30 albums for 2020

​This was a weird year, that despite its many, many, many disappointments, ended up producing a lot of great music. Or maybe this weird year gave us more time to enjoy more music? Hard to say. Hard to say, too, how the halted concert and touring industry impacted blockbuster releases like Lady Gaga’s “Chromatica” or The Weeknd’s “After Hours” (which rips, by the way, that lead single was never not playing in my apartment the month it came out) and smaller acts (and venues, for goodness sakes) alike. I will say this: for circumstance or happenstance I found myself digging way more into acts of a smaller caliber than I typically would, and I think that made for a better year of music. I want to specifically shout out Bandcamp Friday as a great vehicle for helping artists make a lil extra cash, and for amplifying artists who might not have broken out as large without the intentional signal boost.
   
Another thing unique to this year, for me and music, was how seasonal all of these releases ended up being. When I went back through the calendar, I was shocked at how memory holed some albums that, back in March say, I would have taken a bullet for. The excellent and quiet “Local Honey,” Brian Fallon’s full turn to singer songwriter & third solo effort, was everything when frost still touched the tops of the grass in my very small world. I’d forgotten it came out this year until this morning. Jason Isbell’s excellent dad rock “Reunions” which, coincidently came out right before I became a (pet) parent this summer was probably the only thing I listened to in June.
   
This is all to say, almost none of these albums made it through the whole year as constant listens. I don’t think this is an indictment on these albums, which are, in their own rights, some of the best pieces of music released in this goddamn awful year. One of the few perks of this goddamn year, though, was how easy it was to make time for music from years past that I’d missed (I got into Steely Dan this year, for example) or the money saved from only needing to drive my car approximately 9 times made more room in the budget for record collecting, and the obsessive listens that come with that (as of writing I’ve got every White Stripes vinyl release and variants that Third Man’s put out since opening doors in Nashville, 2009). This was a year where, as much as I explored new shit, was listening to bands, tediously consuming their discographies, really digging in. I obsessed as much as I explored, maybe more. As an aside, I also got heavy into audiobooks and podcasts as an easier-to-pace-with companion to training for the multiple half-marathons I ran this year.
  
Since my listening habits changed along with everything else this year, I figure I’m allowed to change the format of my own year end album list, which, since time is a meaningless commodity, I’ll overstuff with #content. Unique to my list this year is the addition of three new categories: 5 Favorite Vinyl Buys, 5 Favorite Live &/or Reissues, 20 Unranked Favorite Albums, and of course, my Top 10 Albums of 2020. I’m going to Punctuate the 20 Unranked List with the top 5s to add narrative tension, if you just want to know where “Punisher” by Phoebe Bridgers ranks on my top ten, like every other credible indie-adjacent year end list, scroll down.


20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020
This first batch are all alumni of top ten lists in years pasts, go figure:
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Microphones in 2020 – The Microphones
 “Microphones in 2020” maintains the confessional, stream-of-consciousness Mount Eerie & Phil Elverum fans are used to, reaching back into the lo-fi roots of his previous recoding name, this song length album acts as a state of the union for music, the world, for Elverum, all set in the pastoral scenes his music paints so beautifully. Refreshingly light, considering his more recent works, “Microphones in 2020” is heavy by virtue of the gorgeous physical object the LP is: a double-gatefold, full of art, poetry, and essays Elverum found in his sock drawer is a great companion to the 40 minute song, stretched across 3 sides of vinyl.
 
Dedicated Side B – Carly Rae Jepsen
Carly Rae Jepsen’s B-Sides are better than most pop singers’ A-Sides, and while Side B’s songs were rightly left off of last year’s impossibly good “Dedicated”, these songs put Jepsen into more sonically interesting and genre-bending occasions that even casual fans will savor. “Window” is the killer track: https://youtu.be/z90WurQZMNo
 
Letter to You – Bruce Springsteen
Every review for “Letter to You” goes on and on about how it’s the most vital and exciting music from Springsteen in years, if not decades. I’ll admit, The Boss’s powers are much more clear when he’s playing front & center and as band leader. Recorded live in studio with The E Street Band, there’s such a tremendous unity to these songs, timeless, brawny rockers in a year when we couldn’t head into the stadiums to do rock-god-revery. No worries, “Letter to You”’s got anthems: 2 minutes shy of an hour of anthems.
   
I don’t know, I might have just been on a Springsteen tear this year – one of the many, many audio books I took out with me on runs was his memoir – an expansive companion to the Netflix presentation of his Broadway stint as a storyteller and personal historian. I loved that book, loved Springsteen’s voice warbling through his own tale, loved the frantic searches on YouTube for shitty crowd shoot footage of gigs and songs he’d refer too off hand. But what I love more is not the man himself in the spotlight, but the Boss, and the people he is ostensibly the boss of: the E Street Band. Listen to that title track and tell me I’m wrong.
 
