the top 50 best albums of 2020

There’s a part of me that wants to give more of an explanation as to why this is a little late - and then there’s the part of me that wants to say, ‘if you’ve watched On The Pulse for the past year and saw just how many albums I reviewed, you’d get it!’

And that’s arguably the biggest new factor surrounding my year-end list of the best albums of 2020, normally the one that feels the easiest to assemble - I track everything I listen to, I maintain my own personal list of where I’d rank respective projects, and hell, I already turned in my list of the top ten albums of 2020 to UPROXX damn near a month ago, this shouldn’t have been that strenuous to make. And that would be a fair assessment… except in 2020, I reviewed over 370 albums in On The Pulse, which is more than an album a day! Now that will be changing in 2021 - my last video discussed why and those plans in the near future - but when you cover that much material where you could make a credible top 50 and have to make some painful cuts, it feels like a disservice to all the work I did to not finish the job appropriately, especially when chopping it down to just a top 25 would leave so much off that deserves all of your attention.

And that’s the other thing I’d like to stress here: especially in the lower half of the list, I would not put much weight in any rankings I may have assigned, especially as all of these albums are legit great and deserve all the attention and exposure I can provide, and I’ve flip-flopped on where I’d sequence any of them multiple times throughout a relisten to the entire list - you know, the other big reason this took so long to get out. Hell, there was a part of me that wanted to follow Bandcamp’s lead and scrap a ranking altogether - placing any of this into an arbitrary, time-locked hierarchy where the argument becomes less about the subjective and unique emotional experience of art and more about numbers and status, it’s pedantic, reinforces the delusion that there’s such a thing as ‘objective standards or criticism’, and does artists, critics, and the audience no favours. The only reason a ranking exists is for my own personal records at this specific moment, and as time has proven, that can shift as I change and evolve as a critic and listener. So if anything this list might serve more as a task for you all - I can damn near guarantee that none of you heard every album on this list, all with their own eccentricities and entanglements, and maybe this’ll give you the drive to check a few of them out, perhaps starting with…

Armand Hammer - Shrines

Best Song: ‘War Stories’

50. An album all about capturing and trying to measure the value of little victories, the incremental steps to build away from apocalypse, all against production that is brighter and clearer than ever and bars that feel all the more tangled and abstract. Armand Hammer may have found even thornier obfuscation on their path… but it’s one that for once leads to hope.

Bill Callahan - Gold Record

Best Song: ‘The Mackenzies’

49. Bill Callahan finds unstable multitudes within himself on an album that’s more scattered and funny than he’s been in years, mostly coming through looking outside himself with bemusement as he tries to take stock of time’s passage and wind the next steps of his artistic journey. He may be more settled and setting into his ways, but those ways are ever moving.

ShrapKnel - ShrapKnel

Best Song: ‘Gun Metal Paint’ ft. Zilla Rocca

48. A jagged team up and debut from a pair of abstract bruisers who deliver some ruthless and cutting bars, the sort of grimy old-school underground rap littered with references as they brood and sift through the wreckage. Definitely an intense and harrowing listen, but rewarding to crack through each layer.

Special Interest - The Passion Of

Best Song: ‘All Tomorrow’s Carry’

47. I see everyone who put the Fontaines D.C. and Protomartyr albums on their year-end lists instead of this - blisteringly noisy with pummeling grooves, a brand of post-punk that’s as deliriously horny as it is relentlessly charged and political, a howling voice from the street being broken to be gentrified. And it’s not a voice that will come quietly.

R.A.P Ferreira - purple moonlight pages

Best Song: ‘DUST UP’

46. The street poet who gets kicked out of the reading continues in his abstract musings over a spacious cushion of jazzy production from the Jefferson Park Boys and Kenny Segal, where R.A.P. Ferreira can seal himself in his own well-constructed house of mirrors with an ascetic commitment to spoken word artifice… but when the vibes and musings are this potent, one must acknowledge that it’s so artfully done.

IDLES - Ultra Mono

Best Song: ‘Model Village’

45. It might be their most direct and clunky album to date, the sign that IDLES might be starting to believe their own memetic hype a bit too much so that the nuance starts sliding out of frame… but it’s not like they’re wrong, and they’re at least self-aware enough to realize straightforward, percussive catharsis can be the most immediate relief.

