastal region in southwest England, this song cycle is inspired by Polly Jean Harvey’s book-length poem, Orlam, about a young girl coming of age in a rural world that’s part countryside idyll and part hallucinogenic space warp. The colorful animism and local dialect inject elements of charm and wonder into Polly Jean’s folk-rock arrangements. This album is more a vision of the artist as a storyteller than rock idol‚ although she’s certainly still both, and, as such, seems full of refreshed inspiration. And while her longtime collaborator John Parish is on board, so is musical auteur Flood, who shepherds the samples, loops, field recordings, and noises that widen the album’s sonic palette, enhancing its otherworldly atmosphere. If this sounds intriguing, or if you already love this album, watch the October 2023 PJ Harvey concert from the Olympia, in Paris, on YouTube to see its artful live performance.
Must-hear tracks: “Lwonesome Tonight,” “I Inside the Old I Dying“ (check out the video, below), “All Souls,” and “A Child’s Question, July.”
mssv - Human Reaction
In 2021, I took a deep dive into Mike Baggetta’s music and emerged inspired and charged by his flexibility and range as a player and composer—and, even more so, by his unpredictability and his tonal sensibility. He is an outstanding improviser steeped in jazz, but I think of his playing with mssv as rock—albeit wild-ass rock, with no limits. And mssv is a true underground supergroup, which also includes legendary bassist Mike Watt, of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE, and drummer Stephen Hodges, whose playing with Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, T Bone Burnett, and even David Lynch has made him a legend among the cognoscenti of “thump.” Hearing Baggetta shred and get funky on the title track is a glorious thing, and throughout, he and his comrades create a ferocious blend of the dissonant, the howling, and the mysterious. Check out our soon-to-be-posted Rig Rundown with Baggetta and Watt, from a recent concert at the Blue Room at Nashville’s Third Man Records complex.
Must-hear tracks: “Human Reaction,” “Baby Ghost (from the 1900s),” “Junk Haiku,” and “In This Moment.”
Margo Cooper - Deep Inside the Blues
Okay, this is a book, so I’m cheating a little, but any serious fan of post World War II Mississippi blues will want this. Documentary photographer and journalist Margo Cooper has collected 34 of her longform-profile interviews of blues artists—almost all with literal as well as stylistic Magnolia State roots—and 160 gorgeous, richly detailed photographs in this very high quality coffee-table-sized edition. Every artist here was making vital contributions to culture during your lifetime, so there’s no whiff of the musty vault about this work. And many, of course, are still making music and other art of a high order. If you’d like to learn, deeply, about the sounds and lives of Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Sam Carr, Cedric Burnside, Little Joe Ayers, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson, Eden Brent, T-Model Ford, Robert “Bilbo” Walker, Super Chikan, and more—and increase your knowledge and appreciation of African American and blues culture—this is the place.
2024 Wish List
Please, Tom Waits … please make another album so this wish doesn't have to top my most-anticipated list every year! Otherwise, I sure wanna hear Sleater-Kinney’s Little Rope, Chelsea Wolf’s She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, the Bevis Frond’s Focus on Nature, the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Glasgow Eyes, and the new ones from the Messthetics and Adrianne Lenker.
Jason Shadrick - Associate Editor
Dave Barnes - Featherbrained Wealth Motel
I always find it rewarding to be able to listen to an album and pick out elements that I know came from other artists I love. It’s full-circle listening. Dave Barnes took an entire year off of listening to music not made by the Beatles and created an album that is rooted in his pop-folk style, but retains a Liverpudlian heart. The layered production is a sonic puzzle that is begging to be unwrapped. Admittedly, there aren’t many 6-string pyrotechnics on display, but the sheer mastery of songcraft can open your ears to the fact that blazing, warp-speed pentatonics are sometimes the furthest thing from what a song needs.