Local Honey – Brian Fallon
For Brian Fallon’s third solo album, he wanted to scale back: the stories are less anthemic, more autobiographical, and all written on a piano and performed, so sparingly, on Fallon’s acoustic guitar. If you show up to “Local Honey” wanting Gaslight Anthem, or even yearning for some of the more rootsy rock tunes of Fallon’s previous solo LPs, you’ll be disappointed. But as an all too brief showcase of songcraft, it is clear Fallon is becoming a tremendous talent. “21 Days” is the slow jam of the year: https://youtu.be/wVBJqt6elVM
    
Bridge to Quiet – Animal Collective
I’ve been a fan of Animal Collective for a little over ten years now, and in the fervent fan community there is much to do about something we call “demoitis” where fans are given more time with bootlegs of live renditions going through the road-tested workshop for future studio songs. The story goes, you spend a year with the prehistoric version of a jam like “Guys Eyes” and the studio version misses the colossal highs a summer tour’s worth of live improvisations on the track sets.  
   
I say this to say that late in 2019 Animal Collective debuted some of the most promising material they’ve ever played live, and then the pandemic interrupted their studio plans. “Bridge to Quiet” is NOT those road-tested. Embracing the constraints of recording safely this year, “Bridge to Quiet” is a small 5 song moment (one of which is a tedious instrumental) stretched across 30 minutes. Released exclusively to Bandcamp, the album is a low-stakes affair, and while “Piggy Knows” will surely become an all-time classic, “Bridge to Quiet” never extends itself beyond an offering to fans, while we wait for the proper studio sessions to capture the magic (or not!) of those songs from late 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuYKDaxaxyw&ab_channel=AnimalCollective
   
5 Favorite Live &/or Reissues of 2020
Speaking of those goofballs in Animal Collective, I gotta cheat a bit for this first one:
  
2019 Fall Tour Bootlegs from Meow Wolf, Big Sur, and Desert Daze Fest – Animal Collective
It’s a good problem to have when the new songs you’re demoing at live shows are so good they make the studio album you put out a few months later forgettable. About 20 new songs, fit in great harmony with live AnCo staples, these bootlegs have been essential listening. Some of the greatest live music I didn’t get to see before the pandemic.
  
“A Dream in the Dark: Two Decades of Okkervil River Live” – Okkervil River
Embracing the many line-ups, sounds, and styles of Will Sheff’s long-running Okkervil River project, “A Dream in the Dark” complies the best of River’s year-long anthology of live releases. Cased in a beautiful book-spine triple gatefold, the six sides of vinyl pair nicely with Sheff’s liner notes, photos of the band over the years, and capture some of the best of his substantial catalogue of songs.
   
“All That You Can’t Leave Behind (20th Anniversary Expanded Edition) – U2
Bono is an arduous dude, no doubt about it. “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” isn’t U2’s best album, nor their most ambitious, but damnit if it isn’t the most U2. Tagging on a disc of remixes, a disc of (mostly) awesome b sides, and a live album from U2’s huge tour, you get some of U2’s biggest songs in the biggest way possible. Does it make up for my being 10 years old, and unable to go see that arena tour? No, but can I close my eyes when “Beautiful Day” is blowing the roof off of the venue and pretend? You betcha.
  
“Everything Will Change” – The Postal Service
You wouldn’t think The Postal Service is a band that needs a live album treatment, and even if that were true, I’d still be about this release: I was at the Berkely, CA tour date, which makes this extra, extra special. I think though, even if I weren’t at the you-gotta-be-there reunion tour back in 2013, Ben Gibbard, Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis bring great depth and texture to the computer bleeps and bloops of “Give Up”’s tracks. Toss in some covers, and Gibbard’s voice way higher in the live mix, and you got yourself a pretty spectacular live record. 
     
   
“De Stijl XX” – The White Stripes
No surprise here: the meticulously crafted 20th anniversary celebration of The White Stripes’ tremendous second album culled from Ben Blackwell and Jack White’s respective vaults to present an essential collection of photographs, lyrics sheets, b-sides, alternative takes, and an entire double-live album documenting The White Stripes one inch away from their explosion into the mainstream with “White Blood Cells”. This is to say, the prime before their prime. Great, great, great shit.
    
20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020… continued!
Want some gentle folk, stunning songcraft, and high-quality easy listening?
  
“Gold Record” – Bill Callahan
Killer track: “The Mackenzines” https://youtu.be/hMMEUgts6i0
  
  
“9 Songs About Love” – J.E. Sunde
Part of that untouchable talent pool in Western Wisconsin. Something in the water in that part of the Midwest!
   
  
“The Third Gleam” – The Avett Brothers
Their best music and songwriting since “I & Love & You”. I can’t say killer track, for reasons that will make sense when you listen to: “I Should Have Spent the Day With My Family” https://youtu.be/z69P7RDim88
   
How about some rap music?
   
