A Year in Music 2023 – RM Hubbert
by Killian Laher

How are you? How are things?

Currently recovering from covid, which sucks, but generally good!

Do you think it’s been a good year for music? What were your highlights?

Aye, it’s been a great year for music. My current favourites include The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess by Chappell Roan, The Wringer by Martha Ffion, Crazymad, For Me by CMAT and I Get Into Trouble by Maple Glider. Nails by Benefits has been getting hammered, love that one.

Bird Machine, the posthumous Sparklehorse album as well, although it’s a difficult listen. Finally, the Dawson discography that came out this year is fucking outstanding.

Music seems to be on an endless cycle of comebacks – with goth making something of a resurgence this year.  What do you think about that?

Ha, I didn’t realise that goth was back! It never went away in this house. The cycle of comebacks is pretty much business as usual though, eh? I’m pretty sure we had a goth resurgence 20 years ago as well.

Anyone you’d like to see reform/return?

I miss seeing Fugazi live, would definitely love to see them again. A few months ago, I randomly remembered that Fugazi recorded all of their shows and had them all for sale on their website, so went and bought a copy of the show from the first time I ever saw them (16/05/92, 4 days after my 18th birthday). It was incredible, took me right back to that room. Had me in tears. In a good way, mind.

Other than that, not really. There’s way too much new music out there to be getting excited about.

I believe you are working on music yourself, can you tell us anything about that?

Sure! I took a load of time off from writing over the pandemic, etc, because the last thing the world needs is another album about that. I had the stupid idea that it might be interesting to combine the process of making an album with making the tools needed to make an album, so I basically spent the last 3 years learning how to do fine woodworking and build my own musical instruments. That’s going pretty well, but it’s a slow process. To be honest, it’s been really nice to just take my time with a record, I was on a yearly release / tour cycle for a long time. Here’s hoping it’s worth the wait!