Must-hear tracks: “The Girl with the Weight of the World on Her Shoulders,” “Miss Deconstruction”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Council Skies
Another year spent waiting for the (inevitable?) Oasis reunion. As a kid that grew up learning guitar in the mid ’90s, I admired how Noel Gallagher crafted simple riffs that moved stadiums full of people. Council Skies is likely Noel’s best work as a solo artist, with well-crafted guitar parts that are more memorable than impressive—which is a good thing. “Pretty Boy” is an anthemic show starter and “Open the Door, See What You Find” is an incredible ode to Abbey Road-era Beatles arrangements. Maybe I’m going through a middle-age Beatles renaissance myself, but I think this collection of tunes balances incredible songwriting with a sense of melodicism that even the greats rarely encounter. Still waiting for the brothers Gallagher to rock again.
Must-hear tracks: “Pretty Boy,” “Easy Now”
John Scofield - Uncle John’s Band
He finally used the most appropriate jam band pun possible, and I’m glad he waited. Ever since his collaboration with Medeski, Martin & Wood, Scofield has flirted around the edges of the jam band world. Although the title of this album might lead you to believe that he’s gone full Garcia, this collection of originals and expertly chosen covers demonstrates that some guitarists just thrive in a trio setting. The freedom that rips through “TV Band” and “The Girlfriend Chord” is classic Sco’: tone that just breaks up enough combined with propelling lines that skirt through the changes. Another mention needs to go to his longtime timekeeper, Bill Stewart, who keeps the time pulsing without ever getting in the way. And the lone Grateful Dead cover does make me wish for an entire Dead album from Scofield. Maybe just an EP?
Must-hear tracks: “Uncle John’s Band,” “TV Band,” “The Girlfriend Chord”
2024 Wish List
An Oasis reunion. A new Fleet Foxes album. A live Julian Lage album. More albums with tube amps.
Nick Millevoi - Senior Editor
Mighty Glad – Self-titled
Mighty Glad was formed out of the collaboration between pedal-steel/guitar conjurer Rocco DeLuca and vocalist/organist Johnny Shepherd, both of whom were central characters on Daniel Lanois’ 2021 space-dub-gospel record, Heavy Sun. That album remains one of my favorites of this decade, and I’ve been seeing Instagram clips of this new ensemble in the time since. Now on record, Mighty Glad lives up to my hopes. At its most essential, Mighty Glad is a soulful, dramatic vocal record with patient, nuanced, and delicate instrumental support. On these mostly slow, dynamic songs, it can feel as though the ensemble is fine-tuned to some deep psychic wavelength, making every note feel essential. Mighty Glad demands repeated listening and consideration to fully absorb its lessons, of which I’m sure there will be more for me to glean for quite some time.
Must-hear tracks: “All the Way,” “I’ll Keep the Light,” “Send Me a Message”
Daniel Villarreal – Lados B
At the height of the pandemic, drummer/percussionist Daniel Villarreal gathered guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss for a two-day outdoor recording session. On Lados B, the trio reflect the fresh air and Los Angeles sunshine with laidback spontaneity on this set of loose, earthy grooves.
The record’s nine tracks point in a lot of directions—toward soul jazz, pan-Latin rhythms, Afrobeat, and more—but ultimately the trio create their own sonic argot. It’s a group record, for sure, but Parker’s playing offers a masterclass in how to take simple lines to unexpected, singular melodic places while staying deep in the pocket. The spry chemistry of these three masterful instrumental personalities and the nice weather combined makes Lados B a standout example of creative funk. Here’s hoping there’s more to come from this trio.
Must-hear tracks: “Traveling With,” “Sunset Cliffs,” “Salute”Florry – The Holey Bible
Florry is my favorite rock ’n’ roll band going today. Guitarist and singer/songwriter Francie Medosch’s songs are raw, direct, often witty, and clever. In Florry, she’s assembled a band that includes a front line of pedal steel and fiddle—along with her incisive Tele playing—to deliver her twangy tunes with country-rock flair. But as much as The Holey Bible—or the year’s best-named EP, Sweet Guitar Solos—might draw quick comparisons to a ragged, Stray Gators-era Neil Young, the band is energized by punk-rock abandon. Nothing is calculated. Nothing is overwrought. Nothing is slick. It’s pure vibe. Wearing their gritty Philadelphia-brewed attitudes on their sleeves, Florry throws caution to the wind and simply rocks.
