In dealing with 2020, history will show that in the middle of the pandemic we as humans craved escape and nostalgia. Some will say there was no great new music in 2020, and that is admissible. Still, the year of searching for things to occupy our newly found time did turn up quite a few fantastic albums - which are assembled here in no order for your examination.
Phoebe Bridgers
Punisher [LP/CD]
(Dead Oceans/Secretly/AMPED)
If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that on her second album, the diminutive gifted singer/songwriter Bridgers would be scored as Breakthrough of the Year - I would have said no way. "Punisher" rises head and shoulders above all the other pre-COVID releases in its ability to communicate intimacy, hope, and wisdom without you knowing it. Bridgers developed her singing and writing to the point of being universal without overtly trying to be (Tame Impala, Glass Animals.)
Waxahatchee
Saint Cloud [LP/CD]
(Merge/AMPED)
The other female voice in Alt/Americana/Pop that was dominant was Katie Crutchfield. "Saint Cloud" represented a clearing of her mind and gaining a perspective on the past as a means to learn from and know you have absorbed into you. With meditations like "Lilacs," Crutchfield unknowingly wrote the album of recovery.
Rina Sawayama
Sawayama [LP/CD]
(Dirty Hit UK)
One of the best new artists of 2020 was never even released on our shores. The versatile Sawayama's debut tackled questions of family and identity within a series of songs that continuously shift their focus between genres. "Sawayama" lays bare its protagonist while laying waste to being genre-specific. "XS" and "Bad Friend" still richly deserve hit single status here in the US.
Fontaines D.C.
A Hero's Death [LP/CD]
(Partisan)
Like Post-Punk in the early Eighties, many of the new male-led gritty bands out of the UK lead with a message and make production secondary. Like their Irish predecessors U2, Fontaines D.C. eschew the Black & White spartan sound of their debut (as well as the Idles release from this year) to place their anthemic thrust in more supersonic territory. As singer Grian Chatten deeply intones "Life ain't always empty," Dan Carey's dreamlike sonic envelope insures you this is only the beginning of a mantra of hope.
Soft Kill
Dead Kids, R.I.P. City [LP]
(Cercle Social)
Just as Fontaines D.C. embraced a new wider production palette, this Portland, OR doom band made their breakthrough with a Cure-inspired Goth Pop album that finds its Romanticism in bleak messages pumped through irresistible dance beats and melodies. This generation's Goth Pop has been waiting to surface for the last two years (most notably last year's Boy Harsher and this year's Choir Boy, Cold Showers and bdrmm,) with Dave Trumfio's vivid recording and their hooky yet personality-driven songs, the independently made and released "Dead Kids" arrived at #1 on Billboard's Alternative sales chart on the band's relentless self-promotion alone.
Napalm Death
Throes of Joy In The Jaws of Defeatism [LP/CD]
(Century Media)
If you have never listened to Extreme and/or Death Metal before, the stalwart Grindcore band Napalm Death brought the music into startling focus on their 16th album. "Throes Of Joy" carves up the current state of affairs in the world into several bite-size pieces that are furious yet thought-provoking. To make matters even wilder their Killing Joke-ish gut-punch sound ("Amoral") makes "Joy" a textbook for understanding the modern machinations of Metal. A thrill from start to finish that is both defiant and frightening.
Ahwlee
VII [LP]
(Rap Vacation)
As Hip-Hop became the dominant style of music in the commercial world, 2020 saw several artists from the experimental side emerge with fantastic, visionary albums that broke the rules and kept the music from stagnating under its current legion of braggadocio-slinging digital-only artists. With only 20,000 Soundcloud followers and ten years of mixing and making music, Ahwlee drew inspiration from his favorite video game (Final Fantasy VII) to create a dreamworld that brought together the deeper side of Jazz and classic Hip-Hop.
Holy F
Deleter [LP/CD]
(Holy F/Redeye)
Electronic Music in 2020 had a banner year, but in the end none of the releases could outpace the hectic yet reductive Nineties redux of this Canadian group. Their mix of live instrumentation and electronics gives them a unique forward-thinking drive that makes even their most soothing grooves into bangers. With guest spots from Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip and former Liars singer Angus Andrew, they even master the "feature" into both standing out as singles and fitting right into the way EDM albums should sound.
Colter Wall
Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Song [LP/CD]
(La Honda/Thirty Tigers/The Orchard)
2020 was a hard year for the true Country male artists of the world. Between the Bluesy/Soul leanings of Chris Stapleton and the masterful Nineties sheen of Morgan Wallen, Country continues its identity crisis. Having finally absorbed the myriad of females into their static radio world in the last two years, Canadian Colter Wall should be their new hope to swing back into Traditional music. Over the course of three albums, the velvet-baritoned Wall has developed into a singer/songwriter like no other. For the first time, Wall uses a band on "Western Swing" and it only exposes his innate ability to tell stories and make you further realize his mix of covers and originals, and solo and accompanied songs is the way every Country album should be made.
Steve Earle
Ghosts of West Virginia [LP/CD]
(New West/Redeye)
Bob Dylan
Rough and Rowdy Ways [LP/CD]
(Columbia)
Two premiere artists with two startling visions of America. If anyone re-envisioned the "album" in 2020, it was this pair of erstwhile classic singer/songwriters. Earle's remnants of his Broadway play about mining in West Virginia told a far larger tale. When Earle and his band sift through the seeds of history, these "Ghosts" not only tell stories of the Blue Collar workers in our nation's past-they further illuminate how the semblance of "family" binds us together even in the darkest times and how struggles with class have those families continuously repairing the torn fabric.
Dylan's 39th album runs like a hybridized Great American Novel fused with James Joyce's "Ulysses." With enough hidden references to merit its own companion book or footnotes, "Rough and Rowdy Ways" demanded full attention and study. With his new band, Dylan leads them like he did the sessions of old. Always maintaining their edge and keeping things unpredictable. The bluesy swagger of his "Time Out of Mind" triptych, the literate attention of the mid-Sixties (think "Blonde on Blonde" and "Highway 61 Revisited"), and the caustic tongue of "Blood on The Tracks" all resurfaced in this mature examination of our history. Having no central purpose or focus makes "Rough and Rowdy Ways" both a trip to traverse and an earnest sermon at a time when too many of the wrong voices seem to echo the loudest and the most.
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Café in Hattiesburg.
