In 2020, I cried, I sought other worlds...
Grief has a way of making obstacles out of the things you love.
I’m still spinning that idea around in my head, but specifically about missing live shows, unsatisfied by virtual shows, uncertain about socially-distanced shows. It sure as hell sounded good enough at 3 in the morning. I only saw 4 IRL before it all went down:
Jan. 17: Dark Thoughts @ Hole in the Sky
Jan. 31: Jawbox, Positive No @ The Broadberry
March 7: Elkhorn @ Rhizome
March 11: HAIM @ So’s Your Mom
I had to reconfigure, re-assess or remind myself what the music meant, to quote the late, great Pretty Girls Make Graves. So for the second half of my year-end list, here’s how music functioned on the somber, chill or dancing-while-crying (or just dancing) side of 2020. Links go out to Bandcamp where applicable.
Elsewhere:
Read: In 2020, I raged, I sunk into soft sounds… (AKA part 1)
Podcast: my year-end Viking’s Choice episode on NPR Music’s All Songs Considered
Playlist: a long, loosely sequenced mix of my favorite music released in 2020
P.S.: If you're reading this newsletter via email, the list is most surely truncated. I suggest hitting the link. — Lars Gotrich
I sought other worlds
Obnox, Savage Raygun (Ever/Never): Lamont leaned into the psychedelic-noise boom bap for this one, reminding us he could school these young rappers any goddamn day of the week, but flexing his funk muscles, too. Whole thing sounds like the soundtrack to a Blaxploitation heist flick.
Moor Mother & billy woods, BRASS (Backwoodz Studioz): Still digesting this late-year drop from two of the deepest minds on the scene, but know its lysergic and apocalyptic beats and rhymes will take me past 2021.
Maral, Push (Leaving): Where else you gonna get Lee “Scratch” Perry and Penny Rimbaud on a psychedelic Iranian dub-punk psych voyage?
R.A.P. Ferreira, Purple Moonlight Pages (self-released): Mangled beats, jumbled jazz — dig that “Creator Has a Master Plan” quote — and dude’s spiral bars.
Moor Mother, Circuit City (Don Giovanni): Just dope after dope drops from Moor Mother in 2020. This one’s the musical set in an ever-present dystopia where the only freedom is free jazz.
Jucifer, نظم (Nazm) (self-released): Even for a duo as unpredictable as Jucifer, this completely threw me! Amber pays tribute to her MENA heritage through the metal mutants’ own loving and gnarled version of Arabic pop.
Kaatayra, Só Quem Viu o Relâmpago à Sua Direita Sabe (self-released): Truly, an inspired approach to black metal. Kaatayra is rooted in Brazilian folk music, a dense forest canopy of spirited rhythms and ayahuasca-induced fever dreams.
Luke Stewart, Exposure Quintet (Astral Spirits): Luke can lay down a mean groove (see: Irreversible Entanglements), but it's cool to hear him stretch out as a composer… or in the case, set stages for collective compositions that build and break down motifs with righteous textures and fire.
Susan Alcorn, The Heart Sutra (Editions Mego): The pedal steel player makes seeking, self-contained symphonies with atmospheric glissando. Janel Leppin arranges Alcorn's pieces for a sextet sympathetic to endless possibility.
John Kolodij, First Fire • At Dawn (Astral Editions): Rustic landscapes burnt to embers.
Silver Scrolls, Music for Walks (Three Lobed): Polvo’s universe expands and contracts, sucking up a black hole of ramblin’ and roarin’ rock-n-roll goofin’.
Big Blood, Do You Wanna Have a Skeleton Dream? (Feeding Tube): An alternate dimension where girl groups sing in smoky lounges filled with gremlins and ghosts.
Beru, Forgiveness is Supernatural (self-released): Outer-space sadness warped through cinematic noise, ghost trap and soul-rattling drone-doom.
Witch Prophet, DNA ACTIVATION (Heart Lake): Psychedelic R&B built on and bent by lysergic hip-hop beats and Ethio-jazz melodies. A visual music that speaks to the past, present and future all at once.
Armand Hammer, Shrines (Backwoodz Studioz): Heavy instrumentals and heavy rhymes by billy woods and E L U C I D, hip-hop's most inside-out duo.
Meridian Brothers, Cumbia Siglo XXI (Les Disques Bongo Joe): Do we call this kraut-cumbia? Space-age dub meets Colombian folk music in a motorik mode.
FILI, Meat (Stupid Decisions): Grizzled bedroom garage-rock drunk on green ooze and UFO conspiracy videos.
Model Home, SE (Future Times): Molasses-dripped boom-bap, broken techno, rap noir and noise bravado.
I sipped rosé
Sexores, Salamanca (Buh): Dreamy darkwave dredged from velvet dungeons, sung oh-so sweetly and seductively en español.
Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud (Merge): Katie Crutchfield had to leave the South (for many years) to make her record that sounds most like home.
BLACKSTARKIDS, Whatever, Man (Dirty Hit): Anything-goes pop built on neon MGMT hooks, a breezy "Steal My Sunshine" mood, a Soundcloud rap haze and likely a number of Gen Z references I don't know. It's fun to pick apart the influences, but also just a blast to enjoy.
Smoke DZA, Homegrown (Cinematic Music Group): Smoke's flow sends me straight to the boroughs, hitting up bodegas for tall boys and chopped cheese, maybe a bottle of something fancy for later that night.
George Clanton & Nick Hexum, George Clanton & Nick Hexum (100% Electronica): Really didn't expect a vaporwave king and the dude from 311 to soundtrack my chilled-out dreams of escapist summer nostalgia, but, hey, 2020.