Must-hear tracks: “Drunk and High,” “Take My Heart,” “Cowgirl in a Ditch”
Charles Saufley - Gear Editor
MV & EE - Green Ark
In a year of pop bloat and A.I. barf, I predictably gravitated toward a lot of homebrew jams. The land of DIY needs no royalty, of course. But if I were to nominate two ambassadors, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder would serve as well as any. On their diplomatic visits to distant planets, land masses, and undersea and sky cities, they wouldn’t have to talk much. They could merely play the assemblage (vortex?) of echo, fuzz, electric Indian instruments, wah, synth, and slow-swirl phase of Green Ark while sharing some local hospitality. I’m confident any beings or entities on the receiving end would be impressed with the industrious, resourceful, and cosmic potential of our species and spare us any bother. I suspect fellow humans, too, will find much inspiration in this platter of earthy, spectral barn dub.
Must-hear track: “Livin’ it Up”
PAINT - Loss for Words
PAINT is Pedrum Siadatian, who is better known as the lead guitarist in L.A.’s Allah-Las. Where the Las are often an elegant, streamlined, party-at-its-champagne-flowing-peak affair, Loss for Words is a fractured, rumpled, foggy, pre-hangover walk home just before dawn—all caught on handheld VHS and stapled together in Godard-on-molasses jump cuts. Though it’s a loosely constructed, largely untethered, and deeply modest record, the tunes here aren’t really chill-out jams. A solitary sort of ill-at-ease mood permeates many of these pieces. Soundtracking a dark, solitary drive down broad, near-empty boulevards with only shuffling deep-night creatures for company, Loss for Words could stand in for a scrambled car-radio scan of the quadruple-post-modern airwaves.
Must-hear tracks: “Paris 2020” “Rousseau’s Lament”
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The Brian May Gibson SJ-200 12-string in the hands of the artist himself.
Together, with a legion of Vox AC30s and a few effects, May and his homemade Red Special have created some of the richest, most glorious guitar sounds that have ever been documented. It is with that guitar in his hands that he’s crafted everything from his velveteen guitar orchestras to his frenetic riffs and luxuriant harmonies to his effortlessly lyrical leads, which matched the dramatic melodic motifs of Freddie Mercury in one of the most dynamic lead singer/guitarist pairings in rock music.
Although it has a smaller role in his body of work, overshadowed by such an accomplished, prolific electric guitar C.V., May’s acoustic playing is a major part of the story of his music. His bold opening strums of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” are some of the most recognizable D-major chords in the classic-rock canon, and his supportive work on “Spread Your Wings” adds lush dimension between Freddie Mercury’s arpeggiated piano chords and his rich electric guitarmonies. The multi-tracked 12-string figure that opens “’39”—his “cosmic folk song”—is among his most recognizable.
It’s a surprise, then, that when I ask May about the acoustic guitars used while recording with Queen, the most notable is his Hallfredh acoustic, a “cheap as hell” guitar from a virtually unknown brand. “My little old acoustic, which I swapped with my dear friend at school,” he reminisces. “The strings were so low on it that everything buzzed like a sitar. I capitalized on that and put pins on it instead of the bridge saddles, and you can hear that stuff on ‘The Night Comes Down’ [from Queen]. I used it all the way through Queen’s recordings, like on ‘Jealousy’ [from Jazz] years later and lots of things.” He also recalls his Ovation 12-string and some others, but the Hallfredh remains in the foreground of his acoustic memories.
The cosmic inlays on the Brian May SJ-200 represent the rock legend’s work in the field of astrophysics, in which he holds a PhD.
