Last December, I made a bold decision to step away from my full-time job to focus more thoroughly on starting a career in music journalism, granted to me by Creative Loafing Tampa in 2020. With my job getting me up at 4 a.m. Monday through Friday, it wasn’t easy to do both, especially when interviews are mostly preferred to be conducted in the early afternoon.
In a total state of delusion, I decided that since the paper would not be able to provide a paycheck large enough to keep me sustainable—being an alt-weekly and all—I would make the rest of my money by being an Uber Eats driver on the side. After about a week and a half of living just like that, I figured out that life doesn’t work like that.
So after a few days of looking around for real, part-time jobs, I was hired by a local Chili’s to take on some food running, on a very flexible schedule that would allow me to both excel at CL, and serve ungrateful people their fajitas at the same time. It’s not completely ideal, but I got weekends back to myself within a few months of starting, I got to know some lovely people who really made an effort to make the awkward gay kid fit in as much as possible, and thanks to the company’s willingness to help its employees accomplish their respective hopes and dreams, I got more accomplished in six months than I thought I would throughout the entire year.
Now rest assured, I fully understand that much of the world had a hard time this year, especially our friends in Ukraine. And it hurts to still see anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQ+ activism, and seemingly endless amounts of straight white men spouting bullshit about what a woman should and shouldn’t do with her body all across my country.
But when I wasn’t thinking about that, and the added bonus of how Ron DeSantis, my own governor, would probably love to see me dead, I was getting a lot done.
In 2022, I caught well over 100 live acts—including both surviving members of The Beatles—while managing two columns in Creative Loafing Tampa, and interviewing the likes of Alice Cooper, Al Jardine of The Beach Boys, and Jon Anderson of Yes. I also attended my first Gasparilla Music Festival, travelled to Connecticut for a weekend to cover an up-and-coming record label’s debut live music bash, and just got to live through a lot of stories I’ll be telling for years to come.
Just like last year, plenty of new music emerged from artists I’ve known and loved both going back to when I was a toddler, and as recent as when I first caught them live for the hell of it however many months ago. Here are 12 of my favorites, in chronological release order.
I hope your holidays were as holly and jolly as they’ve ever been, and may 2023 be loaded with peace, and for once, just a little bit of sanity.
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January: Jethro Tull – The Zealot Gene
It’s a little hard to call this a Jethro Tull record, considering the fact that Martin Barre isn’t included at all. But main creative force Ian Anderson nonetheless continues to capture the original band’s sound with new, younger musicians backing up his flutey, whimsical lyrics and instrumentation. I remember when “Sweet Shoshana” dropped almost unexpectedly in like, November 2021. I gave it a listen because recently, it had come out that Anderson was dealing with COPD, and perhaps this was the beginning of his swan song. Upon the full album’s release, I first listened to the whole thing on my Bluetooth speaker while closing up at work one night, and I ended up introducing one of my new co-workers at Chili’s to the band, who had been unfamiliar with it beforehand. It’s been said that Ian’s working on another album under the Tull moniker, so hopefully he’ll stop in Tampa to promote it once it drops.
February: Bad Omens – The Death of Peace of Mind
One of my co-workers hyped Bad Omens up to me a month or two after the band’s newest album released. I ended up giving it a listen while driving home from a Jannus Live gig in April, and I was impressed enough to go the extra mile, and check out previous releases from them. I eventually came to realize that as Bad Omens continues to drop new material, they get much more contemporary in their sound. Like, almost to the point where I’m surprised that they’re not in the headlines more often. The Death of Peace of Mind is still guitar-heavy, but also far more synth-based than say, their first album from 2016, which is the closest to metal they’ve ever done. If they keep selling out venues like Orpheum in a matter of hours, I won’t be surprised to hear them on mainstream radio within the next few years, or maybe even score a spot on the bill at one of Tampa Bay’s many annual music festivals.
March: Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs – External Combustion
Mike Campbell is forever a Heartbreaker, but in a post-Petty world, he leads the Dirty Knobs full-time. The 72-year-old Florida boy’s latest album with his band had very little pre-release notice, and turned out to be one of two albums—the other being Wreckless Abandon—promoted on the Knobs’ long-awaited, largely postponed 2022 tour, which was scheduled to kick off in Tampa. Never in my life did I think I’d get to hear an album that had both Ian Hunter of Mott The Hoople and Margo Price featured, let alone one fronted by Tom Petty’s right-hand man for over 45 years. In a style similar to Wreckless Abandon, External Combustion sounds like Mike took another listen to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ final album Hypnotic Eye and held onto its more modernized, alternative guitar licks, while keeping his original Heartbreaker guitar wails completely intact. I was lucky enough to finally catch the Knobs’ first run of U.S. shows at the late Orpheum in Ybor on May 4. The four postponements kinda sucked, but since OG Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch emerged from the shadows and toured with the Knobs for select dates—including mine—I think the postponements might have been the best thing that ever happened.
