Best music of 2022 (first impressions)

Continuing on my plan from a year ago, I spent the last six months listening to music from 2022. Compared to the first half of the year when I listened to music from 2021, I got through way more releases: 262 compared to 193. Of course I still have lots that I didn't get to, but I don't feel too bad about that.

Because of this increase, I'm splitting off the top of the "Good" bucket into "Really good". But because these are still basically just first impressions (very few were multiple listens), I'll continue to just sort them alphabetically within each category.

Great:

Body Type - Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing's Surprising
Cave In - Heavy Pendulum
Flash Hits - Growths
Giraffes? Giraffes! - Death Breath
Goat - Oh Death
JB Dunckel - Carbon
Jack White - Fear of the Dawn
Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto - Quatermass Expansion
Loop - Sonancy
Neil Young with Crazy Horse - World Record
Nuclear Daisies - s/t
Rachika Nayar - Heaven Come Crashing
Rosalie Cunningham - Two Piece Puzzle
Širom – The Liquified Throne Of Simplicity
Straw Man Army - SOS
Suede - Autofiction
The Hologram People - Village Of The Snake God
The Mystery - The Mystery Sees the Burden
The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention
The Soundcarriers - Wilds

Really good:
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Overall, 2022 was a good year for music, plenty to revisit someday (if I ever catch up to new releases... maybe in 2025?), but subjectively it felt a bit less great than 2021. Happy to see the return of some old favorites, though. Looking forward to 2023... (Already in the queue: 275 releases. Yikes! And 7 from 2024 already!)

Here's what was left on my queue of 2022 releases to listen to, not including various other best-of lists that I was sometimes consulting:
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