Chris Stapleton - Starting Over

Best Song: ‘You Should Probably Leave’

44. …yeah, okay, it’s probably his best. A little long and a little short on distinctive ideas to justify its length, but Dave Cobb finally gave Chris Stapleton the textured mixes to back his full-throated delivery, and the results wind up of such high quality it’s hard to complain. Also following into his most political moments to date, and a sign that the album’s title might be the chit in Nashville he’s cashing in.

Kaatayra - Só Quem Viu o Relâmpago à Sua Direita Sabe

Best Song: ‘Desnaturação de Si-Mesmo’

43. The bliss of facing and accepting one’s primal end, burning through false histories to accept the wild tranquility within, all amidst the most organic fusion of acoustic elements and atmospheric black metal since Panopticon. An unexpected gem out of Brazil, this is a rainforest taking back the world that would burn it.

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band - Just Like Moby Dick

Best Song: ‘Death Of The Last Stripper’

42. Everyone who told me that Bob Dylan’s layered writing excused haphazard delivery and questionable production needs to put on this album and take a seat. Stunning indie country and singer-songwriter material from a wily old master who is just as funny, heartfelt, and pensive in contemplating his legacy and the great white beast of time ahead, especially for all of those whose stories are left voiceless.

Lori McKenna - The Balladeer

Best Song: ‘This Town Is A Woman’ ft. Karen Fairchild & Kimberly Schlapman

41. Digging deeper into maternal themes with diminishing returns - unless you’re of that age where it absolutely will hit more deeply - but arguably some of the most layered and robust arrangements Dave Cobb has ever given her, it’s not Lori McKenna’s best by any stretch, but when her best highlight one of the greatest songwriters working today, it’s hard to ignore the fact she’s still bringing greatness.

Alanis Morissette - Such Pretty Forks In The Road

Best Song: ‘Sandbox Love’

40. It’s her best album arguably since the 90s, with a sharp confessional honesty that fits her idiosyncratic writing and raw delivery like a glove, where age has allowed her edges to gleam and expose the exhausted but vibrant humanity within. If the production had just been a bit more consistent, this could rival Fiona Apple for women long intentionally misunderstood returning to drive forth truth… and even then, this is still something special.

Hot Country Knights - The K Is Silent

Best Song: ‘Then It Rained’

39. In one fell swoop, Dierks Bentley made a wickedly sharp and targeted parody that also happens to be one of the best neotraditional country albums this year, more proof that if Nashville just got out of his way, he’d be one of the most interesting mainstream-accessible acts on music row. Incredibly niche, but it’s certainly one i can get behind - in more ways than one.

Juliet McConkey - Disappearing Girl

Best Song: ‘Hung The Moon’

38. One of the most fully formed indie country debuts I’ve heard in a long time, Juliet McConkey came out of nowhere with her spare brand of slow burn songs, telling stories of women often used and abused by the world, but also digging into the uncomfortable systemic and emotional complexities that enable it. An unassumingly tough listen, but one worth hearing - and a woman I hope we don’t find disappearing.

Marlowe - Marlowe 2

Best Song: ‘Same Team’

37. The production doesn’t quite have the huge dramatic flair of the first Marlowe album, but Solemn Brigham tightened up both his content and his lyrical dexterity to deliver a terrifically fun and criminally underrated set of songs, a balancing act with L’Orange once again executed impeccably. Weirdly comforting - mostly through finding comfort in weirdness - but the hustle and flow is undeniable.

36. I reviewed this triple album at length in its own piece and I had way more to say than can be summarized in a pithy fragment, so I’ll stick with this: Patricia Taxxon took the full, many-coloured breadth of her explorations in electronic music from brostep to hyperpop to ambient and made a postmodern blur crossing gender, shape, apocalypse, and artistic drive. Wonderfully dense but incessantly melodic and catchy, it’s a dance towards transcendence.

the Mountain Goats - Getting Into Knives

Best Song: ‘The Last Place I Saw You Alive’

35. The Mountain Goats went a bit feral with this one… but in a world where what is once pristine is decaying and what is decaying is overgrown towards renewal, it’s a nice touch to see the Mountain Goats explore it and everyone willing to plumb those depths, whatever the cost. But with a remarkable amount of accessible, upbeat charm, John Darnielle manages to make his shambling singer-songwriter project unearth so many nuggets of gold with every tentative step into the wilderness

Quelle Chris & Chris Keys - Innocent Country 2

Best Song: ‘LIVING HAPPY’ ft. Joseph Chilliams & Cavalier

34. One of the most blissful rap albums of 2020, Chris Keys returns to give Quelle Chris’ pensive reflections on a wider world and his newfound place of modest success in it the smoothest and jazziest foundation he’s ever had. A lush and thoughtful meander through terrific guest verses, and while it can feel a bit unstructured, it feels like his most sober and mature work to date. A solid meditation indeed.

Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA

Best Song: ‘Bad Friend’

33. Rina Sawayama delivers a full-length debut that takes the nostalgic blur of a half dozen early 2000s sounds and infuses them with righteous intensity, reflecting on claiming her place in art, finding her true roots, and filling the emptiness of that past with some truly charged and forward-thinking societal commentary for another layer of subversion. And as pop metal begins to slide back into popularity once again, Sawayama proves more than capable of leading the charge.

Backxwash - God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It

Best Song: ‘Black Magic’

32. She needs less than a half hour to compress the tangled horrors of depression, oppression, family rejection, and an existential nightmare into a better produced and more punishing set of bangers than leave all of her cis counterparts in trap metal scrambling. What Backxwash showed with this wasn’t just a textured and nuanced understanding of her occult trappings, but the compositional chops to really bring them to bear with a core of earnest humanity that lets you care beyond the shock. Also it bangs like you would not believe, but that goes without saying.

Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress

Best Song: ‘Sin Of My Heart’

31. And this grindcore/hardcore punk act needs even less time to break you apart. Fifteen minutes that can only be described as punishing with melodic grooves so ugly and gargantuan and that seem so wild you almost don’t notice how razor tight the compositions and insanely visceral the writing are. The sort of tightly contained nightmare that bulldozes everything in its path - you should move.

Lydia Loveless - Daughter

Best Song: ‘September’ ft. Laura Jane Grace

30. No, it’s not better than Real, but a year or four away from that painful immediacy gave Lydia Loveless the space to spiral out and dig into the roots of it. If it feels circular in its gleaming, nocturnal, Fleetwood Mac-esque melodies and compositions, it’s because she needs that therapeutic focus to shade her passionate ambition. An album that knows she loves too hard, but also provide the path to roll into that idea. She may have highlighted that he made it ‘seem real’ - now Lydia Loveless can put her own words to that dream.

Aesop Rock - Spirit World Field Guide

Best Song: ‘Marble Cake’

29. If there was a rapper better suited to the wild anxiety of our times who is not named billy woods, I’m not sure I could name him. But Aesop Rock’s spiraling eye for survivalist detail and his own frankness for endings including his own means that every offkilter note and paranoid spirit get memorialized, especially as he’s let the surly darkness in many a time and he can ride its lifelong endurance trial. Again, it’s overlong and occasionally questionable in its detours and production, but projects like this are built to go down rabbit holes, leaving you kicking at turtles all the way down.

American Aquarium - Lamentations

Best Song - ‘A Better South’

28. An album this divided against itself in sound and content should not hold together. More stately and atmospheric and yearning but also hardscrabble and rootsy and defiantly country, an album that wants to uphold a strong core of populism, but if only because being this broken and flawed has you clinging for any sort of foundation. A few steps removed from their best as you can tell BJ Barham hasn’t quite found the core of his sound or ideals just yet, but the struggle to think bigger with real sobriety gives it a raw honestly like little else, occasionally for the worse but with eyes on the better. Not their best, but when said best are classics of indie country, greatness is still worth highlighting.

Neon Trees - I Can Feel You Forgetting Me

Best Song: ‘Nights’

27. A new wave comeback for the ages, Neon Trees delivered their best album since Habits and likely their most fully defined and expansive. Six years and a bad breakup gives Tyler Glenn all the ammunition to stave off existential emptiness, and all the hooks he needs to ride the wave as long as he can. Coupled with razor-tight compositions, this is Neon Trees finding the core of their splashy, technicolor attitude and giving it enough hydrogen to explode. Sorely overlooked, but a riotously good time.

Dzo-Nga - Thunder In The Mountains

Best Song: ‘Flames In The Sky’

26. They finally got the drums right, and they made their best album to date. Dzo-Nga’s fusion of atmospheric black metal and folk took them in territory that owed less to Celtic melodies and more to a deeper set of American roots, infused with a sacred feminine presence and their best melodies to date. In finally realizing their potential, their savagery picked up the infectious focus and tempestuous energy that feels like a chinook coming off the mountains. A thunderstorm worth riding.