April: Jack White – Fear of the Dawn
I wish every day that Meg White would come out from hiding and do something, but it’s still a major blessing that Jack White has continued being creative outside The White Stripes. Fear of the Dawn—which is his first of two albums released this year—feels like a retrospective of the electric side of his career. I would say that side one—between “Taking Me Back” and “Into The Twilight”) carries more White Stripes vibes, while most everything else on side two is more Raconteurs-based, in that it sounds more loose and less angry, minus “What’s The Trick?,” of course. I also enjoyed Jack’s mostly-acoustic follow-up from the summer, Entering Heaven Alive, which sounded more like a cross between Neil Young and The Raconteurs. So glad I caught Jack live at 97x NBT in December, and was allowed to snap photos on my point-and-shoot, despite him being a staunch anti-photography artist like Bob Dylan. Sorry, Jack.
May: Mavis Staples and Levon Helm – Carry Me Home
I finally saw the last of the Staple Singers live at Gasparilla Music Festival on February 27. I had a great respect for her before that, but seeing Mavis Staples live was like a religious experience, in that her in-song sermons about civil rights and love, and then mistaking Liquid Death for beer were enough to convert me to a full-blown fan. So when I heard that she would be releasing new material—which appears to be the last project Levon Helm worked on before his 2012 death—I was ecstatic. The material is as funky and blues-based as a good chunk of Mavis’ exceptional solo career has been. Along with that is “When I Go Away,” which is about one’s positive perspective of their own funeral day—an unfortunate coincidence to have been recorded so close to Helm’s passing—as well as a stirring 4 minutes and 23 seconds that is “Farther Along,” a hymn that goes back to at least 1911, performed a cappella. I’m hoping that the gospel choir sings it at GMF next year, because that piece could bring chills to even the most areligious of listeners.
June: Weezer – SZNZ: Summer
Okay, truth be told, Summer is not my favorite installment of Weezer’s 4-part “SZNZ” project that emerged this year. That honor goes to Spring, because it introduced me to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which turned me onto more classical music. On the other hand, Summer sounds like two previous Weezer works—OK Human and Van Weezer specifically—had a baby, with only subtleties from the former. I didn’t think that “Records”would be the biggest hit off of this one, but I still satirically cringe at the fact that Rivers Cuomo now has a semi-eponymous song, “Cuomoville.” It’s catchy—and steps away from the OK Human–Van Weezer-hybrid ideology—but if some of those lyrics are really what Rivers thinks of as “a surrogate for Heaven,” maybe he should go join the Amish if he’s willing to exclude the “magic in the evening” bit, of course. Then again, I’m biased. Him and I both are two of the biggest introverted dorks in the music community.
July: Lizzo – Special
Not that I expected “About Damn Time” to blow up the way it did, but the first time I heard the song snippet on Lizzo’s James Corden segment, I knew that us Lizzbians were in for one hell of an era. Special continues Lizzo’s tradition of penning and performing tunes in which she encourages—and expresses—self-love. She also blends in salutes to Lauryn Hill on “Break Up Twice,” which also had involvement from Booker T. Jones and Mark Ronson, and sings about how everybody’s gay. Whether that means that everyone is at the very least a little bisexual, or everyone’s just happy as fuck at a 1 a.m. party, male Lizzbians like myself—many of which actually are gay—are more than onboard. And I can safely say that the tour behind this album was nothing short of extravagant. I splurged and upgraded to the pit when she stopped in Tampa on September 24, and I caught a petal from one of the roses she threw out into the crowd. I’m tacky, so I framed it along with my purple pit wristband, and a shot I captured a song or two in.
August: The Tilt – Up The Gospel
One of my favorite parts about being a local and live music critic is the local part of it. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know so many bands and artists working on making it in Tampa Bay. Keyboardist Zeta Io of The Tilt—a relatively fresh face to the local music scene—reached out to me on my 21st birthday in July, presenting his band’s debut album Up The Gospel. I loved what I heard, but had no idea how to execute a proper album review-slash-release-party-preview. Zeta told me that the record was made mostly during the pre-vaccine days of COVID-19, as a “plea to usher in a better world from the ashes of our current situation.” “Sixtyfour Houses”—my favorite track, which closed the album out—contains lyrics relating to a topic many of us have gone through at one point or another: Self-awareness, especially when it involves evolving into a toxic person for a time. It’s a synth-heavy, 11-minute epic that stands out from the rest of the album—which is a healthy mix of guitar and synth—and if Up The Gospel’s sound is anything like what the band’s sophomore album could potentially sound like, The Tilt will probably never go out of season.
