Andrew’s Top Albums of 2020

Better three months late than never…. Here are my top albums of 2020:

1. Bob Dylan, Rough & Rowdy Ways

Rough & Rowdy Ways felt like essential historical text for America during this complex, trying year. Bob Dylan treats all of American history up to present day like a Magic Eye puzzle where he can stare and analyze it long enough and then something that’s simultaneously supernatural, transcendent, horrific, and joyful appears, echoing Fredrick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis.” The album closes with “Murder Most Foul” where Dylan rides in the convertible that JFK was assassinated in through decades of popular culture, jukebox pop hits, and American tragedies. 2020 left no doubt that we as country are still riding in backseat of that storied convertible on this “Grand Experiment” roadtrip.
Here’s what I initially wrote about the album:

The new Bob Dylan album is a meditative, dream-like vaudeville sermon of America told with side-eyed suspicion, a knowing wink, and careful caution while recounting its soda fountain junk food jukebox simple joys. We’re just the students in this AP U.S. History course along for the ride as Dylan drives the Lincoln Continental limousine that JFK was assassinated in down U.S. Highway 1 with the radio on toward Key West to Harry Truman’s White House. It’s a twilight ride looking at history in the rearview mirror as the green flash of a sunset on the ocean brings to mind the green light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby. There’s a grace to it recognizing hard times but is welcomed like a warm breeze, slowing down time.

2. (tie) The Avalanches, We Will Always Love You

As months go by since its release, We Will Always Love You feels like the “Mannahatan Booths” featured in HBO’s Watchmen — a ridiculous sci-fi confessional booth transmitting heartache and hope for human contact. It also feels like if Brian Wilson, Prince Paul, and the Dust Brothers helped Beck write Radiohead’s follow up to OK Computer. It truly is something special that conjures a range of feelings from warmth and wistfulness, which is not too different from that Golden Record (which inspired this album) on the ambitious, lonely Voyager satellite encompassing the entire human experience on Earth.

Here is what I initially posted about the album:

The new album from The Avalanches, ‘We Will Always Love You,’ is more sophisticated, poignant, and patient than I was expecting. It’s like getting bottle service at a club on a meloncholic-but-hopeful space station looking over Earth while reading books on the importance of the basic universal truths of love and hope amidst an immense, expanding vacuum. The album is like if Sandra Bullock was having a great, emotionally fulfilling time of self reflection in Gravity.

We Will Always Love You is more sleek than their classic, otherworldly vacation that is their debut, Since I Left You (2000), or their endearingly ragtag sunshine psychelica 16-years-in-the-making follow-up, Wildflower (2016), but it still has their signature collage of samples sound.

After following The Avalanches for about 20 years, I can’t help but be oddly inspired/proud of them to still be releasing some excellent music through the ups and downs in the stream of time. (Read about it here: https://www.nytimes.com/.../avalanches-we-will-always...) I guess I’m falling into a new genre/demographic of music that could be called “dad-tronica” and I am ok with that. Time and music is all relative anyway… PS: It’s nuts that trip-hop is about 30 years old…..

2. (Tie) Jarv Is…, Beyond The Pale

Beyond The Pale, from Jarvis Cocker’s (Pulp) new group Jarv Is…, is like one of those glowing single cell organism creatures that can be seen on ancient stalagmites hundreds of feet below ground in dark caves or like one of those glowing stains that can be seen in hotel rooms with a black light. (It’s fitting that I’ve thoroughly been enjoying listening to this album on glow-in-the-dark vinyl.) Jarv Is… embraces science and sleaze on Beyond The Pale where Cocker has transformed from Britpop star into the latest iteration of BBC’s Dr. Who. Here’s what I wrote this summer about Beyond The Pale:

Jarvis Cocker, the 90’s Britpop icon from Pulp & unlikely bespectacled sex symbol renowned for singing angsty tales of mundane existence and longing in modern life (as well as one my favorite songwriters ever), has reached a tenure now as the Doctor Who of British music. His new album Beyond The Pale, serves as his TARDIS, transporting him from his living room to the Big Bang to the tourist traps outside European landmarks to whatever next stage of evolution. There is an air of “learning is fun” academia to the album, with Jarvis as the frumbled, engaging planetarium host or professor. Beyond The Pale is a grower of an album where Jarvis shows off his smart, dirty playfulness that contains that signature ache that his best tunes have.