Alright, that’s the first twenty-five… hopefully that didn’t take too long and I gave you all plenty of material to check out, now onto the second half of our list…

25. This is probably the most ‘conventional’ rap album on my list in terms of content and groove and presentation, and my general rule of thumb when it comes to these is that it needs to have the refinement to stand in its lane and maybe a bit more to give it that necessary push. And while it’s not his best… man, going back to Freddie Gibbs has rarely been easier.

Freddie Gibbs & Alchemist - Alfredo

Best Song: ‘Something To Rap About’ ft. Tyler The Creator

There’s a part of me that’s willing to be patient for Pinata Part 2 for which Bandana unfortunately fell short, but Alfredo stands as a close second as a phenomenally relaxed and approachable synthesis of Freddie Gibbs’ tight gangsta rap flows, mature stylism, and enough hard life lived to give his material that detail and texture. It also helps that he’s loose and funny when he needs to be and all his guest stars deliver verses to match - the maturity from both Rick Ross and Conway was very welcome, but the nicest surprise was Tyler the Creator who flips a luxurious brag with just enough wit so you know the mischievously air is still there. All against sample-rich production from Alchemist which is buttery and so damn smooth, in 2020 we all needed an exhale. Didn’t expect it would come from Freddie Gibbs, but I’m kind of happy it did.

24. So there’s such a thing as stacking the deck when it comes to an album where you can look at the producers and collaborators and just think ‘oh, I’m going to love this’… and while some would think that short-circuits your critical faculties, more often than not I’m going in with a goddamn microscope and higher standards, and normally I wind up disappointed. Of course, there are exceptions.

The Killers - Imploding The Mirage

Best Song: ‘My Own Soul’s Warning’

This might be the best thing The Killers have released since Sam’s Town, and if some of the kinks were fixed, this could have wound up their best album. Recruiting folks from behind The War On Drugs, along with k.d. lang and Weyes Blood, it was set up to be a grand indie rock swing for the fences and more often than not it stuck the landing courtesy of the huge hooks and mid-80s inspired Americana that hits all of the band’s gloriously self-serious ambition. Yeah, the production was pretty far from their best and I did think that minus the sly self-awareness of an Alex Cameron that the writing got a little less interesting, but when the hooks hit with such epic, organic swell, it was hard to complain. Coupled with some of their best ever songs and a surprising amount of consistency, the Killers made a comeback nobody saw coming, and I was thrilled to ride it.

23. So this is also a comeback, so to speak, but I think the buzz around this album got a bit warped because the band ‘broke up’ and then reformed and then changed genres along the way, all of which led to a sophomore concept album triggering as many questions as answers…

Creeper - Sex, Death & The Infinite Void

Best Song: ‘Paradise’

Honest to god, I think I like this more than Eternity In Your Arms - yeah, it’s considerably less punk and embracing more retro glam rock, but for a band as nakedly camp and theatrical as Creeper is, I loved the sonic experimentation and more obvious ambition! Hell, if they had fixed some of their production issues so the shoestring budget wasn’t so nakedly obvious, this could have easily contended for the best of 2020, it was that gloriously ridiculous! Granted, it’s now moving into territory where I have to compare Creeper to Kyle Craft, and I’m not sure they can measure up with him just yet… but I really appreciate the risk and romanticism of this push and ultimately how they found enough to tie things together. Coming out of the black rain, this was a blast from the midnight sun.

22. But you know, while we’re talking about nighttime albums…

Little Big Town - Nightfall

Best Song: ‘Forever & A Night’

One of the earliest projects of 2020 and criminally slept on because their label has no earthly clue surrounding what a good single is, I’m not sure if this is Little Big Town’s best album, but it’s certainly one of their most mature and well-executed projects. This was a year where a lot of folks fell in love again with the smooth soft rock grooves of Fleetwood Mac, so it makes sense that Little Big Town’s mixed-gender harmonies and well-blended acoustic layering would make them obvious winners, but where I saw the greatest leap was in the songwriting. This was an album that feels like it came from a band in their forties who have lived a lot of life and had to make morally ambiguous and complicated decisions about relationships, and ‘Wine, Beer, Whiskey’ wasn’t on this thing, it’d be one of the year’s biggest surprises and standouts. Mainstream Nashville may have mismanaged and forgotten about this band, but they deserved better attention than they got this year.

