My favorite albums of 2020
2020 has been a hell of year. All that needs to be said of the past 365 days has necessarily been said elsewhere, so let’s jump straight to the music. That’s what we’re all here for anyway, right?
Below are ten of my favorite albums from 2020, in no real order, plus some honorable mentions at the end that just missed my ten. If you’ve got a second after reading, send over a message with your favorite song/album/EP from the year and I’ll most definitely give it a listen. That’s the best part of the new year, for me at least - going through and listening to everyone’s favorite music from the previous year and, most likely, finding a new all-timer.
1.) NO DREAM - Jeff Rosenstock
This album slaps you in the face right from the off. “Did you learn to make amends with your pile of flaming shit?” Rosenstock asks over a raucous slam of snare hits and descending guitar chords. And, carrying a 40 minute run time, the project doesn’t really lose much of that intense energy so poignant in its minute-long opening track. As I wrote in my brief Bandcamp clip for this album, it feels like a long, hot drive through the summer time thinking about how futile life can sometimes feel. Rosenstock pulls the listener through alternating highs and lows, while maintaining the consistent theme of existential pointlessness. I don’t think there’s an album on this list that better matches the energy of 2020 than NO DREAM. A fitting place to start, I think.
Favorite tracks: Scram!, Leave It In The Sun, Honeymoon Ashtray
2.) Inlet - Hum
While NO DREAM offers more chaotic punk rock energy, Inlet focuses its sound into heavier, more concentrated riffs that envelope your soundscape and crash over you much like an ocean would crash over an inlet, as captured in the album’s cover art. There’s a sense of hopeless longing carried throughout the record, like something close but also very far away, almost unreachable. I hesitate to say Inlet feels post-apocalyptic, because I think that classification misses what’s really going on throughout the project’s 55 minute run time. But it is close, and if you’re in the mood for some heavy, enveloping riffs juxtaposed by smooth, distinct and even gentle vocals, Hum packs some great moments into Inlet.
Favorite tracks: Waves through Step Into You is just a fantastic run of songs to kick off the album. I feel it kind of trails off after that. Sorry for breaking format. Didn’t get very far.
3.) Unlovely - The Ballroom Thieves
I don’t have a ton to say about this album. Right from its sweet opening piano chords and vocals by Callie Peters, one part of the trio that make up The Ballroom Thieves alongside Martin Earley and Devin Mauch, you get the sense Unlovely is going to be a wonderful listen. And that’s truly what it is. Just one really good, unique song after the other. I caught this one early in the year and just kept returning to it throughout. “I took the blue out of the news today/Wrap it around me, it shields me from the thoughts people think they need to say,” Peters sings to open the album. This is another project, similar to NO DREAM but quite different in its approach, that matches the emotional tenor of 2020 excellently. The Thieves acknowledge this, noting Unlovely is a “sonic encapsulation of emotional and political dissonance, the constant state of discomfort that’s enveloped the world for the past few years.”
Favorite tracks: In the Dark, Don’t Wanna Dance, Love Is Easy
4.) RTJ4 - Run The Jewels
Let’s jump into some hip-hop, shall we? RTJ4 was easily my most listened to album of the year, noted by Spotify in its year-end Wrapped — even if that’s only because it was a constant feature during runs for a solid month or two over the summer. But RTJ4 offers much more than just the energy needed to burst through the streets of Rock Island. At its best it’s a sharp commentary on the irony and despair that has encapsulated the plight of Black men in America in 2020, heard most distinctly on walking in the snow, or JU$T featuring Pharrell and Zach De La Rocha of Rage Against the Machine fame. It’s also a moment of personal reflection for Killer Mike and EL-P, heard on the final cut of the record, a few words for the firing squad (radiation). And, in true Run The Jewels form, RTJ4 offers the potent lyricism and high energy, bombastic beats that make the duo so distinct.
