My Excel spreadsheet of albums from 2020 to check out is currently at 255, and I still keep adding to it. Of those 255 I've probably listened to a little over 100. So that means I could completely overhaul my list of 20 below if I kept right on listening to the albums I haven't heard yet, right? THEREIN LIES THE DILEMMA. But, if I don't do this now then I never will! So here it is, as of 12/28/20, my top 20 albums of 2020. The 2020 20, as it were, plus the countless honorable mentions at the top. See you in 2021, which will assuredly be a much better year. Ha!
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Aesop Rock, Airbag, Aksak Maboul, Akurion, All Them Witches, Arabs in Aspic, Armand Hammer, Beach Bunny, Bitch Falcon, Black Curse, Blóm, Charli XCX, Chromb!, Couch Slut, Crack Cloud, Crippled Black Phoenix, Cryptic Shift, Damaged Bug, Dawn of Ouroboros, Dream Nails, Einstürzende Neubauten, Empty Country, Enslaved, the Flower Kings, Fontaines D.C., Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist, Ganser, Gazpacho, Haken, HMLTD, Horse Lords, Intronaut, Junglepussy, Kelly Lee Owens, Kooba Tercu, Kvelertak, Lantern, Lil Uzi Vert, Liturgy, Lunatic Soul, Megan Thee Stallion, Motorpsycho, the Mountain Goats, Nadine Shah, Nation of Language, No Joy, Of Feather and Bone, Oneohtrix Point Never, OOIOO, Oranssi Pazuzu, Pain of Salvation, Panzerballett, Peel Dream Magazine, the Pineapple Thief, Porridge Radio, Pottery, Protomartyr, Public Practice, Pyrrhon, Rina Sawayama, Run the Jewels, Serpent Column, Sex Swing, Shabazz Palaces, Shards of Humanity, Special Interest, Stephen Malkmus, Sweeping Promises, Taylor Swift, Thundercat, Thy Catafalque, Ulcerate, Undeath, Wobbler, and Young Knives.
#20. The Wants - Container
Container dropped on March 13th and it immediately became newest obsession. I was ready to call it my album of the year, but then, as the year went on, listening to Container would bring forth every single fresh, nascent thought and feeling that I had ever felt during the very beginning of the fucked-up Covid times. Nothing else will do that quite like this album will. I ruined my enjoyment of it forever just because I had it on repeat during the extremely anxious uncertainty of early lockdown. And that sucks. BUT, this album meant a lot to me in March so it deserves a spot on my list anyway. That'll teach me to enjoy music during stressful situations!
#19. Cable Ties - Far Enough
Australian punk trio Cable Ties went to the Sleater-Kinney school of aggressive-yet-catchy feminist riot grrrrrrrl rock and roll! Far Enough jumps around from gritty, to furious, to passive, to pensive, and everything in between. There are some real kickass solos too! I like it a lot! NEXT!
#18. The Tangent - Auto Reconnaissance
The Tangent's 8,000th album makes my list as the token whimsical British prog album of the year, narrowly beating out the Pink Floyd-ripoff by Arabs in Aspic and the Sting/Smashing Pumpkins/Porcupine Tree dadrock epic by The Pineapple Thief. Auto Reconnaissance drew me in with the many captivating and humorous spoken-word diatribes about modern-day stuff like Brexit, the TV show Lost, Flat-Earth conspiracy theorists, and many other subjects, layered over eclectic and ever-changing musical styles. For me, this album has an adequate amount of self-awareness that I need from my prog rock, and I find myself coming back to it more often than I do with others. So on the list it goes!
#17. Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
OHHH how InTeREsTinG, a year-end list with Fetch the Bolt Cutters on it. Oh boy, oh wow. That's original and not at all boring in a year where this album tops every single list! So I listened to a Fiona Apple interview on a podcast once a couple of years ago and she was completely neurotic and anxious and obsessive compulsive. She was absolutely nuts! I totally fell in love with her in a very literal sense. And yeah this album is pretty ok! Not 10/10 worthy, of course. The only album that is a true 10/10 is Kidz Bop 29.
#16. Svartkonst - Black Waves
Roughly 45 million albums come out per year that sound identical to Svartkonst's Black Waves. It's some hybrid of death/black metal that leans more toward one end of the spectrum than the other. Nothing about the song structures or the vocals or the riffs are original. Even so, a few albums like this break through the barrier for me every so often and I'm not intelligent enough in my death or black metal knowledge yet to explain why. Maybe it just hits all the right buttons with respect to the speed, heaviness, overall length, who knows? Maybe I'm intrigued by the fact that the whole project is completely created and executed by a single Swedish dude? For some reason, whatever it might be, I kept finding myself coming back to this one and not getting tired of it. So on the list it goes! Also, go fuck yourself, Tom, you're not fooling anyone by pretending to like this shit. Wakka wakka!