In recent years, May has been performing the 1975 ballad and emotional Mercury vehicle “Love of My Life,” which appears on A Night at the Opera, as an acoustic tribute to the late singer. May and his acoustic 12-string sit center stage each night as he leads the crowd through a heartwarming rendition of the song, joined at its climax by a video of Mercury. For that powerful, commanding moment, he’s relied on “a number of guitars we won’t mention, but it just came to the point where I’m thinking, ‘This isn’t sounding as good as I would like it to.’”
At one concert, a Gibson representative who was around piped up and offered to make him a guitar to his specs specifically for this piece. “I was surprised that they would notice me in the first place,” May recalls, “because part of me never grew up.” A surprising take from a rock star of such stature, but he explains, “I’m still a kid who was reading the Gibson catalogs and not able to afford anything, seeing the SGs and the Les Pauls and dreaming of being able to own a Gibson guitar. I now have a couple of the SGs, which I absolutely love, but, of course, I made my own guitar and I now have my own guitar company, so I went a different way. But to me this was a joy that they would offer to make me a guitar, which I could take out onstage.”
After building one for the guitarist, Gibson created a limited edition run of 100 instruments of the new model, called the Brian May SJ-200 12-string. Featuring a AAA Sitka spruce top with a vintage sunburst finish, AAA rosewood back and sides, a 2-piece AAA maple neck with walnut stringer, and a rosewood fretboard, it’s a top-of-the-line acoustic. The most noticeable feature on the SJ-200 is probably the string arrangement, which is flipped—as is most commonly found on Rickenbacker 12-strings—with the lower string above the higher string in each course. May has made that modification on other 12s, because he likes to string the high string first when fingerpicking. “You get an incredibly pure sound that way,” he points out. “‘Love of My Life’ is a good example—if it’s strung the other way, it sounds very different.”
On its pickguard, all seven of the other planets in our solar system are etched. The shaded one, close at hand, is Mercury, a tribute to the Queen singer.
May’s aesthetic customizations draw from his astrophysics work and add a personal sparkle to the large-bodied acoustic. The pickguard features a custom design with the seven other planets in the system, which is to say, not Earth. Mercury sits close at hand, a tribute to the singer. The fretboard and headstock include 8-point star inlays—to give a “more cosmic feeling”—that are made from agoya shell, as are the bridge inlays.
“It became a discussion about art and science, which I love,” May says of the design process. “That’s probably the biggest thread in my life, this path trodden, some people would say, between art and science. But I would say that they’re the same thing. So, I just tread among art and science.”
May’s own Gibson has already appeared in concert during the “Love of My Life” segment of Queen’s show, and occasionally for “’39.” On social media, where May stays active, many fans caught a glimpse of the guitar when he posted a new song for Christmas Eve. “I just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and that’s the way it came out,” he says. “It was incredibly spontaneous. I wanted it to be a gift. I didn’t want it to be, in any way, a way of advertising or making money or anything. It was just a Merry Christmas gift to whoever wants to listen to me.”
“It became a discussion about art and science, which I love,”
While that was one of the first things created with the new Gibson, he has more plans. “I’ve been playing around with it. In fact, we’ve been dropping the D,” he says, hinting at some future plans with guitarist-vocalist Arielle. “I have quite a few songs with the bottom D dropped. I haven’t normally played them acoustic or 12-string, but I’m discovering that some of that sounds really good. It gets such a lovely big clang and a big depth to it.”
Recently, May spent a great deal of time looking back as the band prepped the Queen I box set. The remixed, remastered, and very expanded version of their 1973 debut, Queen—they’ve added the “I” here—which was released last October, encompasses a rebuild of the entire record, plus additional takes, backing tracks, a version recorded specifically for John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show, and a 1974 live concert recording from London’s Rainbow Theatre.
May says of his new Gibson: “To me, this was a joy that they would offer to make me a guitar."
Revisiting this early document over 50 years later, it’s amazing to hear how well-developed the guitarist’s sound already was—full of the propulsive riffs and harmonies that would become part of his signature. May concurs, “You go back into these tracks quite forensically, and I hear myself in the naked tracks and I think, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize that I could do that at that point.’ It must have happened very quickly.”