Favorite tracks: out of sight (feat. 2 Chainz), walking in the snow, pulling the pin (feat. Mavis Staples & Josh Homme)
5.) Dark Matter - Moses Boyd
We head across the pond for my next album, Moses Boyd’s Dark Matter. This was my standout release from the ever-prolific London jazz scene in 2020, a scene that continues to produce some of my favorite music during the past few years. Moses Boyd is a scene mainstay, a drummer and composer who has collaborated as both a writer and player alongside other London artists including Nubya Garcia, Sons of Kemet, Yazmin Lacey and Joe Armon-Jones, who features on Dark Matter. Dark Matter is Boyd’s first full-length studio album, and it’s packed with the type of youthful, vibrant energy that is quintessential to the sounds coming out of London over the second half of the past decade. Stranger Than Fiction opens the project with an infectious drum line and booming bass that joins the mix during the bridge. Poppy Adjuha and Obongjayar feature on Shades of You and Dancing in the Dark, respectively, in the middle of the record. And Joe Armon-Jones offers his exquisite piano stylings on 2 Far Gone towards the end of the project. Dark Matter is London jazz-tronica, and Moses Boyd, at their finest.
Favorite tracks: Stranger Than Fiction, Shades of You, Y.O.Y.O.
6.) The New Abnormal - The Strokes
I was debating leaving The New Abnormal off this list and letting NO DREAM takes its sonic place, maybe featuring it in honorable mentions. But, alas, I felt the need to give some personal love to a project that has been neglected or even downright excluded from notable year-end lists from prominent publications. Julian Casablancas will forever be one of my favorite songwriters, whether it be with The Strokes, The Voidz or as a solo artist. And I can’t help but feeling The New Abnormal is a return to form for Julian with The Strokes. I loved The Voidz’s most recent album, Virtue, from 2018, and The New Abnormal feels like a continuation of the type of electronica-influenced rock that made Virtue so distinct for me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Comedown Machine, maybe wrongly so, but it is refreshing that The Strokes are pulling in a new direction with The New Abnormal, and doing it so successfully.
Favorite tracks: Selfless, Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus, Not The Same Anymore
7.) Lianne La Havas - Lianne La Havas
Lianne La Havas’ self-titled third studio album is one of the most exquisitely produced, warmest records I’ve heard over the past few years. Lianne’s vocals just melt over a host of songs that are wonderfully mixed by herself, Beni Giles and Matt Hales. Bittersweet, released as a single from the album in early 2020, exemplifies this mix perfectly, and might be my favorite standalone song from the year. The sounds of Lianne’s self-titled project are pure and poised, mature and reflective, and offer a summery soundtrack to what has otherwise been a particularly chilly year. I have distinct memories of listening to this album while on a summer vacation, relaxing to Lianne’s vocals on a warm midwestern beach. Few projects make me feel as warm as this.
Favorite tracks: Bittersweet, Can’t Fight, Weird Fishes
8.) Anime, Trauma and Divorce - Open Mike Eagle
Open Mike Eagle’s Brick Body Kids Still Daydream was, possibly, my favorite hip-hop record from 2017. Anime, Trauma and Divorce finds itself among my favorite hip-hop records now, three years later. Mike’s deeply personal lyricism, accentuated by his vocals’ prominent placement in each songs’ mix, never fail to prod my own consciousness. This type of personal rap is taken to new heights on Anime, Trauma and Divorce, as Mike pulls apart one of the most personally devastating years in his own life, a year that featured a separation from his wife and the cancellation of his recent television production. Anime, Trauma and Divorce is a deeply reflective record, one where Mike questions his own place in the world in a type of mid-life crisis not usually expressed via hip-hop artistry. Everything Ends Last Year is one of the most soul-crushing songs I’ve heard in a long time, as Mike reviews these negative events in a simple, stripped down, spoken word style that strikingly interrupts the album’s flow. Yet Mike approaches all this seeming negativity in a semi-ironic and self-deprecating way with which I think we can all relate.