NB: The album is best to listen to whilst (not reading the lyrics) in the dark of night with a mixed vodka cocktail of your choice as opposed to walking in the afternoon heat to Trader Joes.

3. Haim, Women In Music Pt. III

“We learned more from a three minute record baby than we ever learned in school…,” Bruce Springsteen sang and Women In Music Pt. III is Haim’s doctorate thesis. The Haim sisters treat the album like they are twisting a radio dial with perfect timing, genre hopping and capturing perspective and emotion in three minute increments of pop catharsis. With its distinct SoCal feeling, Women In Music Pt. III feels like Joni Mitchel and Fleetwood Mac recording a late 90’s Beck album.

Here’s what I wrote back in the summer:

When Spotify rolls out their “Spotify Wrapped 2020” year in review, I imagine Haim‘s “Summer Girl” and “Now I’m In It” will likely be my top two songs of the year due to my 1 and half year old daughter’s, Frances, incessant dancing, joy, and overall losing her “ish” when these two songs come on. (We’ve had to stop having music on during meal time to avoid the risk of these songs coming on because she cannot multitask when they are playing.) I remember friends with kids telling me that their Spotify gets hijacked by kid music and their child’s preferences and I am grateful that France’s impact on my listening habits so far has been associated with this solid, well done new Haim album.

With Women In Music Pt. III, Haim are like a west coast Vampire Weekend(thanks to co-producers Rostam and Ariel Rechtschaid) mining Joni Mitchell, Prince, Lou Reed, Aimee Mann, The XX, and Fleetwood Mac for musical touchstones on this eclectic album. The album also reminds me of Beck‘s 2004 album, Guero, — another genre hopping album with a granular focus on Los Angeles existence. (Both albums have a song centered on a “summer girl” and another song about being “alone”).

It’s fitting that Haim’s music videos were directed by the SoCal auteur Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights”, “Magnolia”). The videos may be his most modern-day set work since “Punch Drunk Love” and both PTA and Haim on this album exude that enchanted palm trees, concrete, twilight, and heartache west coast vibe.

4. Perfume Genius, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

While possibly not featuring the colorful flourishes contained in previous albums, Perfume Genius’s Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is a tour de force of constantly compelling command and conviction. The album is full of smoldering, patient, baroque nocturnal art-pop halfway between Leonard Cohen, Kate Bush, Portishead, Serge Gainsbourg, Sade, proto electronic punks Suicide, and Scott Walker. Drawing upon such influences, singer/songwriter Mike Hadreas can direct the album’s songs to alternate between writhing like a prowling snake and floating with staggering stillness like a full moon on a clear night. Set My Heat On Fire Immediately is a fascinating time that could be filed under the “3am-box-wine” or “digital-ghosts-with-pompadours” genres. (Additional Note: Blake Mills, who produced the album and played on a lot of its songs may be my MVP/”Best Sixth Man” this year. Besides Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, Mills played on Bob Dylan’s Rough & Rowdy Ways, Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Boltcutters, and my fav track on Malkmus’s Traditional Techniques (“Brainwashed”).)