“RTJ4” – Run the Jewels
You know this is the only year-end list that doesn’t have this record in the top ten, and maybe if their opening slot (and the whole shebang) for Rage Against the Machine’s reunion tour didn’t get canceled and I got to experience these songs in a bigger context than my headphones, things would be different. At this point, we get Run the Jewels: their sound is big, their bars are foul, and they’re Dangerous with a capital D lyricist. Sometimes corny, sometimes poignant, all the time good for doing cardio exercise.
      
  
“A Written Testimony” – Jay Electronica
Long awaited and well received. In early March when Electronica’s album dropped it seemed like this was going to be a big year. Half right? Killer track: “Shiny Suit Theory” https://youtu.be/k-NkmUPfIw4
  
  
“Alfredo” – Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist
Decidedly not as good as 2019’s “Bandana”, Gibbs and Alchemist team up for an extremely solid rap album. Gibbs’s acrobatic flows sound so at home on Alchemist’s warm production, a rewarding listen for sure. Killer track: “Baby $hit” https://youtu.be/KaFCp0huJ3w
   
   
“Song Machine, Season One” – Gorillaz
The first exciting collection of songs from this band in a decade fully embraces the band’s ethos as not-a-band and opts for a “season” of music, songs built around collaborations with a wide range of genre artists that makes for a mixed, playlist of songs that are bound by their non-cohesion in an exciting and refreshing way. Find a feature on a track you like and start there.
  
  
“Pray for Paris” – Westside Gunn
Shout out to Walt for putting me on to Westside Gunn, ran a lot of miles to this record.
   
  
5 Favorite Vinyl Buys of 2020
 
“The Age of Adz” – Sufjan Stevens
“The Age of Adz” was in the same Amazon package my copy of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” arrived at my college apartment in and frankly, got a bum wrap. The bars on “Monster” were far more appealing to my ear when I was 20 than the blips and bloops and the strange, unfamiliar humanity of Sufjan’s magnum opus. In the wave of press for “The Ascension”, comparisons between the new record and “Adz” were both frequent, and apt. “Ascension” revisited themes and sonic palettes similar to its ten-year-old precursor. After being floored by Sufjan’s new record, I had to give “Adz” a second shake, and in its sprawling, double-gatefold glory, the long sweeping set pieces and complex movements of music demands the album be consumed as a whole, taking only pause to flip from sides a to b and then c to do. “Adz” might have spent more time on my turntable than “Ascension” and, afforded more free time than usual, I more than made up for lost time with “Adz”’s 20 minute closing track “Impossible Soul.” You should too.
    
  
The Triple Decker Record – The Dead Weather
There are a lot of holy grails and great white buffalos in Jack White’s world of record collecting, but none are more sought after – at least not from the Nashville 2009 and onwards era of Third Man Records – than The Dead Weather’s impossibly stupid, frightfully cool, and profoundly limited release of their 12” single “Blue Blood Blues” which has nested inside in a 7” single featuring two unreleased songs. To hear the unreleased tracks (one of which I’ve heard is on their 2015 album “Dodge & Burn”) you have to cut into the 12” and break out the 7” single. I imagine I’ll spend much longer toiling over opening that up than I spent trying to find a copy at the right price.
Update: days after writing this paragraph, I did crack it open, and I’m so, so, so glad I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ3c3WZ-3UU&ab_channel=OfficialTMR
   
 
  
“The Most Lamentable Tragedy” – Titus Andronicus
If there’s any band you can trust to cut a solid hour plus punk rock opera it’s the hard workers in Titus Andronicus. Since the album’s 2015 release I’ve wanted to experience the set piece in one sitting on LP, but the triple feature always felt a little too steep. I figured this would be a good record to buy on one of the first Bandcamp Fridays.
  
  
Forget how good the songs are, and how good the whole concept album is, this has to be one of the coolest, most difficult-to-listen-to sets of LPs I’ve got. The sequence of the records is LP 1, side A, LP 3 side A, LP 1 side B, LP 2 A&B, and LP 3 side B. LP 3 spins at 45, the others at 33. Crazy shit. Thought my iTunes copy had been out of order the first time I listened straight through. Good times!
   
  
“Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV: Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow” – Coheed & Cambria
Coheed had big plans for this year: their own music festival cruise, the 4th chapter of the album spanning Neverender tours behind one of my favorite of their albums, and, the presumptive reissue of their most sought after vinyl record. Having scrapped the first two, this fall, the band elected to clear out the storage unit and release the “Gunslinger” Variant of their 2007 album out into the world – lucky for me, now when the tour does reschedule I won’t have to cradle it for dear life in a mosh pit, I guess – and boy is it beautiful. Three sides and an etching in a full-art double gatefold, adorned with the comic book style imagery from the science fiction story Coheed & Cambria’s concept albums, comics, and novels tell. The vinyl itself is a translucent gold with brown, orange, red, and black whisps of smoke. This thing looks as good as it sounds, I only wish I hadn’t sprung for the original pressing months earlier!
   