#15. The Cool Greenhouse - The Cool Greenhouse
I'm a big fan of Mark E. Smith and his band The Fall, so when I first heard this album and realized that it was nothing more than an incredibly dry British guy rambling inane nonsense over repetitive non-musical post-punk beats I was FLABBERGASTED that anyone had the audacity to completely rip off The Fall. And then this album grew on me, because I love The Fall and I guess that extends to the cheap imitations! I'm only human, after all.
#14. Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
I've been a giant Mr. Bungle fanboy for a quite long time, but I was lukewarm about the news that they were going to come out with a proper re-recording of their 1986 thrash metal demo. Well fuck me sideways, sir, this album slaps! I didn't expect these geezers to pull off something that sounds so lively, competent, and legitimately angsty. I don't even miss the oddball hurricane of genres that you would usually get with a Mr. Bungle album. You can tell these guys had a ton of fun doing this too, I hope they come out with more stuff soon. Or else!
#13. Jerskin Fendrix - Winterreise
Little is known about Ferpsin Grenbinx except that he's some rich over-educated kid from the London area who spent a lot of his free time as a young man being a weirdo shut-in with weirdo interests. So, of course, I couldn't wait to dig right in! This is, as it turns out, a very weird album. It brings to mind thoughts of Ween or a poor man's Zappa. Porpchin Vernstix bounces around a million different genres and styles in 40 minutes, which is BORING AS SHIT if done incorrectly but this ain't incorrect! It was underwhelming at first, but after quite a few spins this album solidified in my mind as something that was completely unlike anything I've ever heard before! And I've heard a lot of weird shit! I'm looking forward to the future offerings of Mr. Skerfjin Cornchex for sure.
#12. Open Mike Eagle - Anime, Trauma and Divorce
Mr. Michael Eagle is a huge insufferable nerd, so of course I was going to like this. Also, while I'm not a very big fan of anime, I'm a very big fan of both trauma and divorce so two out of three ain't bad! The whole album covers his terrible 2020 without forgetting the sense of humor, which I found pretty damn relatable except for the part where I forgot my sense of humor this year entirely! One of the best songs of the year is "The Black Mirror Episode", which is a very vague semi-autobiographical recount of how watching Black Mirror ruined his marriage. Funny! This album would've been a 10/10 just like Kidz Bop 29, but the omission of an Oxford comma in the title cost him a few points overall. Sad!
#11. Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
I once saw Grimes described as the world's most famous and public Invader Zim fan, and that nicely solidified my perception of her from that point forward until the next three eternities. Miss Anthropocene came out in February while the world was still relatively normal and she was still making the news regularly with her Elon Musk-induced pregnancy. It must have destroyed her that Covid pushed her out of the news cycle. Even giving birth in May and naming her child after a Star Wars robot didn't keep her in the spotlight for too long. Anyway, this album is pretty good and "Delete Forever" is up there in my top tracks of 2020. Good for Grimes!
#10. Hen Ogledd - Free Humans
Once upon a time, way back in the day, there was a certain EXCITEMENT that came from wading through countless indie rock records. Now I'm cranky and old and jaded and it seems like every indie rock record I ever listen to these days sounds like something else I've heard before already. And then FINALLY I felt that UNADULTERED EXCITEMENT again for the first time in a long, long time after listening to Free Humans! These four talented musicians come from some backwoods Scottish town and they sing with their adorable rural Scottish accents over some deeply interesting and varied melodies. This is a long album but it sure doesn't feel long at all. Fuck Phoebe Bridgers, fuck Perfume Genius, fuck Waxahatchee, fuck Fleet Foxes and Adrianne Lenker and Laura Marling and Sufjan Stevens and Tame Impala and Soccer Mommy and any other dreary critically-acclaimed indie artist that put out indie rock that sounds like all the other indie rock that keeps coming out and haha whoops sorry ok I'm done now
#9. clipping. - Visions of Bodies Being Burned
I wish I could find more hip hop albums like the ones that clipping. have been putting out over the last 10 years. Cold, sharp, smart, dense, and calmly aggressive. Aggressive, like, in an industrial way, not in a "I'm gon' kill you bitch" way. But it's aggressive in that way too! It's aggressive the way your grandmother is aggressive with her Catholic-guilt bullshit. It's aggressive like this album isn't mad at you, but it's disappointed. I'm not making any sense! Hip hop album of the year right here! It's rife with cheesy '80s horror tropes and interesting, noisy slasher sound effects. Don't listen to it, you'll hate it.