Favorite tracks: Death Parade, Sweatpants Spiderman, Everything Ends Last Year
9.) Untitled (Black Is)/Untitled (Rise) - SAULT
SAULT is one of the most mysterious and one of my favorite collectives from the past two years. They eschew media attention while simultaneously releasing four critically-acclaimed full albums since May 2019. Their albums 5 and 7 came out in 2019 as a pair of infectious, synth driven neo-soul records, which both featured some of my favorite tracks from the year. The British collective followed up 2019 by releasing another pair of records, Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise) in 2020. While the two are distinct albums, many other publications have grouped them together in lists, and I feel inclined to do the same, since sonically and thematically (Black Is) and (Rise) cover very similar territory. Sonically, the Untitled records follow much the same thread as 5 and 7, mixing swirling synths, sometimes faded and sometimes flashy vocals, clean drums and quick guitar licks into a cacophony of tracks that flow effortlessly together, produced, to much acclaim, by Inflo, who has worked with Michael Kiwanuka and Little Simz, two other standout British artists, on various other projects. One change from their 2019 is the inclusion of more drum sounds, like tambourines and congas, which add depth to the mix. Thematically, the Untitled records unapologetically forward social, political and cultural issues facing Black people in both Britain and the U.S., a clear distinction from the more personal theme of 5 and 7. Tracks such as No Black Violins in London, Don’t Shoot Guns Down, and Black provide evidence of this focus, as well as Wildfires, my standout cut from the two near hour-long albums. SAULT continue to provoke and enchant. Their Untitled duo is essential listening.
Favorite tracks: Wildfires, Bow - Michael Kiwanuka, Black
10.) Purple Moonlight Pages - R.A.P. Ferreira
Purple Moonlight Pages is my favorite project of 2020, and it doesn’t feel particularly close. In the echelon of modern conscious hip-hop records, I confidently place Pages among the likes of To Pimp A Butterfly, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, and We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service. While Pages doesn’t take as much of an outward focus as these three or other conscious hip-hop records, Rory Allen Phillip Ferreira deals with the internal struggle that takes place on the fringes of artistry unlike any other album I’ve heard. Ferreira offers the type of existential reflection on Pages that has in many ways defined the year, but also defines what it means to be an artist in the modern age in general. At a time when artistic expression through music making is as approachable as ever, while the artist is simultaneously underappreciated and undercompensated for their efforts, putting work and dedication into musical craft can feel pointless and unreasonable. Ferreira poses these questions on Pages, and doesn’t seem to offer too many answers. We’re hearing what he’s thinking about his own position as an artist and as an individual, and how those two interact. “At the end of world, we was fighting back with brushes and pens/ We decided that the suffering should end, no matter how good it feels,” Ferreira raps on CYCLES, which includes a spoken-word excerpt from an essay by American writer Susan Sontag that sort of encapsulates the ethos of Pages, noting that an artists job is to invent, “trophies of experience.” “Why those low frequencies always be your final destination, huh?” Ferreira questions on NO STARVING ARTISTS, a possible reference to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a novel that deals with similar questions about personhood and caricatured experiences as both an artist and as a Black man. Purple Moonlight Pages is an existential hip-hop journey like no other.
Favorite tracks: CYCLES, LAUNDRY, NO STARVING ARTISTS
Honorable Mentions
folklore/evermore - Taylor Swift
Shrines - Armand Hammer
Consummation - Katie Von Schleicher
Petals for Armor - Hayley Williams
Heaven To A Tortured Mind - Yves Tumor
LESS IS MOOR - Zebra Katz
Mystic Familiar - Dan Deacon
Honeymoon - Beach Bunny
The Neon Skyline - Andy Shauf
I Disagree - Poppy
Suite for Max Brown - Jeff Parker
Fetch the Bolt Cutters - Fiona Apple
Underneath - Code Orange
Mia Gargaret - Gia Margaret
Punisher - Phoebe Bridgers
Okay, that is all. I really loved all of these albums, and, as I noted above, this is not a ranking, but simply a list of ten records I can definitely say were some of my favorites from 2020 and which I wanted to write about a little bit.
Please, send me a note with your favorite album from this year, and I’ll give it a listen and maybe even write you back about my thoughts on it.
If 2021 as a year overall can match the type of music released in 2020, I think we’ll be in for a good one.