“14:59” – Sugar Ray
No shame in my game. This got me through the cold extended winter into April’s earliest true Spring days. You haven’t heard “Every Morning” until you’ve heard it with the warm crackle of a vinyl record.
   
20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020… continued!
How about some vibes?
   
  
“Apple” – A.G. Cook
Imagine the weirder, more digital, riskier version of Sufjan Stevens (who I bet we hear from one more time on this list wink wink). That’s A.G. Cook. Killer track: “Superstar” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5alfOXbhHF0
  
   
“All Things Being Equal” – Sonic Boom
This would have been an extremely good album for all the road trips that got canceled this year. Still, Spaceman 3 alumni and frequent Panda Bear collaborator Sonic Boom brings all of outer space right into your ear holes, one slick track at a time. Slick track: “Just Imagine” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFsppY8r1_4
  
   
“Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” – Oneohtrix Point Never
A love letter to FM radio. Much more comfortable than Oneohtrix’s recent soundtrack work for “Uncut Gems”. The whole thing, front to back, is best listened in a chair out in a warm breeze, or, you guessed it, on a long drive, if you can manage one.
   
  
“Imploding the Mirage” – The Killers
The nice thing about The Killers’ 6th studio album manages to skyrocket over the colossally low expectations. Does it quite recapture the massive “Hot Fuss”? Of course not. But it gets closer than they have since “Sam’s Town”. Killer track: “Caution” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrpBgN_iUnA
   
  
Punk? Emo?
   
“Ground Aswim” – Sinai Vessel
Tapping into the same vein the earliest Death Cab for Cutie does, Sinai Vessel manages to hit some current-sounding emo that’s dusted with nostalgia. The songwriting is great, the production is crisp, and the tunes are awesome. But don’t take it from me, Sinai Vessel’s creative mind hopped on twitter a few months ago to say that his own album was ‘slept on.’ Kinda funny, but also kinda true. Don’t sleep!
   
    
“Ultra Mono” – IDLES
The lads in IDLES are good sports, especially after spending the “Ultra Mono” release cycle getting dunked on by cynics and critics. Are they a little corny in their messaging? Sure, but is their messaging good & pure? Yes, and probably. And anyway, on riffs alone, “Ultra Mono” is all killer and no filler, regardless of how you feel about their politics, the tunes go hard. Killer track: “Grounds” https://youtu.be/mRkUt9VnaR0
   
   
“Melee” – Dogleg
Quick facts: the album is loosely based on the video game Super Smash Bros Melee, which members of the band are supposedly whizs at; Dogleg is from Metro Detroit; they have an early EP about Star Wars. IF that’s not enticing to you, how about this: a harder-edged Weezer with riffs as classic and memorable as anything you’ve heard. Just a good ass loud and fast punk record. Killer track: “Kawasaki Backflip” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjjygwmqG9M&ab_channel=TripleCrownRecords
     
  
Top 10 Albums of 2020

 
10. “Punisher” – Phoebe Bridgers
It was a cold and damp day, the first time I listened to the second album from critically acclaimed and culturally beloved social media & indie music sensation Phoebe Bridgers. I’d first heard her music along with Bright Eyes (who, shit, that album they dropped this year was such a let down and I’m sorry to take space away from Phoebe to say that but goddamn…) in Better Oblivion Community Center and thought her voice was really interesting, and assumed the musical direction of that band was more Connor Oberst’s doing.
  
So here I am, on a long run that would end way, way early, trying out this beloved album by this lauded artist genuinely eager to fall for the colossal hype. I was already in a bad mood, stressed, or nervous, or anxious about some laundry list of troubles, and it was cold, and damp. Like on all my runs, it takes about a song and a half to get into the huffin’ rhythm where I stop focusing on my labored breathing and get into the mystical headspace of whatever I’m listening to. Luckily, “Punisher”’s opening instrumental track chewed that up so I could be fully astonished by “Garden Song”’s churning and soft guitars, and Bridger’s audacious lyrics. “And when I grow up, I’m gonna look up / from my phone and see my life” and holy shit after a year of our lives happening on those screens hits different. Thank god for “Kyoto”;s arena-ready size, man, that would have been a great song at Bridgers’ canceled tour dates opening for The 1975.
  
The album goes on, delicious lyrics, light hearted but still complex arrangements and tuneful songs. The hype around “Punisher” is well, well, placed. In fact, the album’s only weakness (and #10 spot) is that the first time I listened to it was last week. I imagine keeping warm with “Punisher” well into next year. It is wonderful and unique and sad. But, back to “Garden Song” where Bridgers sings “No, I’m not afraid of hard work / I get everything I want / I have everything I want” all I could do was stop running and start walking slowly back to my apartment.
    