21. And you know, given that we’re already in the territory of overlooked projects due to Nashville mismanagement…

Caitlyn Smith - Supernova

Best Song: ‘Damn You For Breaking My Heart’

Caitlyn Smith should be one of the biggest pop country artists of the modern era and at this point folks are out of excuses as to why. No, the album is not as textured or diverse as her debut Starfire - and the reverb-saturated production reminded me a little too much of certain indie trends in the 2010s - but when the compositions are so sharp in melody and content, paired with a singer who has the pipes to match mixes of this size, Smith can match the title of her project for sheer power. An album of complicated heartbreak and renewal that balances nuance with righteous catharsis, it might feel more single-minded than her debut, but throughout 2020 it was no less effective for it. This woman should be a goddamns superstar as the Florence Welch of modern pop country - any time Nashville could make that happen, it’d be swell.

20. …you know, sometimes you just have to let things be what they are. So let’s deal with this.

Machine Gun Kelly - Tickets To My Downfall

Best Song: ‘forget me too’ ft. Halsey

It’s stupid, it’s overcompressed, it’s relentlessly cliched, it’s messy, and have I mentioned it’s stupid yet… so why does it work so goddamn well? Because there’s a part of me that says this works in spite of Machine Gun Kelly, where he’s just such a dumbass stumbling through great hooks and Travis Barker giving him the most propulsive grooves and production of his career… but then you realize the stupidity is kind of why this works - for so many claiming this is derivative, I don’t think many acts could have sacrificed their dignity to make this album, given that it rides so heavily on MGK’s personality, which can be a tough pill to swallow. I’ve compared this to I Get Wet by Andrew W.K. in mining epic magic out of the raw dumb basics, but there’s honestly less airs or pretension to it, so you’re never going to take it that seriously, and when the majority of the album shows MGK stumbling through bad melodrama, you realize you could easily treat it with the thickest veneer of irony for cheap disposability. But let’s be real, I don’t see that veneer, and part of me likes this because of how honest it is in its stupidity, especially when the hooks are great and the album can lean into it, where even the sincere moments click. You might call it derivative, but not only did most pop punk in 2020 not have hooks or grooves as good as this, but also there’s some uniqueness coming from the pulls from modern emo rap which sonically fits in a similar family, even as it all feels desperate as hell. And I think ‘desperate’ is the most appropriate word here: one self-aware, low cunning calculation to get to this genre after getting driven out of rap, and he struck gold for one album. I don’t expect it to last, I get why purists of multiple genres and a lot of critics hate it or can’t connect with it to have fun, and I don’t think Machine Gun Kelly can pull this off twice… but I had more fun with this album in 2020 than anyone could have predicted, and I think it works, even if I can still see that downfall on the horizon.

19. Okay, that was a lot - let’s take a deep breath and pick up something much less controversial, shall we?

Jhene Aiko - Chilombo

Best Song: ‘P*$$y Fairy (OTW)’

Well, okay, it depends on the circles you’re in - if you float around in spaces that like a lot of R&B, I’ve seen folks come down on Jhene’s newest album for being her most upbeat, commercially accessible, and lightweight album to date, the sort of project where it’ll surprise you at first it was nominated for a Grammy and then realize it makes way too much sense. But honestly, Jhene Aiko choosing to write more hooks while still maintaining her unassailable low-key charisma and power alongside liquid, organic production and one hell of a consistent vibe only serves to highlight her influence in modern R&B, especially as this project can be as thematically robust if you look between the lines, falling in love again but having a jaded and melancholic approach to counting how many days of it will last. There’s a blissful wistfulness that I find really damn compelling, and even if it’s not trying to be as literate as Souled Out or as expansive as Trip, this is another slice of R&B where Jhene proves just how special and underrated she is.

18. And you know, while we’re in the territory of criminally underrated artists…

Cam - The Otherside

Best Song: ‘Diane’

Okay, I get why some of you might be surprised to see this one - because I imagine a whole bunch of you didn’t even know it came out, given that its best singles were dropped when she was on the label mismanaging her career, and she put this out around a week of utter insanity! But when I first reviewed Cam back in 2015 I was convinced she had the pop chops and personality to make a colourful and diverse pop country album, and The Otherside is that in spades. It’s the leap forward with better writing, more refined production, and some of the best hooks she’s ever had, marshalling a slew of collaborators like Lori McKenna and Harry Styles but never having their voices overwhelm her magnetic presence. This is the sort of album that fulfills all the promise from Untamed and then some - and even if Nashville somehow doesn’t know what to do with her, she’s still a force to be reckoned with. You probably missed this - you should fix that.

