Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Bauhaus Staircase: How will you ever say goodbye?

Artist: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Album: Bauhaus Staircase
Year: 2023
Grade: B

In Brief: Whether it’s the geeky synthesized sounds that bring back warm memories of the 80s, or the smooth and emotionally weighty pop melodies that would sound good in any era, OMD manages a pretty good rundown of the various things they’ve excelled at on an album that may well be their swan song. If this is how these elder statesmen of synthpop choose to go out, then it’s a strong note to end on – a testament to their long-running legacy, and also a darn good fit for a 21st century revival of the genre that’s still going strong.

Yaeji – With a Hammer: That’s one way to make smash hits, I guess.

Artist: Yaeji
Album: With a Hammer
Year: 2023
Grade: B

In Brief: Immersing yourself in this Korean-American singer/songwriter/DJ’s world is a challenging yet also strangely soothing experience. Her voice is soft and almost childlike, yet her words go back and forth between being introspective and aggressively confrontational. She sings (and sometimes raps) in both English and Korean, yet sometimes her use of eerie vocal distortion makes even the more straightforward English passages tricky to parse out. Sometimes the music is ambient and calming, sometimes she’s throwing out relentless breakbeats just to see if the listener can keep up. There are multiple expressions of fragmented identity in play throughout Yaeji’s debut album, and perhaps only a very small niche audience will understand and relate to all of them, yet she presents these apparent contradictions in such an appealingly hypnotic manner that I can see why she’s finding an audience beyond just those who speak both of her native tongues.

Devours – Homecoming Queen: So We’re Mainstream Now?

Artist: Devours
Album: Homecoming Queen
Year: 2023
Grade: B+

In Brief: Can synthpop be both nostalgic and cutting-edge at the same time? Can it be genuinely fun to listen to even though a lot of the lyrics are brooding and cynical? Can the musings of a 30-something gay man getting over a breakup and re-adjusting to single life in rainy Vancouver be relatable to a 40-something married straight dude in sunny L.A.? YES. Yes, it most emphatically can. Devours has made one of the year’s most engaging pop records, with song after song of intriguing ear candy that I couldn’t restrain myself from… y’know… devouring.

Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Lovers in the End

Artist: Depeche Mode
Album: Memento Mori
Year: 2023
Grade: B-

In Brief: I went from being fascinated with this album’s first few singles, to being rather bored with it once I tried to take the whole thing in, to eventually going back and realizing there was more to it than I’d given it credit for. So, y’know, my usual response to most Depeche Mode albums. There’s beauty and poetry to be found in some of these solemn meditations on the end of life, but it can be hard to get over the initial impression that it’s an unrelentingly dark, dour diatribe.

Everything But the Girl – Fuse: You hit the highs and you own the lows.

Artist: Everything But the Girl
Album: Fuse
Year: 2023
Grade: B-

In Brief: If you’re like me and EBTG piqued your interest with their more electronic output in the late 90s, then you might find their comeback album – the first thing they’ve put out since the turn of the millennium – to be a bit sparse, and the more dance/pop-oriented singles that they led off with might seem a bit misleading. But if you’ve followed EBTG for a long time and you’re a fan of their more subtle, sultry, and stripped-down efforts, just imagine that with a slight bit of moody electropop haze overlaid onto it, and you’ll probably settle into this one just fine.

New Order – Power, Corruption & Lies: Every time you get these words wrong, I just smile.

Artist: New Order
Album: Power, Corruption & Lies
Year: 1983
Grade: A-

In Brief: The second time was the charm for New Order, who desperately needed a shot at reinvention after spinning their wheels a bit in the wake of Joy Division’s demise. A lot of the things I love the most about the brightness of 80s synthpop and the dark intensity of 80s post-punk are captured beautifully on this album, which somehow managed to be a landmark record in a banner year for 80s music in general… and that’s true even without the presence of the definitive hit single that put New Order on the map for a lot of people.

Yazoo – Upstairs at Eric’s: Taking Early 80s Synthpop to the Next Level

Artist: Yazoo (aka Yaz)
Album: Upstairs at Eric’s
Year: 1982
Grade: A-

In Brief: It’s part classic, part curiosity, and a little bit confusing. Certainly a whole lot more than I would have expected from a synthpop act in the genre’s early stages. Yazoo may have only existed for a few short years while Vince Clarke was in between other, far more long-lived bands, but their debut album captured my attention in a way I wasn’t expecting. This was the moment where my exploration of early 80s electronic music went from, “Hmmm, this is interesting for mostly historical reasons” to “YES, this is EXACTLY the vibe I was looking for!”

Björk – Fossora: Fungal Bungle

Artist: Björk
Album: Fossora
Year: 2022
Grade: C+

In Brief: I feel like one of the few people who both admires Björk and has a hard time getting into this album. It’s challenging in ways that I feel like I should be used to Björk being challenging by now, and yet at the same time its instrumentation and overall atmosphere feel naggingly familiar, like we’ve been here before, just with a different section of the orchestra. But what the hell do I know? The critics all seem to love this one, and it feels like there isn’t “mush room” for dissent.

The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin: The sound they made was LOVE.

Artist: The Flaming Lips
Album: The Soft Bulletin
Year: 1999
Grade: B+

In Brief: Nine albums into a career full of bizarre, abrasive, psychedelic experimentation, The Flaming Lips came up with a game-changing dream pop masterpiece that many consider to be their magnum opus. It’s loud, brash, and startling one moment, yet disarmingly beautiful the next, and the existential crisis and heartfelt response at its core still have a profound emotional effect on me to this day.

Sylvan Esso – No Rules Sandy: Surreal, But Free

Artist: Sylvan Esso
Album: No Rules Sandy
Year: 2022
Grade: B

In Brief: While Sylvan Esso’s approach to electropop has always been incredibly quirky, they seem to have upped the ante on this rather scattershot and more spontaneous-sounding collection of songs, resulting in an album that might feel a bit less unified than their past few, but that makes up for it with its fair share of interesting side journeys. Their self-titled debut is still the gold standard as far as I’m concerned, but this one’s a good candidate for second place.