9. “Reunions” – Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit
If the year ended in July “Reunions” would have not only been my album of the year but I would have sworn Jason Isbell was the best working musician. I cannot overstate how much I loved, and listened to this record after it’s May release. Like Bridgers, though, the calendar conspires against “Reunion”’s cool balance of dad-rock and folk-country tunes.
  
  
“Be Afraid” is the only country-rock song about politics that doesn’t suck ass, and “What’ve I Done to Help” is just a stone-cold guitar song in league with Sturgil Simpson’s “SOUND & FURY”. One of the real gems on the album is the astonishing “It Gets Easier” which gives a raw first-person perspective on Isbell’s sobriety. “It gets easier / but it never gets easier” might read a little cliché, but with the 400 Unit’s musical flourishes and Isbell’s delivery solidify the song as honest and memorable.
   
  
Two of my favorite music critics both wrote about “Letting You Go” and “Dreamsicle”’s heartbreaking father-daughter storytelling, the latter a sad-sap sticky fiction, the former a gorgeous ode to parenting. I say with zero irony and total self-awareness how ridiculous it was that on the drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to pick up our eight-week old puppy Desi from the breeder, that I listened to “Letting You Go” fifty times in a row and wept the entire way back to Southfield. “Reunions” guided me home steadily, and while I was the slowest car on the interstate, I had The 400 Unit’s gentle urging that we’d be taking the dog home to a good home.
   
   
And that’s a dog daughter, god willing the next few years are good to Rachel & I I’ll pull this one off the shelf and discover these songs in a whole new way.
  
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Speaking of dogs …
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8. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” – Fiona Apple
Revisiting this album for this writing was such a joy. I’d wondered if maybe “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” massive moment might have burned too bright in April, after all, this was a year where a perfect 10 score on Pitchfork couldn’t hold too much media attention. Cynically, I wondered if the album – its early release narrative, Apple’s slow (read: perfect) work ethic, its topicality, the height of quarantine, round one – would hold eight months later. I knew “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” was destined for year end list ubiquity, but I wondered if it would be one of those albums that crushed lists and fell into obscurity.
  
The egg fell on my face about thirty seconds into album opener “I Want You to Love Me”. Yes, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is receiving hyperbolic, nearly fanatical praise. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, it deserves it.
One thing I’d forgotten is how weird “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is. Distanced from its zeitgeist moment of flash-in-the-pan perfection you get to really enjoy how strange Apple’s orchestrations are: we know percussion includes kitchen appliances recorded at home, we know Apple’s dogs make a few crucial features that a lesser artist might have sanitized.
   
Me and the dog were on a walk when I popped “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” on, and, for a moment the album wasn’t a product of its enormous moment, and instead just something really catchy and fun and smart that I was listening to, and readers, I hope for you to enjoy Fiona Apple’s tremendous album without the specter of its stakes. Those stakes are earned, but – at least for me – I forgot that beneath at all were 13 incredible songs.
   
7. “Live Forever” – Bartees Strange
I read a lot about Bartees Strange this year, and on the one hand, that’s super annoying, because I don’t have anything new or interesting to say about “Live Forever”. It does play with a lot of different genres, there are big pop songs, big rock songs (talking about you “Stone Meadows” – that song could obliterate an arena venue), RnB, emo. Strange wears many hats, extremely well, and “Live Forever” is a rewarding listen each time through.
On the other hand, Bartees Strange seems like an extremely genuine guy deserving of the praise being heaped upon him and his work. So, don’t listen to me, don’t listen to the experts. Go listen to Bartees Strange.
 
   
6. “Teenage Halloween” – Teenage Halloween
I love, love, love, love, love Teenage Halloween’s self-titled. Its such a good record. The killer track is all of them, and you just have to go listen to it. Also peep the band’s twitter feed for a chance to buy their homemade salsa. I can’t say enough good about Teenage Halloween, their songs rip, they are a force of good in an otherwise evil world, and you gotta go listen to their album right now.
 
  
5. “Shamir” – Shamir
Shamir’s self-titled album is 28 minutes long, but if it were seventeen hours, you’d still like it. Since 2015’s major label debut “Ratchet”, Shamir has been chasing his sound and his voice. Going indie after dropping the label over creative differences, Shamir moved away from the disco dance pop into guitar rock and lo-fi music, and while the many releases since 2015 have made following Shamir’s work worthwhile, this self-titled album finally captures the best of what Shamir’s unique voice and keen ear for pop music are capable of.
   
