The best rock from the Bay Area in 2022
Ready for another year-end list? How about eight?
In celebration of all the great music released by Bay Area artists over the past year, we’ll be sharing daily wraps of our favorite releases of 2022. Starting today, every day we’re publishing a new list highlighting the best music from the Bay Area across a wide variety of genres, including dance, downtempo, folk, hip hop, metal, and rock.
Read on for our favorite rock from the Bay in 2022, or shuffle the playlist. (Also check out this playlist for more country and folk)
MAHAL - Toro y Moi
“It feels good to be here, so I’m going to try to stay.”
Take a ride in a Jeepney around the Bay and you’ll experience everything from the winter blues to spring sunshine to summer fog. Pass all the Teslas on the Golden Gate Bridge, cruise by your favorite underground studio in Oakland, and then maybe later show off your fancy new website—sparkling with GIFs, primary colors, and big blue underlined hyperlinks—to all your cool San Fran friends.
Finally, with a full heart, say hello to MAHAL, the seventh album from Chaz Bear as Toro y Moi, featuring collaborations with fellow Bay artist Salami Rose Joe Louis as well as Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Sofie Royer, and the Mattson 2. The album title means “love” in Tagalog, and that’s what it’s all about. Love of self. Love of one’s ancestors and descendants. Love of music, art, and magic. And, yup, love of the Bay.
— Ronny Kerr
Windowpane - Aluminum
Inspired by the fertile transatlantic shoegaze scene of the 80s and 90s, Aluminum released the Windowpane EP on Dandy Boy Records. Swirls of sweet melody peak out from behind walls of distortion heavy guitar, featuring the dual vocals of Marc Leyda and Ryann Gonsalves. Moody synths and samples add depth and texture to the mix. Equal parts sweetness and chaos, this is a compelling entry to the local fuzz-rock scene.
— Elliot Engel
Fingers Crossed - Artsick
“An ode to the fuzzy power-pop roots of their own label as well as the shambling punk put-out by northern neighbors K Records in the mid ’90s,” Fingers Crossed by Artsick featured earlier this year as Album of the Day on Bandcamp. If you’re like me and agree that the Vaselines discography just isn’t long enough, this catchy, jangly indie pop punk album from Slumberland Records should scratch that itch. Artsick is bandleader Christina Riley (formerly of Burnt Palms) in collaboration with Donna McKean of Lunchbox and Mario Hernandez of Kids on a Crime Spree.
— Ronny Kerr
Absolute Compliance - Bronze
“They are real-deal weirdo kings of San Francisco and their spell is not easily dissipated once cast.” From Castle Face Records, Absolute Compliance is a full-length album of psychedelic, entrancing electronic rock by Bronze. It’s non-nostalgic krautrock made by musicians well aware of the power of mantra.
— Ronny Kerr
Together - Duster
“It's a lot more like absurdism than nihilism.” So don’t call it sadcore. Duster, a band formed in the South Bay and now based in Santa Cruz, released their fourth album Together on Chicago-based record label Numero Group. It’s slow and whole, minimal and meditatively rhythmic—as if a humble singer-songwriter with simple sounds boarded a spaceship to slowly sail the cosmos.
— Ronny Kerr
White Jesus, Black Problems - Fantastic Negrito
Come down here in West Oakland
32nd and San Pablo Avenue
Things are just the same
As they were 30 years ago today
Gospel. Blues. Country. Rock & roll. Punk. And a hell of a story to tell—as personal as your heart, as massive as America, as bloody and passionate as both. White Jesus, Black Problems is the fourth full-length album by Oakland blues rocker Fantastic Negrito (aka Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz), and it’s likely his most ambitious work to date. Dphrepaulezz based the work on his seventh-generation grandparents (an African-American grandfather who was a slave and a white Scottish grandmother who was an indentured servant), their illegal common law marriage, and the love and politics that flow from that deep, winding history. And it’s one of the biggest, best things from the Bay this year.
— Ronny Kerr
Half Yesterday - Flowertown
“As if you’re floating around the city, people-watching through a soft focus lens.” SF duo Flowertown returned this year with Half Yesterday, a dreamy mini album of gauzy lo-fi indie tunes. You may know Karina Gill from her work with local band Cindy, and Mike Ramos recently put out a record of his own as Tony Jay. The songs here drift in and out, the characters of their songs blurring together, or fading out seemingly mid sentence. Harmonious interwoven melodies float like clouds above songs comprised of little more than strumming guitars and simple percussion. Beautifully simple production centers the emotion of each song. This is perfect headphone music for a stroll around your neighborhood, especially in the fog.
