So, now it's very long overdue for this, the last part of my 2020 year end lists. Yes, I'm well aware that it's almost March, but as you are aware, a lot has been going on in the world, and its been a little hard to focus. Alas, here is my personal top 10 list of albums released last year.
Code Orange continue to push the genre of metal-core into more experimental directions. They played around with nu-metal on their last effort, Forever, and have now augmented that more melodic sound with heavy electronics and industrial sounds. The sound is super glitchy and at times disorienting (I thought my internet connection was buffering or something the first time I listened to 'Swallowing the Rabbit Whole'), but it's still as punishing as you'd want your metal-core to be. I'm also glad it came out at the early stages of the pandemic, as I may have looked over it later into quarantine as I sought out progressively mellower music.
John Dwyer and the Oh Sees (or whatever they're going by at the moment) have had a very prolific career, and that shows no signs of stopping. However, John Dwyer teamed up with a new cast of characters for Bent Arcana, which evolved from largely improvisational jam sessions, and strays pretty far from the tighter arrangements of the garage psych bangers the Oh Sees might craft. Even if the tracks on something like Face Stabber were longer and more krautrock and prog rock inspired than earlier fare, John Dwyer has never been a part of something so loose and exploratory in nature.
I got pretty deep into the Griselda Records discography last year, and the key shining member to me is Conway the Machine. From his delivery, superior wordplay, and more versatile nature, Conway is definitely the standout of the group to me, and he more than shows it on his greatest and most diverse album to date. Though he still spits cold coke rap bars over eerie and grimy production, there's also a lot of introspection and even some melodic hooks that have been largely absent from Griselda projects up to this point. Sometimes in hip hop, it's not always about who's the hardest. Sharing your story can also be very effective.
Yes, this album is really great. I'm sure your sick of hearing about it by now. There is not a weak Fiona Apple album in the pack, but if I'm going to be honest, this is probably my fourth favorite record of hers, just above Extraordinary Machine. That's not to say this album is bad, far from it. I guess I'm just curious as to why this album is being praised as being so game changing, while, in my opinion, The Idler Wheel... was just as experimental, percussion heavy and emotionally resonant 8 years previously and I barely heard a thing about it. Maybe the world wasn't quite ready for the sound yet. I'm glad it is now.
It's kind of amazing that this album was recorded and conceived of before the pandemic, as it sounds and has themes of a quarantine record before those were even a thing. Reading the Joyful Noise press release and hearing some of the lyrics give off this feel of a post apocalyptic group of people hiding away and rocking out before their technology reliant overlords find and extinguish them. Their insistence on recording as an insular group instead of with many collaborators like their previous Mountain Moves also gives the record an intimate feel that, given its recording time occurring before it was en vogue to do so, seemed almost prophetic.
El-P and Killer Mike seem to top themselves with every album. This record has a lot of very diverse production styles, and RTJ4 is probably the duo's most political effort to date. Unfortunately, this album and other albums like it are still having to be made, supporting political causes and movements that are still as fresh as they were 50 plus years ago. This album was released around the time of George Floyd's murder, and the names keep proliferating. I hope one day the messages in these raps will be completely irrelevant, like "remember when?"
4. Sparkle Division- To Feel Embraced
This is a completely different side of William Basinski. While his Lamentations album released the same year was also strong, his collaboration with Preston Wendel came completely out of left field. Jazzy, funky, and almost danceable? For a famed ambient composer like Basinski, it seemed inconceivable. I guess I have no idea what kind of music he made in the '80s, before his tape loops began to degrade, but I wouldn't have thought it was something so groovy. We'd also get a bit of Basinski's older and unheard work last year, released as Hymns of Oblivion, but this one took the cake for me.
3. Sightless Pit- Grave of a Dog
The collaboration efforts between The Body and Full of Hell were always better than the sum of their parts in my opinion, but throw in my number one album artist from 2019, Lingua Ignota, and the sound reaches levels of intensity and haunting beauty that are intoxicating and uncomfortable in equal measure. This album is incredibly heavy, interspersed with a lot of electronic edits that keep things unpredictable, with Kristin Hayter's rising above the distorted guitars, walls of fuzzy noise and throaty screams. This definitely scratches the same itch that Caligula did the year before, maybe with a bit more forward momentum.
Robin Pecknold and company came out of nowhere and gave us a little sonic sanctuary from the darkness that I think a lot of people desperately needed in 2020. Nearing the fall of last year, I was feeling exhausted, burnt out by all the fear, anger and depressing events. Fleet Foxes allowed me to escape that for just a little while, and bask in the mellow sun baked sands of a beach no one could get to, all without leaving my house. People went on about how some artists weren't talking about events in their music, but I feel like it doesn't have to be all political all the time. Sometimes people just need to be reminded that's not just heaviness all the time, and every wave, no matter how large, always breaks on the shore.
I was late to the Phoebe Bridgers party, but I'm glad I'm finally here. This is essentially her previous album, Stranger in the Alps (which I'm just as obsessed with), with better production and more instrumentation, without sacrificing any of the superb songwriting or emotionally devastating power. Phoebe Bridgers falls into that class of songwriter that bares a lot of their personal lives, and in that amount of detail, a huge amount of relatability and emotional resonance is planted. There's also a lot of humor in her lyrics as well, which leaves you questioning whether to laugh, cry or brood with existential longing. I think she does Elliott Smith proud here, and I hope her new found success doesn't keep her from her previous groups, boygenius and Better Living Community Center, because I need more from them too.
So, that's my top ten. I know it took me forever to drop the list, and I'm not sure what I'll be doing next with the blog, but I'll try to be a little bit more active. Hoping everyone is having a better 2021 so far, and hoping the world recovers from what was a pretty dismal last year. Peace.
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