Its clear in the songs how happy with these songs Shamir is, and that’s an infectious thing for a listener. In “Diet”, for example, boasts the great songwriting conceit that culminates with the chorus’s “maybe taste his blood / because I always want to try it / but I won’t let it become part of my diet” which is a great mid-career Death Cab for Cutie exhibition of gross body metaphors for a romance, but then also squeezes in kind of a banging guitar solo. That’s fun! Or how about “Running” which could be a Carly Rae Jepsen song with its big bass line and also gives a lyrical nod to R.E.M. Like Bartees Strange, Shamir is operating between different genres and showcasing different influences, and I can’t help but wonder if firm lines between genre and influence continue to become less important. Something something in the era of digital streaming and algorithm playlists….
    
In its brevity, “Shamir” is a quick listen, and the album opener “On My Own” really nicely foreshadows the different sonic palettes and themes Shamir explores, so if, like me, you listen to this album a few times each time you listen to it, “On My Own” acts like the legend to a map, a sort of safe, home base for the rest of the tracks. In years, this song will be recognized in the pantheon of all-time stone-cold classic break up songs that sound happy, and I think that’s a tremendous accolade in of itself.
   
 
4. “The Ascension” – Sufjan Stevens
Like I wrote earlier, “The Ascension” is not really a continuation in the soundtrack work Sufjan Stevens has been doing recently, nor is it in the same vein as “Carrie & Lowell”. “Ascension” picks up where “The Age of Adz” left off ten years ago, expanding on the sprawling blips and bloops and the strange, unfamiliar tones of those songs. “Ascension” goes as far as to borrow the massive closing track, albeit a few minutes shorter than “Adz”’s unbelievable “Impossible Soul.” To wit: if you cut out side D of this record, “The Ascension” would only lose two of its 15 songs and would be under an hour. While the big finish, “America” doesn’t quite meet the same highs of “Impossible Soul”, its scope is impressive.
   
The title track, though, does in five minutes what “America” can’t do in twelve: wrap up the themes and sounds of the rest of the record laid bare: “when I am dead and the light leaves my breast / nothing to be told nothing to confess / let the record show what I couldn’t quite confess / for by living for myself, I was living for unrest”. Even without the real-world context of Stevens’ publicly renouncing his Christian faith, it is clear in the lyrics the speaker is going through a tremendous change of spirit. Later, he sings “and to everything, there is no meaning / a season of pain of hopelessness”, which by the way is a hell of thing to say in a song in 2020, “I shouldn’t have looked for revelation / I should have resigned myself to this / I thought I could change the world around me” isolates the speaker in their own self-reliance, which, perhaps lonely, perhaps isolated, activates this whole new power within. After the song’s long and slow build culminates in a small, but emotionally potent, conclusion, Sufjan practically whispers, “what now?”
   
Its almost too bad this beautiful confessional answers its own question by evoking the clumsiness of “America”’s neo-Whitman, “don’t do to me what you did to America” because it is the interiority of the album that makes “The Ascension” so grand to me: the largess of introspection. Maybe I rigged the record to play in favor, after all, the first time I listened to it in a single sitting was not while sitting at all and instead doing a 20 mile run on Detroit’s gorgeous Belle Isle on a cool morning. I had a lot of time to ponder myself during that run.
   
I feel like I’m making the record sound too serious. It isn’t. “Video Games”, for example, it’s a straight up dance track (at least as close to a dance track Sufjan Stevens can make). “Landslide” is a sexy slow jam with some impressive guitar work, “Death Star” teases out some late-album energy, “Sugar” ends the album proper (I’m calling side d a sort of encore) as good as any album closer.
  
But for me, “The Ascension”’s secret weapon, the song that kept me coming back, is “Die Happy.” “Die Happy” is almost six minutes long, it has one lyric – “I wanna die happy” – and the song repeats it twenty-one times to the point where the words have no meaning. If “to everything, there is no meaning / a season of pain and hopelessness” felt bleak when you read it earlier, the utter instance of “Die Happy” still echoing from earlier in the album when you encounter the title track in sequence sounds a lot different, and when Stevens asks “what now?” at the end of that very same song, we have our answer.
  
 
3. “Shore” – Fleet Foxes*
The nice thing about being quarantined with my wife in a very small apartment is that I didn’t (literally) have enough room to pick up any bad habits this year save for one: I joined reddit. This was mostly to talk about Jack White records with the worst kind of people on the internet (other Jack White fans) and to talk about Star Wars with the worst kind of people on the internet (other Star Wars fans). With this in mind, I’ll talk about “Shore” as I remember it, as opposed to how it was:
  
One day, I was sad (hah, this year!) and I thought, man, I wish Fleet Foxes would drop another LP, I wonder what they have going on. I jumped onto the Fleet Foxes reddit page and posted, “hey, what’s going on with new music and the Fleet Foxes”. The first ten comments called me Hitler for calling Robin Pecknold’s band “The Fleet Foxes” and the 11th encouraged me to check out new music Pecknold was debuting on his Instagram page. The demos and snippets were incredible and made my thirst for new Fleet Foxes grow.
   