Flo Milli, Ho, why is you here? (RCA): I want everything good that's coming to this fun, bratty, young rapper.
Angelica Garcia, Cha Cha Palace (Spacebomb): Bluesy rocker leans into her roots, swirling electro boom-bap with ranchero drama.
I danced
Sweeping Promises, Hunger for a Way Out (Feel It): A lo-fi post-punk cheer brigade that soundtracked many living-room dance parties in 2020.
Charli XCX, how i'm feeling now (Atlantic): In as much as anything can be quantified, especially in 2020, this is my favorite album of the year. how i'm feeling now will be remembered for its quarantine-made conditions, but I'm drawn to its turnt-up solitude, glam-blitzed love songs and rave interiority.
Star Feminine Band, Star Feminine Band (Born Bad): Polyrhythmic glee from a group of Benin teen and pre-teen girls. Totally whips ass!
Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated Side B (School Boy / Interscope): If Dedicated was CRJ's first real attempt at a capital-A Album, Side B contains the kitchen-sink loosies, songwriter winkies and outright sillies.
Стереополина, Институт культуры и отдыха (Sierpien / HИИ): Russia's answer to Molly Nilsson or Boy Harsher? At the very least, sympathetic synthesizers of lo-fi, off-kilter synth-pop bangers.
Chara + Yuki, echo (Epic): Outrageously fun, funky and meticulously textured J-pop from two vets. Bops on bops. Pure luxe. Will never be able to afford the vinyl import.
Special Interest, The Passion Of (Thrilling Living / Night School): Hits my early 2000s nostalgia square in the middle of a dance-punkin' white belt, but with a frenetic urgency that vibrates now.
I cried
Space Afrika, hybtwibt? (self-released): You know in Enter the Void how the dead dude floats above life as it moves on? This is like that, but blurred by mourning and heavy with atmospheric concrete, guided by ghostly melodies.
The Microphones, Microphones in 2020 (P.W. Elverum & Sun): Few excavate, interrogate and wander through personal history like Phil Elverum. In other hands, a single, mostly monochordal 45-minute track about what it all means would be self-indulgent — Microphones in 2020 comes to that precipice and shrugs — but his creative life comes into foggy view through a non-linear timeline of death, love, broken hearts and self-discovery. The chord changes at minor and major epiphanies, but lulls back to reality with an existential ennui that still presses on. (See also: my interview with Phil.)
Charlatan, Avenoir (The Jewel Garden): Long, fuzzy tones for foggy mornings.
Buck Curran, No Love is a Sorrow (Obsolete / ESP-Disk' ): Every time I hear "Deep in the Lovin' Arms of My Babe," I swear I've heard its somber Old Man in Black melody before. Buck's Tiny Desk was filmed in the early months of the pandemic.
SAULT, UNTITLED (Black Is) (Forever Living Originals): This was 2020's revolution mixtape, a funky electro-soul monument to Black excellence.
Hayley Williams, Petals for Armor (Atlantic): The way the palette slowly blooms on Petals surprises me every time — folks focus on the lyrics and her history, but Hayley’s telling a story through the music, as tones shift and hairbrush-dancing pop overcomes. Watching Hayley work through her grief over this record and through couch covers of Judee Sill and Bjork made her energized Tiny Desk all the more triumphant.
Lydia Loveless, Daughter (Honey, You're Gonna Be Late): The dirt emo queen reads the whole dang world: "I shouldn’t have to break you down to build me up."
The Goodbye Party, Beautiful Motors (Double Double Whammy): I must have listened to the bittersweet jangle-pop storm "Unlucky Stars" dozens of times this year.
I found constant companions in these record labels
Stupid Decisions (Mexico): As of right now, this stupidly prolific label has 198 albums available for $5. I can't admit to hearing every release, but its gleeful eclecticism (punk, psych, indie-pop, grindcore, weirdo hip-hop) had me checking everything.
Sierpien (St. Petersburg, Russia): Doomy and gloomy post-punk, goth, darkwave and synth pop from Russia.
AMPLIFY 2020 (“Antarctica”): Jon Abbey’s experimental music festival — unable to exist during quarantine — not only became a label or a way to showcase 250 (!) new pieces of music, but more crucially a lifeline to creation when creating new art felt daunting or static.
Astral Spirits and Astral Editions (Austin, Texas): Truly, I could not keep up with the output, but it was cool to see the free jazz/improv label branch out to psychedelic and minimalist music.
ProgRiver (U.K.): Digital reissues of obscure prog-rock records from around the world. Not really a bad one in the bunch!
A World Divided (Tunis, Tunisia): Single-handedly introduced me to the truly thrilling Mediterranean hardcore scene.
Transylvanian Tapes (Oakland, Calif.): Put out killer tapes by death, doom and black-metal bands outta California before they even got an Encyclopaedia Metallum entries.
CHO OYU (Bangkok, Thailand): Forest-focused ambient and drone from Southeast Asia. Pure moods.
Orange Milk (New York / Ohio): Blobulous music for blobulous people.
Flowering Room (Portland, Maine): Crunchy and cosmic psych.
I read way too many comics
Almost American Girl (words and art: Robin Ha)
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth (words and art: Daniel Warren Johnson)
Undiscovered Country (words: Scott Snyder & Charles Soule, art: Giuseppe Camuncoli & Leonardo Marcello Grassi)
Die! Die! Die! (words: Robert Kirkman & Scott M. Gimple, art: by Chris Burnham & Nathan Fairbairn)
Giant Days (words: John Allison, art: by Max Sarin)