Reflecting on those formative times, he continues, “I think there’s a period of just exploding, knowing what it is in your head, and striving to make what you play match what’s in your head. But I see it in other people, too. Sometimes, I go back and listen to the first Zeppelin album, and they were pretty young when they made that. But I think, ‘My God, how did they get that far and so quick?’”
“I thought guitars do work as primary orchestral instruments, so that’s what I want to do.”
Before Queen, May had already recorded a two-part guitar solo on the song “Earth,” a late-’60s track recorded with his earlier band, Smile, which also featured future Queen drummer Roger Taylor. While that lead certainly points toward the ambition in May’s later work, its raw untamedness doesn’t quite show evidence of his ultimate precision. But he says he had it in mind from early on. “There weren’t any more tracks to do three parts” when they recorded with Smile, he says, “but I always dreamed of it. It goes back a long, long way to hearing harmonies in other ways from the Everly Brothers, from Buddy Holly and the Crickets, from all sorts of things that we were listening to when we were kids.
“I wanted to make the sound of an orchestra just using guitars, and there’s other little inspirations along the way,” he continues. “Jeff Beck was an inspiration because there’s that wonderful track, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ which Jeff hated. But there’s one bit where he double-tracks the solo and in just one point it breaks into a two-part harmony, probably by accident. I guess I should have asked him—damn well wish I had. But that sound echoed in my head, and I thought guitars do work as primary orchestral instruments, so that’s what I want to do. I could hear it in my head for a long time before I could make it actually happen.”
Brian May and his Red Special at a recent concert.
Photo by Steve Rose
Though the Queenrecording sessions gave the guitarist his first opportunity to explore the larger harmonized sections that would become part of his signature, many of the sounds on the record left the band dissatisfied. Recorded at Trident Studios in London, the young band could only afford to use the room during downtime. Over the course of four months, they had sessions, usually at night, with in-house producers John Anthony and Roy Thomas Baker, both early supporters. However, the Trident style and sound wasn’t what Queen had in their collective ears, and they’ve remained unhappy with the sonic quality of their debut all these years.
The drums were the band’s primary issue, which Taylor describes as having a “very dry, quite fat, dead sound.” May’s tone is recognizably his own. “Well, I’m a very pushy person,” he laughs. “But nevertheless, it was difficult for me, too. Because of this Trident style of recording, the intention was not to have room sound on it. I kind of pushed, I suppose, to have a mic on the back of the amp as well as the front. That gave me a bit more air. I did feel a little hampered and the change is more subtle on the guitar, but it’s there.
“Jeff Beck was an inspiration because there’s that wonderful track, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ which Jeff hated. But there’s one bit where he double tracks the solo and in just one point it breaks into a two-part harmony, probably by accident.”
“It’s funny because it changed radically as time went on,” he continues. “And I can remember by the time we got to Sheer Heart Attack, Roy is putting mics all over the room and miking up windows in the booth and whatever to get maximum room sounds. It’s certainly nice to go back and make everything sound the way we pretty much would’ve liked it to sound at the time.”
With Queen I out, a new Queen IIset is in the works, which May calls “a very different kettle of fish.” The drum sounds on their sophomore effort were more in line with the band’s original vision, but the dense layers of overdubs that famously appear on the record came at a cost. “I think it is the biggest step musically and recording-wise that we ever made,” says May. “But there’s a lot of congestion in there. There’s mud because of all this generation-loss stuff [caused by overdubs], and because we liked to saturate the tape, which seemed like a good idea at the time. It made it sound loud. But if you disentangle that and get the bigness in other ways, I think Queen II is going to sound massive.”
The AAA rosewood back and sides of May’s signature acoustic are stunning.
At 77 years old, May certainly seems to keep his schedule packed with music work—not to mention his animal advocacy and scientific endeavors. In May of last year, though, everything came to a halt when the guitarist suffered a stroke. “I couldn’t get a fork from the table to my mouth without it all going all over the place,” he recalls. “It was scary.” Luckily, things began turning around quickly. “After only a few days, it’s amazing what you can get back. By sheer willpower, you just start retraining your muscle.” Not quite a year on when we speak, May estimates he’s regained 95 percent of his abilities, which, he says, “is enough.
