The best music concerts, festivals, albums, songs and books of 2022
The Australian’s music writer nominates his highlights of 2022, from the best albums, books and concerts to the best comeback, as the live music sector worked its way back to a pre-Covid peak.
After a couple of fallow years hampered by viruses and border closures, this felt like the first proper chance since 2019 where we could all experience the full and glorious extent of music together. Where 2020 and 2021 both trended toward an increase in consuming recorded music and video, 2022 saw Australia rejoin the rest of the world as far as the concert calendar was concerned.
The international return began with a string of returning rock bands in March – Foo Fighters, Stone Temple Pilots and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club among them, who each put in typically great appearances – through to a genuine glut of activity toward year’s end, as summer approached.
As covered in these pages recently, the logistical logjam of so much talent on our shores at one time – and a pool of far fewer live music industry workers than three years ago – has forced typically competitive concert promoters to play nice, and share both resources and information with one another like never before. Fingers crossed that collaborative spirit endures.
BEST CONCERT
Dua Lipa at Brisbane Entertainment Centre (BEC). I saw something like 100 shows this year, at indoor venues and outdoor festivals across five states, and only one of them was flawless from the first note to last. Touring her excellent second album, Future Nostalgia, this British pop singer-songwriter was accompanied by a stellar band and a troupe of dancers. When they arrived in Australia in November, the performers were about 80 shows deep into a world tour, and the practice showed: the entire concert pulsed with a sense of effortlessness that is exceedingly rare to encounter in the live arena. The overall effect was breathtaking. Easily the best pop show I’ve seen – better than Taylor, Katy, Pink, Billie et al – and up there with the very best I’ve ever seen. I still get goosebumps thinking about this one.
Runners up:Tame Impala at BEC. Guns N’ Roses at Suncorp Stadium. Bonobo at The Tivoli. The Kid Laroi at Qudos Bank Arena. Midnight Oil at Byron Bay Bluesfest. Billie Eilish at BEC. Foo Fighters at Kardinia Park, Geelong. Rufus Du Sol at Brisbane Showgrounds. Glass Animals at Splendour in the Grass. Spiritualized at Dark Mofo. We Lost The Sea at The Zoo. Genesis Owusu and the Black Dog Band at Splendour. Stone Temple Pilots at Brisbane Riverstage. Colin Hay at Brisbane Powerhouse. The OG Wiggles at BEC. Northlane at The Tivoli. Sunk Loto at The Triffid. Mark of Cain at The Zoo. DMA’S at The Hindley Street Music Hall. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis at Brisbane Convention Centre. Jack White at Harvest Rock. Kendrick Lamar at BEC.
BEST ALBUM
King Stingray by King Stingray. This band from Arnhem Land popped up a couple of years ago with a new sound that blended surf-rock rhythms with stirring Yolngu vocal melodies and lyrical themes. Impressively, the quintet’s debut album captured the formidable power and presence these musicians hold in the live arena, particularly on mid-album highlight Malk Mirri Wayin, which concludes with a spectacular, driving wall of sound.
Runners up: Fear of the Dawn by Jack White. FutureNever by Daniel Johns. Bunny Mode by Jaguar Jonze. Weirder & Weirder by Ball Park Music. Darker Still by Parkway Drive. Renaissance by Beyonce. Obsidian by Northlane. Resist by Midnight Oil. IV by The Butterfly Effect. Midnights by Taylor Swift.
BEST SONG
Shedding My Velvet by Jack White. The closing track from Fear of the Dawn, White’s hard-rocking and sonically adventurous fourth album, sits at the summit of his songwriting so far. Its gorgeous arrangement and his cryptic, evocative lyrics have held me under a spell for months on end, and if I can make one request, it’s that you give this song your full attention for three minutes and 39 seconds. It’s a marvel.
Runners up: Simulation Swarm by Big Thief. One Song by Archie Roach. Nobody’s Child by Midnight Oil. Jack by Bad Dreems. New Gold by Gorillaz (feat. Tame Impala). Carbonized by Northlane. Where Do We Go? by Daniel Johns. Just Like That by Bonnie Raitt. Die Hard by Kendrick Lamar. Love Too Soon by Tasman Keith. Malk Mirri Wayin by King Stingray. Karma by Taylor Swift. Darker Still by Parkway Drive. Trigger Happy by Jaguar Jonze. I’m Coming Home Again by Spiritualized.
BEST BOOK
Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan. An all-time literary masterpiece chiselled from rough granite, this one strangely follows a Q+A format all the way through its pages, and somehow remains utterly compelling at all times. Across more than 40 hours of sparkling, searching conversation in all sorts of moods, and at different times of day and night, we come to understand the singer-songwriter and his manner of thinking in three dimensions, thanks to O’Hagan’s gentle, empathic assistance.
BEST COMEBACK
Tie: TISM, the masked Melbourne alternative group, which re-emerged for its first concerts in 18 years to play three hilariously absorbing, irreverent shows at Good Things festival, complete with an active construction site and tradies working behind them on stage; and Sunk Loto, a Gold Coast alternative metal quartet that reunited to play its first shows together in 15 years, and blew me and all their patient, diehard fans away with how extraordinarily note-perfect these musicians sounded after all that time away.
Runners up: Goanna, the Victorian folk-rock act which toured its 1982 album Spirit of Place and moved audiences across the country; and The Butterfly Effect, the Brisbane alt-metal band which issued a great album after 14 years between releases, and continues to impress live.
BEST FESTIVAL
Harvest Rock, a debut event in Adelaide which offered a perfect weekend of inner-city live music – featuring Jack White, Crowded House, Genesis Owusu, and Angus and Julia Stone, among plenty of other great acts – and was only slightly spoiled by the weather, which alternated baking sunshine and brief, torrential downpours.
Runners up:Byron Bay Bluesfest. Splendour in the Grass. Good Things in Brisbane. Dark Mofo in Hobart.
BEST MUSIC TV
Getting Heavy on Australian Story. The nation’s most popular metal band – Parkway Drive, five surfer friends from Byron Bay – showed the scars and imperfections they had accumulated across 20 years of making music together and touring the world, while remaining locked in the toxic communication habits of their adolescence. Their honesty, vulnerability and commitment to change was inspiring, and I think the effects of the openness these men displayed on camera will be felt and experienced in the culture for many years. I suspect the episode will be shown, studied and discussed extensively in classrooms, too; plenty of ‘teachable moments’ in there for educators to unpack with impressionable teenage boys, I reckon.
Runners up: Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy by Coodie. Clusterf..k: Woodstock ‘99 by Jamie Crawford. The NFL Super Bowl halftime performance by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem.
BEST SOUNDTRACK USAGE
Stranger Things, the Duffer brothers’ Netflix series, which wove Kate Bush’s 1985 song Running Up That Hill into its fourth season story in such a perfect and beautifully moving way that my eyes are pricking with tears at the memory as I write this sentence.
In one of the year’s most surprising music stories, Bush’s song went racing back up the global pop charts, but what will stand the test of time is the way the Duffers used Running Up That Hill – and one particular character’s affection for it – as a narrative device to illustrate the connective power that our favourite music can have over our lives.