Then, on a Monday, Pecknold announced a new album, “Shore.” On Wednesday – the autumnal equinox of all days - Fleet Foxes released their fourth album, “Shore.”
   
Having done this free write, I checked my history: On Sunday, September 20th, posters seemingly advertising the new album were spotted in Paris. On Monday, September 21th, the album was officially announced, and I was wrong, it was Tuesday the 22st that “Shore” dropped. Not quite the out-of-nowhere surprise of Beyonce’s “Beyonce”, “Shore” still astonished in its seemingly out-of-nowhere release. I was in the car and had to pull over to order the vinyl variant, which doesn’t ship until late February 2021, so maybe “Shore” will pop up on my year’s end list next year, god willing we all make it that long. It goes without saying it is a monument to Pecknold’s talent that he himself recorded many of the parts himself, and really challenges the notion of what a “band” is.
   
Coming down from the arduousness of “Crack Up”’s dense orchestration, academic lyrics, and (at least for the band) massive world tour, the relative ease and accessibility of “Shore” is, and especially was this year, a welcomed casual affair. I promise that’s not a slight. Fleet Foxes sound best to me when Fleet Foxes are effortless and whimsical. Gone are the 10+ minute epics of “Crack Up” or “Helplessness Blues”. Instead, more grounded and tuneful moments like “Sunblind” or “Jara” paint their pastoral and hang it up; “Can I Believe You” hits that pre-encore set ender creschedo and bows out – not without an all-time classic Pecknold howl, the titular question drawn out to breaking point “caaaan I beeeeeEEEEELLLIIIIIIEEEEVVVEEEEE yooouuuUUUUU.” Hell yes we can.
   
 
*Alternative review: listen to “Wading in Waist-High Water” and “Sunblind” and (1) try not to smile real huge and (2) convince yourself this isn’t some really special music.
   
 
2. “Dear Life” – Brendan Benson
It’s been 14 years since The Raconteurs entered into the orbit around Jack White, the self-proclaimed Seventh Sun (get it?). “Steady, As She Goes” is as strong an argument that White’s voice isn’t the only worthy of a spotlight on a tune he’s playing guitar on. The ‘other’ voice, of course, is another sacred son of the garage rock scene in Detroit, and White’s elder. I point this out, not to draw comparisons between Benson & White’s rags-to-riches stories (although Benson got the major label accolades years before The White Stripes) nor to hitch myself to Benson’s wagon solely on the strength of his buddiness with White (although I’d be lyin’ if I said that didn’t get me to listen) and definitely not to compare them musically (Benson has been on a singer-songwriter trajectory way, way longer). No, I mention this to say that I’d known something for nearly a decade and a half that I only discovered, really, this spring:
  
Brendan Benson fuckin’ rips. He’s a tremendous songwriter, his characters live through fictions that feel genuine, real, lived in the way the best parts of the Star Wars universe do. In “Dear Life” he tells parallel stories about a veteran struggling to return to civilian life and the prisoner a loveless marriage, and while these pastiches nod towards these characters as the punchline in their sad stories, instead, Benson explores their “hangin’ on to dear life” with empathy, admiration for their strength to go on. He loves the people he’s singing about. In “Baby’s Eyes”, another heartbreak song, instead of fixating on Baby’s troubles, he sings “I always see the shine in Baby’s eyes.” Benson doubles down, “here I am with no disguise / I see the best in me shine through / in Baby’s eyes.” His affection is infectious.
   
And what’s more, Benson wrote, recorded, and performed all the parts himself – a skill further displayed during his frequent 4:20 solo performances live on Instagram that included some really cool loops and studio magic to make this one guy sound like a huge, whole band. Musically, “Dear Life” sounds like what you’d expect if you’re as half-assed a Brendan Benson fan as I’ve been: there’s some big Raconteurs-esque guitar songs, but shades of punk (“Freak Out”), R&B, maybe a little disco (“Good to Be Alive” – that might be the incredible music video projecting), bar rock (“I Can if You Want Me To”), shit, there’s even a riff on whatever genre you want to call Broken Bells – alternative/indie/techno? – in the great album closer “Who’s Gonna Love You?”
   
I’d wanted to try to lock onto a killer track, or even an essential run of 3-4 tracks, but like I said, Benson fuckin’ rips. The album is so good I really can’t narrow it down – “Half a Boy (Half a Man)” which sadly isn’t a sequel to Britney Spears’s “Not a Girl (Not Yet a Woman)” is an arena-ready rocker, but it doesn’t top the Donovan riffing acoustic sing-a-long “I Quit” and it absolutely can’t touch the bubblegum pop dad-rock ode to Benson’s wife and children. He sings: “ever since your birth / its been heaven on earth / and you’re perfect in my eye / I’ve got two perfect beautiful babies / and one hell of a good lookin’ wife / got twice the love and half the money / and I feel like the richest man alive.” Especially after Benson’s candid recounting of his recent sobriety during The Raconteurs’ 2019 tour cycle, it is such a joy to hear this kind of a sweet clap-a-long rocker.
   