“The short answer is, ‘I’m good,’” he assures.
May is in great spirits and appears excited about all his recent projects, finished and in-progress alike. In this time of looking back on his earliest works, I ask him to think about his beginnings, when he would gaze at Gibson catalogs but had to build his own guitar out of necessity, because, as he points out, he “couldn’t afford anything else.”
So, what would young Brian May, stepping into an afterhours session at Trident, making his band’s debut, think about his new limited edition signature model Gibson acoustic? He takes a long pause. “It would have been …” he pauses again, “unthinkable.”
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On That’s the Price of Loving Me, “We’re Not Finished Yet” is a love letter to Wareham’s 1968 Gibson ES-335.
The singer-songwriter, 61, has crafted many such moments—most famously during the late ’80s and early ’90s, helping cement the dream-pop genre with cult-favorites Galaxie 500. Take the tenor saxophone, by Ralph Carney, that elevates the back half of “Decomposing Trees” from 1989’s On Fire, or the Mellotron-like atmosphere that bubbles up during “Spook” on This Is Our Music from 1990—both of which, notably, were recorded with journeyman producer Kramer, who’s part of Wareham’s rich sonic universe once again with the songwriter’s new solo album, That’s the Price of Loving Me.
Following This Is Our Music, the final Galaxie 500 album, Wareham and Kramer went their separate ways. The former founded the long-running indie-rock band Luna, formed the duo Dean & Britta with now-wife Britta Phillips, worked on film scores, and released a handful of solo projects. Kramer, meanwhile, grew into a hero of experimental music, playing with and producing everyone from John Zorn to Daniel Johnston. They stayed in touch, even as they drifted apart geographically, and always talked about working together again—but it took the weight of mortality to make it happen.
“[Kramer has] been saying for years, ‘It’s crazy we haven’t made a record together,’” says Wareham over Zoom, his shimmering silver hair flanked in the frame by a wall-hung cherry red Gibson SG and a poster of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1975 drama Faustrecht der Freiheit. “He was living in Florida, and I was living elsewhere and doing other things. But I did lose a couple of friends over the pandemic, and it did occur to me, you can’t just say, ‘I’ll get to it’ forever. Not to be morbid, but we’re not gonna be here forever. We’re not getting any younger, are we?”
Dean Wareham's Gear
Wareham was a member of the early indie dream-pop trio Galaxie 500. After their split, he formed indie rock stalwarts Luna as well as Dean & Britta, with wife and Luna bandmate Britta Phillips.
Photo by Laura Moreau
Guitars
Amps
- Lazy J 20
- Mesa/Boogie California Tweed
Effects
- EAE Hypersleep reverb
- EAE Sending analog delay
- Dr Scientist Frazz Dazzler fuzz
- Danelectro Back Talk
- Joe Parker Raydeen overdrive
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
- Curtis Mangan nickel wounds (.010–.046)
- Dunlop Nylon .88 mm picks
- Truetone 1 Spot Pro CS12
In 2020, Dean & Britta recorded a covers album, Quarantine Tapes—the perfect opportunity, amid the agony of lockdown, to finally get Kramer involved. The producer mixed their hazy version of the Seekers’ “The Carnival Is Over,” which planted the seeds for a bigger collaboration on That’s the Price of Loving Me. At first, though, Wareham didn’t have any songs, so he gave himself a hard deadline by booking some time at L.A. studio Lucy’s Meat Market.
“What is it in a song that makes people cry? What is it that moves you? It’s something unexpected.”
“I don’t write songs every day—sometimes I don’t write songs for a whole year or something,” he says with a laugh. “The only thing that gets me to do it is booking studio time. Then I have to write some songs because it’ll be embarrassing if I show up with nothing.”
