2020: what a year, right?
Under pandemic conditions, without concerts or other in-person settings to share the experience of music with others, my listening became even more isolated and disconnected from whatever else was going on in music. My consumption of ambient music and other forms of beatless experimental music went way up in part because my creation of it went way up (ambient being especially conducive to socially distanced performance conditions). Also, I taught classes on campus just once a week this fall, which reduced my commuting a lot this year — better for the environment, but worse for how much metal and techno I could play at full volume. But I needed music in 2020 as much as ever before, and it was still there to find.
Deradoorian – Find The Sun
Angel Deradoorian climbed the mountain in search of new sounds and enlightenment. That those ended up a little krautrocky is perfectly fine with me.
Protomartyr – Ultimate Success Today
Admittedly, the leaps forward this Detroit band makes with each album get shorter and shorter… but the same could be said for the apocalypse they narrate.
Nubya Garcia – Source
This young lion made a defining album of the London jazz scene.
Kathleen Edwards – Total Freedom
My Americana album of the year came from Canada. Who doesn’t love a redemption story about middle-aged failure?
https://youtu.be/8MPbD4H0-gg
Hum – Inlet
Though I barely remember this shoegaze band from the 90s, their reunion added doom metal and other contemporary forms for a necessary album.
Psychic Temple – Houses Of The Holy
Bandcamp album of the year: So Cal songwriter recorded with four very different groups (Cherry Glazerr, Chicago Underground Trio, the Dream Syndicate, Xololanxinxo) for a generous gift of music.
Lianne La Havas – Lianne La Havas
Come for the sensual cover of an anxious Radiohead anthem, stay for the breathy, woozy neo-soul animated by La Havas’s guitar.
https://youtu.be/LdbHO_KhCig
Molassess – Through the Hollow
Dutch metal group made a meaty, unesoteric prog-metal album.
Hiperson – Bildungsroman
I can’t tell what this band from Chengdu, China is singing about or what post-punk means to them, but I know the hot flush and dashed hopes of youth when I hear them.
Horse Lords – The Common Task
Mesmerizing rhythms and ethnoforgery from this Baltimore quartet.
Margo Price – That’s How Rumors Get Started
Salty country singer brought the goods with this Sturgill Simpson-produced album.
Slift – Ummon
French trio orbits far off galaxies with godhead stoner space rock.
Psychedelic Furs – Made Of Rain
How delightful that one of my favorite bands from adolescence returned so strong for their first album in almost thirty years.
Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin Kynsi
I may be sounding like a broken record the way this Finnish post-black metal band keeps showing up on my list, but I guess that’s how others feel about each new Taylor Swift release.
The Third Mind – The Third Mind
Who knew Dave Alvin had a Haight-Ashbury freak flag to wave? Inspired performance on this mostly instrumental album with Camper Van Beethoven’s bassist and their friends.
Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids – Shaman!
Their fusion of spiritual jazz and afro-funk feels natural and so right.
Field Lines Cartographer – The Glimmering Plane
The Blade Runner soundtrack is never far from mind (this year I made a bitchin’ Vangelis playlist), and this gave me those sublime dystopian feels.
75 Dollar Bill – Little Big Band Live At Tubby’s
Someone released as an album the last concert I saw in 2020! Enjoy this 0:07 clip that I recorded, which helps me remember live music.
Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts V: Together
Could this be the first time NIN appears in one of my end-of-year lists? Shows the benefit of Trent Reznor’s soundtrack work.
High Spirits – Hard To Stop
The name of this retro metal group is truth in advertising — this felt like a great collection of jock jams.
Landon Caldwell – Unity
This is the kind of drone music I swallowed up in 2020.
Fujita – Iki
Calming instrumentals performed on a homemade, keyboard-less pipe organ.
1 comment
Michael E Guerrero says:
Feb 9, 2021
So over 6 weeks later, I’m finally checking out this list. This is great! I’m unfamiliar with most of this. You’re so great at staying up to date with current releases. I try sometimes, but it’s a chore. Grateful for these! So here, enjoy my banal hot takes on first listen to these selected tracks”
(1) Deradoorian – pretty good
(2) Protomartyr – this is great, I have a couple songs by them in my music library, need to hear more. Detroit!
(3) Nubya Garcia – this is pretty good, I like the dubby sounds. there’s a thin line between this “spiritual jazz” and elevator jazz, though
(4) Kathleen Edwards – this is cool, the kind of thing I can listen to with my dad and we can both like. when the tempo doubles up and the song kicks in, the band has a bit of a War On Drugs, “Under the Pressure” vibe. People 10 years younger than us are “middle-aged?” Yikes!
(5) Hum – i don’t remember this band either, but I love these heavy sounds
(6) Psychic Temple – this guy Chris Schlarb’s resume is wild, how have i not heard of him b4? Fun to see the Dream Syndicate revival continuing…
(7) Lianne La Havas – wow, this is cool. i want to hear this whole album
(8) Molassess – heavy psych
(9) Hiperson – yeah, i’m in love. dig the chinese folk sounds with the post-punk. The coastal scenes in the video made me think Chengdu was an island or something, but that’s not right…
(10) Horse Lords – cool, mostly rhythm. ice skaters, winter sky
(11) Margo Price – cool! great guitar and organ sounds; i want to hear more from her
(12) Slift – very groovy stoner rock. trippy video
(13) Psychedelic Furs – the instrumentation – banjo? slide guitar? heavy tom action? what is this…Led Zeppelin III? I finally got to see them around 2017 at the Fillmore, and it was
great! Richard Butler’s still a rock star. I forgot that they’re a brother act ( like kinks, oasis) with brother Tim Butler. Sounds good.
(14) Oranssi Pazuzu – pazuzu! that’s the demon from the exorcist, right? i love how all these metal groups have creative trippy videos. they’ve learned from tool. I <3 Satan now.
(15) The Third Mind – i dig it! "East-West"…that's a cover or reference to the paul butterfield blues band album/song? Which I have and listen to. Mike Bloomfield's on it. This is
groovy, jammy in a way I can get behind.
(16) Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids – Hey, I introduced you to this band. this makes me feel like I'm a part of this! Yeah! Love this Don Cherry meets the Stevie-Wonder-band-in-the70s vibe; they're from the Bay Area but I wasn't really aware of them until I read about them in the quietus
(17) Field LInes Cartographer – nice ambient sounds; don't know what to say. deep listening time! i like the "ringing" drones that start at 8:40…
(18) 75 Dollar Bill – tubby's! I've been there! I have a shirt! I think I'll need more than 7 seconds….
(19) Nine Inch Nails – yeah, I'm more of a fan of Reznor's and Atticus Ross's soundtrack work than NIN. But I guess that's what NIN is now. So that's cool.
(20) High Spirits – this fits right in with some of the better songs by Styx/Foreigner/REO
(21) London Caldwell – this sounds like me farting around on the piano (first minute); love the deep blue organ sounds in the last third of the piece.
(22) Fujita – one note organ solo? chopping wood in background; formless – endlesss