The Album of the Year for 2023 is, in my opinion, the masterpiece Fearless from the mighty Crown Lands: the incredible musicians Cody Bowles and Kevin Comeau.

No other album in my collection has received more repeated listens this year than this one. I alerted you to the lead track, “Starlifter,” back in February. Then, with the release of the whole album in March, it has been in heavy rotation in the succeeding months.

Despite the many top contenders for Prog Album of 2023 that have issued forth since then, the indisputable proof that Crown Lands must be awarded the top prize for 2023 is the Deluxe edition of Fearless that was made available in June.

Added to the nine tracks that comprise the Fearless album, the Deluxe edition adds eight instrumental versions. That means you can do Crown Lands karaoke, or practice playing the musical parts on your own instruments, etc. And the number of instrumental tracks added is eight, because the album track “Penny” is already a guitar instrumental in the tradition of prog palate cleansers like Steve Howe’s “Mood for a Day” or “The Clap.”

Not only that, the Deluxe edition adds seven live versions of tracks from the studio version of Fearless. And it’s seven, not nine, since the album tracks “Context” and “Right Way Back” date back to 2021, and we’ve already witnessed live audio and video versions of those songs in the intervening months.

The Deluxe edition live versions of the Fearless tracks are nothing short of amazing. Usually bands sound worse live than on record. But with Crown Lands, we get versions of the studio tracks that sound even heavier and even more energetic than the carefully produced prog perfection originals.

Somehow, Crown Lands manages to capture on the Deluxe edition live recordings a special energy that they obviously have when they play live. Kevin’s riffs are even darker and more menacing, and the synth sounds punch and crackle with tactile gusto. Cody’s singing is impassionate and immediate, hitting all the high notes and even adding extra sentiment in the heat of the moment. The drum fills are astonishing, as they fly from speaker to speaker and you feel like you are standing behind the kit next to Cody as he kicks out the songs with enhanced verve. Kevin’s guitar solos and bass lines induce ecstasy, which is symbolized by all those bonus fretboard dive-bombing finger slides and power chord zoom blasts.

Fearless (Deluxe): You have to hear it to believe it, and you won’t be able to pick a favorite version of the album—live or studio—since they each have their own special charms. Perhaps all that the listener can do after hearing Fearless (Deluxe) is to pronounce the winner of Album of the Year for 2023 in the same way that as I do. Unquestionably, the crown has to be awarded to the invincibly fearless and unstoppable Crown Lands.