The space itself—decked out with a jaw-dropping amount of vintage guitars and amplifiers and keyboards—helped animate his sleepy-eyed and gently psychedelic songs. “I thought I had a few nice instruments,” Wareham says, “but I showed up, like, ‘Oh, your Les Paul’s from 1955? I think I’ll play this one. Your Martin is from the ’40s?’” Speed and spontaneity were essential: They worked six full days, with Kramer guiding him to capture every performance without overthinking it.
Wareham’s latest was produced by Kramer, a former member of Shockabilly, Bongwater, and the Butthole Surfers who owns the legendary underground label Shimmy-Disc. He produced all three Galaxie 500 LPs.
“[That’s] how I worked with Kramer back in the day too,” he recalls. “Maybe it kinda spoiled me—he was always like, ‘Yep, that’s it. Next!’ I got lazy about going back and redoing things. We’d make the decision and move on: keep that drum track and bass track. Maybe Britta [bass, backing vocals] would change a few things. Sometimes you’re with people who think every single thing should be replaced and made perfect, and you don’t actually have to do that. When it came time for me to overdub a guitar solo or something, Kramer would just allow me two takes generally: ‘Do it again a little differently. That’s it. That’s good.’”
“I thought I had a few nice instruments, but I showed up, like, ‘Oh, your Les Paul’s from 1955? I think I’ll play this one.’”
The material itself allowed for such malleability, with ringing chord progressions and gentle melodies often influenced by the musicians who happened to be gathered around him that day. “You Were the Ones I Had to Betray” has the baroque-pop sweetness of late-’60s Beatles, partly due to the sawing cellos of L.A. session player Gabe Noel, who also added some boomy bass harmonica to the climax. “It’s an instrument you’d mostly associate with the Beach Boys, I guess,” Wareham says. “It kinda sounds like a saxophone or something.”
Wareham, his 335, and Mesa/Boogie California Tweed at a recent Luna show, with bassist Britta Phillips in the background.
Photo by Mario Heller
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the warm hug of these arrangements, but it’s also worth highlighting Wareham’s lyrics—whether it’s the clever but subtle acrostic poetry of “The Mystery Guest” (“I’d never done that before, and it’s not that hard to do actually. Sometimes it’s just to give yourself a strange assignment to get yourself thinking in a different way”) or the hilarity of “We’re Not Finished Yet,” which scans as carnal but is actually a love letter to his semi-recently acquired 1968 Gibson ES-335.
“Sometimes it’s just to give yourself a strange assignment to get yourself thinking in a different way.”
“I read this poem about a guy polishing an antique wooden cabinet or something,” Wareham explains. “I thought, ‘That’s funny—it’s vaguely sexual, how he’s like rubbing this thing.’ I thought it would be funny if I wrote a song not about a piece of furniture but about the guitar—the experience of buying this. The lyrics in there: ‘I waxed you; I rubbed you; I reamed you.’ It all sounds like a dirty song, but it’s like, ‘No, I had to get the peg holes reamed!’ It works kind of as a love song, but that’s what it’s really about.”
Which brings us back to that idea of the unexpected. The most beautiful touches on Loving Me, crafted with his ol’ producer pal, are the ones that appear out of nowhere—like the blossoming guitar overdubs of “New World Julie” and “Dear Pretty Baby.” Kramer, he says, liked to “run two or three guitar tracks at once, where it becomes a symphony of guitars.”
These surprises, indeed, are the moments that stick with you.
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Luna’s four-song performance on KEXP showcases Dean Wareham’s sparse, low-key indie rock vibe as well as his simple and sweet guitar embellishments.
In the ’80s, Peter Buck’s clean, chime-y arpeggios defined the sound of alt-rock to come. From R.E.M's start, his post-Roger McGuinn 12-string style served as the foundation for the band’s simple, plain-spoken approach, offering a fresh take on what an independent band could be and inspiring generations of artists to come. Buck not only found his sound quickly, he evolved throughout the band’s career. By the ’90s, R.E.M.’s sound had evolved to incorporate organic, acoustic textures, and eventually leaning into a glam- and grunge-inspired, distorted-guitar-focused sound on 1994’s Monster.