September: Buddy Guy – The Blues Don’t Lie
I know he’s 86, but it’s a real bummer that Buddy Guy—one of the last living people who got to jam with Jimi Hendrix—is about to embark on his last tour. His first album since 2018 initially caught my eye when he dropped a duet with Mavis Staples about remembering the inhumanity of segregation and how hard it was in general to be Black in the 20th century specifically, but how the blues being around helped them to nonetheless enjoy life. And that tune—entitled “We Go Back”—just scratches the surface. The other guest spots on this record are insane. I wouldn’t be surprised if Elvis Costello helped compose his collaboration with Buddy, “Symptoms of Love,” as it sounds eerily like an Imposters song. And Bobby Rush—another rare musician on the flip side of his 80s still going—brings in some very welcome funk on “What’s Wrong With That.” But perhaps the main highlight of this 16-track triumph is “Gunsmoke Blues,” a slow jam lament that tackles gun violence, with a little help from no other than Jason Isbell himself. Buddy always brings some kind of insane special guest to open for him while on the road, so here’s hoping Jason and the 400 Unit is in the cards to open for Buddy’s farewell run next year.
October: Todd Rundgren – Space Force
The obvious choice should have been Midnights by Taylor Swift, right? Well, everyone knows that one, so let’s tackle a dude I caught live twice this year. Todd Rundgren never really seems to stop working. But the last five years for him—excluding 2020, of course—has mainly centered around touring. Since the release of his last album, 2017’s White Knight, Todd reunited Utopia for a summer, formed a slightly rotational Beatles-themed supergroup with Christopher Cross and Badfinger’s Joey Molland, and even opened for Daryl Hall’s solo tour, with shuffled setlists that would often include cuts as random as “Butter On A Pop Tart” from “Family Guy.” His latest album Space Force, delayed from 2021 due to delays of physical releases, is flooded with special guests, many of which largely cater to Britpop fans. Thomas Dolby—who I didn’t even know was still down to record new material—rematerialized through his airy synths and fuzzy, distorted vocals on “I’m Not Your Dog.” “Down with the Ship” features a low-pitched Rivers Cuomo whining about a sinking ship, Sparks guest stars on “Your Fandango,” which is mainly a repetitive chorus with the occasional harpsichord, orchestra, and sleigh bells kicking in on the verses, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Alfie Templeman had complete creative control on his collaboration, “Head in the Ocean.” Truly a massive break for the soon-to-be 20-year-old British kid on the heels of a superb music career.
November: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Live at the Fillmore 1997
Bruce Springsteen released Only The Strong Survive this month, but instead of giving extra light to the longtime blue collar guy who was cool with his 2023 tour tickets going for hundreds of thousands, I’m gonna reminisce about a box set from a guy I very nearly discovered too little too late to catch live. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1997 residency at The Fillmore in San Francisco is a legendary set of gigs among Pettyheads, and this long-awaited release proves it. In 58 tracks (or 72, depending on who you ask), Petty and unarguably the tightest band in rock and roll rip through both unreleased covers (“Time Is On My Side,” “Louie Louie”) and a few cuts already heard on the 2009 Live Anthology box set (“Friend of the Devil,” “I Want You Back Again.”) There were also a few super deep cuts thrown in (“California,” “On The Street”) and special guest spots from Roger McGuinn and John Lee Hooker that make certain music critics wish that they were born a decade or two earlier to have been able to attend at least one of these majestic shows.
December: SZA – SOS
What drew me to SZA’s latest was very similar to what drew me to Buddy Guy’s earlier this year: A collaboration with one of my musical queens, this one being Lizzo co-writing and doing backing vocals on “F2F.” I’m not gonna pretend that I’m a longtime SZA fan or anything, having only discovered her upon hearing her “Black Panther” collaboration with Kendrick Lamar in 2018, but her acrobatic vocal skills and overwhelming confidence—the latter of which was more uncertain in works that came before—make SOS an instant R&B classic. It’d be pretty cool to see this St. Louis girl collaborate with Jon Batiste at some point. I mean, his instrumental genius and her unforgettable pipes? If SZA can get Phoebe Bridgers and Travis Scott to guest on her sophomore album, why the hell not?
Josh Bradley Live 