17. Okay, this was an album I found practically by accident - it was a YouTube comment that suggested it, I had a slow week, I had seen a bit of buzz but nothing substantial, but I was looking for more country especially on the poppier side and it was her debut, so why not give it a chance?

Katie Pruitt - Expectations

Best Song: ‘Normal’

It’s a ballsy move to call your album Expectations - I can count at least two albums with that same name that fell short, but Katie Pruitt showed just how much of a defined presence and sound she could bring to the table. The atmosphere was gorgeous, leaning into traces of dream country but with more supple touches of arranged orchestration that called back to the smokier sides of indie pop, and not only could Katie Pruitt command the atmosphere with her distinctive husky tones, but also deliver a set of queer love stories for the ages. This is an album drenched in a blend of Catholic boarding school austerity juxtaposed with low-key millennial narratives of coming out in its defiance, an album coaxed through lovestruck adolescence, with the maturity to see the bigger picture and emotive nuance but the spirit to charge forth regardless. Arguably one of the biggest surprises of the year, and one of country’s most starkly effective political statements in 2020, mostly just by living it.

16. So we aren’t going to get away from politics for the next few entries - and I’m not particularly interested in your objections to it. The comments are down there, but be conscious of what discourse you want to start, but in this case… it’s a tougher and more nuanced conversation, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard an album quite like this.

Seeming - The Birdwatcher’s Guide To Atrocity

Best Song: ‘Go Small’

On simply a sonic level, Seeming defies easy categorization. Post-punk industrial dance rock, but with a theatrical pop focus that coaxed through more organic instrumentals, there’s not an easy parallel either past or present to this sound - and when you pair it with politics that skew far-left and survivalist, it’s so damn unique it’s hard to categorize. It’s far from perfect - the apocalyptic trendline it follows can be questionable, especially when some of the production is inconsistent and that follow-up album released a month later really just felt like undercooked b-sides - but in a year with so much societal upheaval, Seeming found the spot between anthemic invective and a soothing moment to catch your breath, which really best comes from someone who knows the mental strain of protest. Organic but theatrical, amazingly quotable but also groovy as hell, it’s an album that’s difficult to describe and will likely not be for everyone - except for those whom it everything they needed, because we’re in this for the long haul.

15. We’re staying in sharply organic, politically charged material for a bit… and I swear, they just keep getting better, don’t they…

clipping. - Visions of Bodies Being Burned

Best Song: ‘Enlacing’

At this point, I’m not sure how I would rank clipping.’s albums, because even within the context of their respective years they are so diverse and robust in their composition and subject matter it becomes damn near impossible, especially when the project picks up as much primal energy as this. The self-titled might be more immediately accessible, but the sheer expanse of soundcraft and production in pulling together the shambling, horrorcore nightmare doesn’t just show a group with an impressive amount of genre knowledge in horror, but also know how to dig into the dripping, gory underbelly of the black social commentary which translates to text and subtext, all the while keenly aware of the grand metatextual experience that is any clipping. album and its commentary on hip-hop! Coupled with Daveed Diggs running circles around every peer yet again and the album’s seismic, apocalyptic feel… well, apocalypse in Greek can roughly be translated to the revealing of knowledge. And what clipping. has unleashed is a revelation indeed.

14. And while we’re on the topic of revelations… the odd thing is that she’s been saying it for over twenty years now, and only now it seems like folks are finally listening more deeply…

Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters

Best Song: ‘For Her’

It’s the most critically beloved album of 2020 and I get why - Fiona Apple’s swirling, percussive, jazz-inflected rock music shudders and quakes with complicated rage, the sort of material held together more on force of will than conventional structure. At that makes sense - Fetch The Bolt Cutters is straining to break free at damn near every angle, a torrent of emotions society demands women stifle but where Apple has clearly run out of all fucks to give… but she’s also mature and thoughtful enough to understand that her tempest will not be shared by everyone, and it makes for one hell of a daring and fascinating singer-songwriter album. I mentioned in my solo review that this reminded me plenty of Neko Case’s Hell-On, but in the months since I’ve realize that this album echoes many of the veneers Apple had on her first two albums, torn away in a refusal to play the game in her most raw work to date. I’m not sure it holds together as well as said earlier work, but I’m also certain she doesn’t care a whit about my judgement one way or the other - glad to see they’re finally listening, and they see potential realized.