— Elliot Engel
Fall in Love Not in Line - Kids on a Crime Spree
“A joyfully noisy, happily hooky, and sneakily political second album that builds nicely on the band's almost perfect debut.” Don’t put that tambourine away just yet: Also from Slumberland Records (like Artsick above), Fall in Love Not in Line is the first major release from Kids on a Crime Spree since 2011’s We Love You So Bad, though they’ve released a handful of singles since. Noisier and more washed out than Artsick, the production may be DIY but the pop is perfected.
— Ronny Kerr
Feel Like Going Home - Miko Marks
Selected by Ronny Kerr.
Bus Stop Nights - Neutrals
Has anyone figured out how, grammatically speaking, to combine pop and post-punk? Is it pop post-punk? Post-pop punk sounds like something else entirely. Post-punk pop? Anyway, Oakland group neutrals nails the sound on Bus Stop Nights E.P., released by indie London label Static Shock Records. Hop around the living room to the punchy bass, beaming guitars, and handclaps—or find a chance to see them live.
— Ronny Kerr
“One Thousand Years” b/w “Transmissions” - Night Collectors
“Their dead-level street gospel is disseminated at peaked volumes amid stroboscopic light washes for a hypno-narcosis, all in one painless pill.” Out on Seattle’s Debacle Records, “One Thousand Years” b/w “Transmissions” is a pair of meditative psych rock monsters by SF quartet, Night Collectors. As a long-time Spacemen 3 and early Oh Sees addict, I made sure to order the 7” the second I heard it.
— Ronny Kerr
Ovens - Ovens
Speeding down 280. Getting stoned in the fog. Making out at the beach bonfire. Pigging out at Heidi’s Pies. These are just a few things every Peninsula kid remembers. And here’s a bonus one for the late 2000s, Peninsula indie kids: Ovens’ self-titled EP, reissued on double white vinyl by Oakland label Tankcrimes. Originally released in 2009, the album sees Tony Molina leading the band through a cavalcade of winsome, pining ballads and shredded chamber pop, all wrung through a sieve of quick shot punk rock. At 44 tracks long but just barely an hour, it’s little joy after little joy after little joy. For something newer, check out the also-excellent In the Fade by Molina, released this year.
— Ronny Kerr
Parallel - Parallel
“Writing these songs was one of the things that helped me stay grounded in such strange times.” Oakland four-piece Parallel released their self-titled debut on qtpoc-run label Cherub Dream Records, and it’s a feast for the shoegazers and dream pop lovers. Ethereal guitars and vocals, hazy drums, and warm embracing bass.
— Ronny Kerr
Summer at Land’s End - The Reds, Pinks & Purples
Here’s an artist who has been at it for a long time, honing and mastering his melancholy chamber pop sound to perfection. Summer at Land’s End—the second full-length album by Glenn Donaldson’s chamber pop project The Reds, Pinks & Purples—is lovely as a rose, whether budding, abiding, or wilting. Donaldson is incredibly prolific, and it’s all high-quality, so also check out two other releases from this year: They Only Wanted Your Soul and Mountain Lake Park.
— Ronny Kerr
No Past No Future - Spacemoth
Selected by Elliot Engel.
move your body - vivian panache
Selected by Rebecca aka Sue Problema.
Welcome Strawberry - Welcome Strawberry
“Maybe songs grow like flowers. You water them or let them wilt. Eventually you will have enough to pick and make a bouquet, ugly and thorny or not.”
When a great new shoegaze band seemingly comes out of nowhere, you pay attention. Welcome Strawberry released their glazy, raucous debut self-titled album on Cherub Dream Records, and it’s a treat for the ears. The Oakland-based project summons visions of classic shoegaze through all the expected traits of the genre—sedate singing, tantric drumming, and, of course, swirling, ethereal guitar parts without number. Even better: It’s brilliantly recorded, mixed, and mastered, so it sounds fantastic on a pair of headphones—a lovely little thing for a midnight reverie.
— Ronny Kerr
Drifter - Young Prisms
We’re born, we drift through space, we drift through time, and then we die. It happens whether we’re aware of it or not. I am reminded of this while listening to Drifter, the first new album from Young Prisms in a decade. I went to high school with a couple of the dudes in this band. We were usually decent to each other, even though our all-boys Catholic environs bred and nourished boorish, immature, unspeakable behavior. Oh well, “boys will be boys.” The years passed. People moved. Into the city, away from the city. Joined bands, left bands. Pursued careers, started families. Drifting, drifting, drifting. And here is a moment in time: A blissful new shoegaze album by old friends, wiser, still full of wonder, and brimming with something that needs to be said, sung. Open hands reaching out, a simple, warm embrace in a cold, noisy world.