#8. Neptunian Maximalism - Éons
Oh hell-and-a-fuck yeah! This, right here, this is the good shit. This 130-minute-long album is a brutal, unrelenting torrential downpour of heavy, drone-y avantgarde punk jazz metal. It's exciting in a way that only a giant slab of boundless free-improvisation can be! I love this kind of shit to death. It reminds me of those 2+ hour Swans records that I can only listen to once in a while since they tend to be these giant sensory onslaughts. Éons could easily be at the very top of my 2020 list, and maybe some day it might be, but right now I have to be honest with myself and say that I'm just not going to spin this one that often. It's a demanding listen. And that's ok. I wouldn't change a thing about it. Sometimes you need a demanding listen once in a while.
#7. Jehnny Beth - TO LOVE IS TO LIVE
IS ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE FOLLOWING JEHNNY BETH'S CAREER? NO? JUST ME? The frontwoman of the excellent Siouxsie and the Banshees-style punk band Savages put out her debut this year, and I like a whole lot yes I do! It's a brutally personal and emotionally intense record full of heartbreak, lust, anger, depression, and confusion. BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME, HOW ABOUT THE ALBUM??? HA HA! Goddamnit! Of course, indie darlings Phoebe Bridgers and Perfume Genius put out emotionally-charged records too but those albums were super boring and this one wasn't at all! That's the difference!
#6. Hey Colossus - Dances / Curses
I call this kind of stuff "slacker post-punk". It's the kind of music you got a lot from the disgruntled young people of the late '80s and early '90s. It's music that chugs along at mid-tempo and sneers through its teeth with menacing passive-aggressiveness, but never actually raises its voice at you. It gives you hypnotic 16-minute long krautrock-style tracks that DARE you to actually sincerely enjoy it and, honestly, it won't give a shit if you don't. Like early Sonic Youth. I love that kind of music. No one really makes that kind of music these days, but Hey Colossus did and they did it very well this year. And that 16-minute track is the best part! There's even a 3-minute reprise track immediately after it! Now that's funny.
#5. Hum - Inlet
I ain't know nuthin' about the band Hum, but Inlet is their first album in 22 years and their fifth album overall. Without listening to even ONE NOTE from any their previous four efforts I'm going to make a sweeping, baseless claim that Hum picked up right where they left off since this album sounds '90s as fuck with its shoegaze-y, grungy, unhip alt-rock. I must say, though, this music does everything right for me. Very melodious and hypnotic drones, a nice balance between light and heavy, clean post-hardcore (AND non-emo) vocals, and a surprisingly unique cohesion among all the various styles. I hear elements of My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Spacemen 3, and even newer stuff like the War on Drugs or Kurt Vile. And I like all that stuff a lot! So there you go.
#4. Pharaoh Overlord - 6
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that combining growling death metal vocals with cheesy '80s synthwave and post-disco beats would end up working so well? I don't think there are any guitars on this album! Very weird and very satisfying! It's like superimposing incomprehensible, guttural growling over some of the more ethereal music from Super Mario 64 or something. It became an instant classic, like I heard this music already years ago. Check it out immediately if, like me, you have no respect for your own taste in music!
#3. Poppy - I Disagree
POPPY PEED ON THE SOFA!!! Fun fact: The guy who played Poppie on Seinfeld died this year on the same day my second daughter was born, August 1! Other fun fact: Poppy the musician didn't die, but in fact put out a crazy album that's a slurry of J-Pop, heavy metal, and industrial music. And guess what? It works very well! I like to think that this YouTube star, who started out making saccharine-y sweet bubblegum songs for pre-teens, suddenly put out this fuck-you album of semi-aggressive and creepy music to alienate her fanbase on purpose. It won me over though! This album is fun as hell and I can't think of much else like it. She sounds like an even nuttier Grimes, which is really saying something since Grimes named her baby after a license plate this year.
#2. The Ocean - Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic
Vast. Heavy. Sprawling. Dense. Suffocating. Intimidating. That's the ocean, baby. Every album by The Ocean is really good and this direct follow-up to their 2018 album is no different. Listen to both back-to-back and crush a dang can against your head! This one in particular is a very immersive experience with its hypnotic and atmospheric electronic pulses and ambient wall-of-noise soundscapes as a backdrop to the sludgy heavy metal riffage! And it just gets better with each listen. It's a great way to experience the scary dang ol' ocean from the comfort of your bean bag chair, hippie. Highly recommended!
#1. Melt Yourself Down - 100% Yes
100% YES, INDEED. Melt Yourself Down's third album is exactly what I fucking needed in 2020. Track after track of upbeat jazz funk with a DIY punk aesthetic, strong afrobeat and Middle Eastern rhythmic influences, and swirling tinges of electronic psychedelia thrown into the mix as well. Energetic from beginning to end, I can't think of another album this year that took me somewhere else quite like this one. And trust me, no matter where I was I often wanted to be somewhere else anyway. I want to be somewhere else right now, but instead I'm typing these words that no one is reading. Hello! Thanks for playing! See ya in 2021 unless we're all dead!
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