13. But on the topic of potential realized, and for a bit of a wild pivot here…

Niall Horan - Heartbreak Weather

Best Song: ‘Arms Of A Stranger’

Look, everyone in the mainstream spent their year fawning over Harry Styles and I get it - he’s the bigger personality, he’s the one with hits. But Niall Horan proved on Heartbreak Weather that not only could he make better pop rock among his immediate peers, but also go toe-to-toe with heavyweights like The 1975 and Ed Sheeran, adapting the roots of their sound and just doing it better. The key words here are craftsmanship - he’s not reinventing the wheel with this breakup album or shattering norms, but that’s because with the level of emotional heft, maturity, and sheer charisma he brings to the table combined with hooks for days, Horan proves while he won’t be the flashiest, he’ll definitely be one of the smartest and coolest guys in the room. And I still think there’s room for improvement - production can be tightened up in spots, the rollout plan for the album could have been improved, and he’s a half-step away from being a superstar. Somehow I wound up on this train early, and thus far, I’m really damn happy to stay onboard.

12. Okay, I mentioned this a while back in that I like rooting for the b-listers, the folks where it’s not effortless, where you don’t have the top spot by birthright, where you have to work outside the box or take a risk or be a little more desperate to get to the top. And while this isn’t desperate by any means, I can hear the risk behind making this album… but you can also tell this is the album Brett Eldredge has always wanted to make, and it’s his best.

Brett Eldredge - Sunday Drive

Best Song: ‘Sunday Drive’

If there’s an album I sorely regret I didn’t review in full if only to give it more attention, it’s this one - because Brett Eldredge took the sort of artistic leap that in a just world would make him one of Nashville’s biggest acts. An old fashioned crooner’s sensibility, dabbling with blue-eyed soul and hints of dream country while keeping the richness of his baritone on an impeccably produced project, it’s the first point where his unique combination of influences came together and really rose above his loose status as a funny company man. And if it was just the stylism that’d be one thing, but Eldredge wrote the majority of the album too and all the promise so many of us saw from his earliest days finally returned and then some! And if you’ve seen my year-end list, you also know just how many entries he placed for my favourite songs of 2020, including two extremely high on that list - and if it wasn’t for a bit of flab in spots, this would be the best album Nashville has seen in years. As it is… yeah, it’s still up there.

11. Honestly, I could just repeat what I said at the midyear, because if anything it’s all the more true now - it’s an album that might slip out of your mind when you hear it, and you wonder why you praised it so much… and then you put it on and you couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Destroyer - Have We Met

Best Song: ‘Crimson Tide’

The truth with this album is that you can’t really “get it” if you didn’t “get” ken three plus years ago, where Dan Bejar takes his haunted, synthwave singer-songwriter observations to how artists react specifically to apocalyptic scenarios and the world-shaking rise of authoritarians. That was the prequel where it was more anxious fear and paralyzed dread - Have We Met is far more immediate, moves up the timetable, and while the writing remains oblique in how Bejar struggles to find the right words to build meaningful connections as everything crumbles, the production is much more in your face and driving, as it needs to be. More than ever it’s an album that forces artists to reconcile the power of their voices and craft - you don’t get to wallow in angst anymore, even if you might want to, and that makes an album that on the surface might seem perfect for brooding or escape all the more galvanizing. Again, this dropped very early in the year and was slept on by way too many - somehow it only becomes more relevant.

10. There’s a part of me that wants to explain how this happened. That part of me was defeated by the desire to just throw everyone to the winds and for y’all to hear it like I did.

Bagdadski Vor - Колхида

Best Song: ‘Крысолов’

So 2020 was a year I got into screamo, which apparently as a genre had a really strong year or something close to a revival - I don’t know how true that is, but the first time I heard the Russian band Bagdadski Vor and their debut album, I found myself truly spellbound. Even though all the lyrics are in Russian, the melodies were so bright and spell-binding that in balancing the bliss with ferocious energy I found the same sense of euphoria I got with the best of black metal. On tunes alone this could have made this list… and then I translated the lyrics and I found the sort of fiercely revolutionary content that had to have been a risk to release in Russia, not just for how it grounds itself against the rampant corruption of the authoritarian establishment but how it sees a shining way out. It’s screamo with a healthy side of hope, as wildly catchy as anything else you’d hear this year, a primal scream that feels, again, way too relevant. It would have been great outside of that, though - you likely didn’t hear this either, and even for folks not into this genre, it’s worth hearing.