5. Shabazz Palaces, The Don of Diamond Dreams

The new album from Shabazz Palaces, The Don of Diamond Dreams, pushes even further into the unknown frontiers with their prog-hop. The album may not quite reach the levels of some of the group’s previous albums, but the ever charismatic Ishmael Butler is at no loss of words/soundbites here, sounding like he’s doing an intergalactic stream of conscious TED Talk pontificating on acceptable aesthetics or performing at an Ambien sponsored/altered episode of The Moth — chalk that up as a “win” in my book. Side A is giddy lyrical crossfire while side B is a late night strut meditation that sounds like it could equally be on either Stankonia or a Roxy Music album. This showcase of Butler’s idiosyncratic flexing both lyrically and production-wise is infectious fun — it’s like watching someone ace with panache a ridiculously impossible obstacle course on American Ninja Warrior or American Gladiators.
[Fun Fact: this is the third album from Shabazz Palaces to show up on my top 10 album lists, which means he is in Stephen Malkmus/James Blake/Gruff Rhys/Beach House/Ariel Pink/Arcade Fire territory.]

6. Hum, Inlet

If you like the 90’s and layered buzzy guitars that can harmonize with vacuum cleaners and puree blenders look no further…..!

Before Inlet, Hum hadn’t released an album since 1998. Inlet feels unstuck in time it could dominate in any era from 90’s shoegaze crunchy guitars to 00’s blog indie to the new found appreciation of metal/shoegaze in the 10’s (Deafheaven, etc.). Listening to these tumbling cascades of guitars feel like watching aerial shots of glaciers collapsing into a sea or tectonic plates colliding. It’s mammoth and astonishing; majestic and intimidating. Inlet puts an infinite scope on the sound of 1995 and, just like the rock formation on the album cover, shows that this kind of “rock” can be around for centuries too.

7. Run The Jewels, RTJ4

Nothing quite captured the fever pitch unrest, horror, and frustration this summer in 2020 than RTJ4. Run The Jewels brought cacophony chaos and sense of mission to this album full of “oh so spicy” sonic knuckle sandwiches. My eyes widened at least five times while listening to the album. Killer Mike and EL-P are like a tag team, socially conscious version of the WWF Buskwacker wrestler twins doing their signature ridiculous walk/stomp over any bullshit in their (and our) way. This WWF sensibility is one of the defining great attributes of Run The Jewels where they can address the heaviest social issues (racism, police brutality, economic inequities, the list goes on and on…) while gleefully having the most dumb fun leaving nothing rightfully intact.

8. Loma, Don’t Shy Away

It’s been intriguing (and even somewhat hypnotic) discovering the new album, Don’t Shy Away, from Loma. The music feels like recalling half-forgotten uneasy dreams (twice this year I either woke up with a song of theirs either in my head or in my dream) and draws upon the 2009-core indie autumnal forest floor vibes of Grizzly Bear, Bat For Lashes, Kate Bush, the long dormant underrated (but never forgotten) Brightback Morning Light, and even a touch of Radiohead. (Legendary producer/aural dreams transmitter, Brian Eno, collaborated with the group on this album.) There is an 80’s New Age vibe to this album mixed with a muddy danger perfect for both a wellness retreat and lurking voyeurism — I guess there’s little something for everyone here.

9. Stephen Malkmus, Traditional Techniques

Traditional Techniques is interesting to parse through. It’s got an acoustic retro british psych folk vibe with some really straight up sincere/sentimental lyrics. There’s still the trademark Malkmus oddness swimming around in its veins that’s making it reveal itself in different ways with each listen. A lot of the album brings to mind Califone, Cass McCombs, and some Bill Callahan. Malkmus has been on a streak of releasing an interesting album a year (Sparkle Hard (2018); Groove Denied (2019)) and Traditional Techniques displays Malkmus’s effortless melodic, arch sensibility but most surprisingly here is a deeper sense of patience. There really hasn’t been a precedent for it in is discography. Here’s to further disparate sonic adventurism in the future as Malkmus carries on into his mid 50’s.

10. Melkbelly, PITH

The new album PITH from Chicago’s Melkbelly sounds like Liz Phair fronting a tornado demolishing a trailer-park storage facility where Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, Death From Above 1979, and Lightening Bolt keep their gear and records. ….You might as well throw in a cotton candy machine or elephant ear stand from a street-fest in the mix/wreckage too. There’s a vortex to these sugary cavity-inducing, buzzy guitars.