Having only gotten this album on vinyl, it might skew the play count a bit, but I 100% listened to this bright pink LP more than any other record I got this year. This guy loves, and that’s impossible not to love; this guy’s rich, and in “Dear Life” Brendan Benson shares those riches with us. 
      
 
1. “Lament” – Touché Amoré
FROM PEAKS OF BLUE – COME HEROINE a guy shrieks, a guitar winds up for a fraction of a second, drums explode, quickly, a melodic rhythm takes shape, “Come heroine / with several suns you light the way / when each day begins …”
  
… and so begins “Lament”, an album I knew nothing about, by Touché Amoré, a band I knew nothing about, other than that a music critic who wrote a review I hate about an album I dislike by a band I love, said these guys were the real deal. Why’d I take that recommendation seriously enough to give Touché Amoré a shot? This guy’s bread and butter were emo and hardcore bands, genres I barely listen to. Was it an issue of boredom? I’d say I’d ran out of shit to listen to, but like two thirds of the thirty albums on this list came out in the fall, so that wasn’t it. Maybe I was curious to get into [redacted critic’s] head? Maybe I wanted to think it sucked so I could dunk on him on Twitter? Maybe [redacted critic’s] intense passion for Touché Amoré sent an echo of kinship I was familiar with – they were, it seemed, this guy’s 1996 cinema masterpiece “Twister.” Its easy to love shit people love fanatically.
    
On Friday, October 9th I went for a 31 minute and 41 second run. “Lament” is 36 minutes long, which means during mile two, which I ran a whole minute faster than mile one, I was listening to “Feign”, chugging it to the lyrics: “I say the wrong thing / at the perfect time” Touché Amoré shouted, asking me “do I die a little less often?” Or maybe it was the incredible “Reminders” with shades of accessible punk rock, its melodic chorus: “I need reminders of the love I had / I need reminders, good or bad.” I mean, shit, that’s about as good as I gets. A hard run is maybe not a good way to encounter new music, but “Lament” connected with me instantly. Prior to knowing Touché Amoré’s previous album (the also exceptional “Stage Four”) was a bitter, naked, honest recoking with lead singer Jeremy Bolm’s mother dying of cancer in 2014, the emotional veracity of Touché Amoré’s songwriting was clear: “So I lament / then I forget / So I lament / till I reset”. Man.
    
In “Limelight” which features the silver voice of Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull, Bolm sings “I’m tired and I’m sore” and, that was probably towards the end of that speedy second mile, but you get the idea. I don’t want to reduce “Lament” to a time & place moment of kismet, because the record is just too good, but that run, the way the sun hung in the sky, that first listen was unlike any other experience I’ve ever had with an album.
   
That night, haunted by the opening lines – “from peaks of blue – come heroine” – I ordered the album and waited for it arrive. Sitting down and listening to the record in one dose was as rewarding, if not a little more relaxing, than the precious first spin, and really, as I listen to it while typing this “Lament” continues to echo in ways no album has before, definitely not this year. I can’t stress this enough: I do not listen to melodic hardcore, I do not listen to post-hardcore, I do not listen to screamo, and yet, like on October 9th near the end of my run, I’m floored to a halt by the one-two punch of album closers “Deflector” (“I’m too delicate”, Bolm screams – been there man – “been a broken record / a continuous deflector”) and “A Forecast.”  
  
It’s that last track that really lets “Lament” shine: it begins with a piano, Bolm alone, speaking, not singing: “I’ve healed more than suffered.” You’re rewarded for knowing the contexts, but even without, the song’s narrative catches you up: “So here’s the record closer / still working out its intent / I’m not sure what I’m after / but it couldn’t go left unsaid” – the band comes in, big, Bolm, shouting to survive” “I’m still out in the rain / I could use a little shelter / now and then.” The song airs grievances, both personal and political (“I’ve lost more family members / not to cancer, but the GOP / What’s the difference? / I’m not for certain / they all end up dead to me” – shit!) but all given an intense earnestness that’s impossible to ignore.
   
I ended that run pretty far from home and had to walk it off. Once “Lament” ended I thought about how good it was, pondering what was unique about this record that records like it didn’t have; I thought about how it reminded me of the first Gaslight Anthem record, “Sink or Swim,” which made me think of their last album, “Get Hurt” that was panned by [redacted critic] in 2014.. I’m not sure if this is a parable about criticism or taste or how sometimes people whose opinions on twitter you sometimes hate are sometimes extremely right or if its all just a funny coincide. I put on “Sink or Swim” and thought about how wrong [redacted critic] was about Gaslight Anthem, what an asshole [redacted critic] was but by the time I’d gotten home I’d taken his recommendation again.
   
​It was the first time I listened to “Lament” again, but it was far from the last.