9. So I caught this one late - and it’s honestly the sort of project where it’s tough to say much about it other than… yeah, the follow-up might be five years late, but it’s goddamn welcome that we got it!

Ward Davis - Black Cats & Crows

Best Song: ‘Nobody’

Ward Davis was a name I’d seen floating around certain indie country spheres for a while, more known for his writing chops than his own albums… and if there’s a project that can correct that assumption, it’s this one. Hitting an expert balance between scuzzy, intensely detailed and visceral southern rock and more neotraditional country, Davis manages to write one hell of a complicated but genuinely gripping divorce album along the way, many of the songs finding the sad sweet spots between anger, numb grief, and the complexity to know it’s not really anyone’s explicit fault, and if it is he is as much to blame. It’s country that holds itself to a higher standard with powerful honesty, where his low-key delivery is as much of a boon as anything in emphasizing a sense of grounded populism, and when the songs overall are this consistently strong, it feels like he delivered all the promise that Cody Jinks has been sitting on the past decade, if not more. I did miss the harmonica a bit, but outside of that, this is plainspoken, Jason Eady-esque grown man country, and is absolutely worth more attention.

8. So back to screamo for a bit - you might notice that I said screamo had a particularly strong year, and normally I would have to provide more evidence beyond one random Russian band’s debut. So what would happen if you take a screamo act and give them the sweeping, punishing power of atmospheric black metal and content just as visceral to match…

Svalbard - When I Die, Will I Get Better?

Best Song: ‘Click Bait’

In recent years, there’s usually one black metal album that gets into my top ten where I can just point to the melodic swells and crescendos and the production that gives it so much power that the band doesn’t have to do more… but Svalbard went further. Their lead singers delivered throat-shredding screams and the lyrics were all about tearing free societal barriers to expose real trauma, specifically accentuated by how well Serena Cherry balanced her screams with sung passages. It gets visceral and raw extremely fast, but it’s the clarity that comes with letting a wound bleed freely, a purification that lets you reclaim your agency and self-worth, and even then some of the poetry across this project is genuinely striking, the sort that’s a natural complement to the balance of serenity and savagery that both black metal and screamo share. Another considerable improvement from their previous work, Svalbard managed to find a synthesis of sound and made it glorious - another oft-overlooked project, and y’all need to hear it.

7. So the next four albums on my list… I’m not going to say they’re repeats, but by sheer happenstance the last albums that they put out were all in 2017, and they also all made my top 10 that year - I dunno what to tell you, they’re some of the best acts of the past decade! Ergo, you should already know why I love these acts - my challenge is convincing you why these albums are special in their own ways. So let’s start with another moment of bliss.

Perfume Genius - Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

Best Song: ‘On The Floor’

One thing I’ve found tremendously rewarding about getting into Perfume Genius is that you can actively see an arc in the content and healing of Mike Hadreas, and while finding his bliss was certainly an odd moment in 2020, I can’t deny just how tremendously relieving it felt to indulge in it. Not quite as decadent as the escapism of No Shape, but it doesn’t need to be - it’s more secure in himself and his relationships, his eyes are clearer, and even the body dysmorphia that wracked him before seems at least controlled on this album, and that’s a weight I’m thrilled to hear him lift! And as such, the album does not reach the glorious points of swelling decadence that made No Shape so magical, but in a sense finding normalcy and stability gives the album a different sort of core, picking up elements of rock and even country and showing the most diversity in his sound he’s ever had. Every Perfume Genius album is on some level ecstasy - this one finds its organic foundation, and is magic for it.

6. Whereas, if we’re just going to rip out the foundation altogether… well come on, you had to hear this coming.

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit - Reunions

Best Song: ‘It Gets Easier’

On some level this album is easy to praise - it’s Jason Isbell, it’s one of the best writers in alternative country, give him the most expansive production Dave Cobb can deliver alongside his most progressive compositions and you’ve got a winner. But I’ll admit Reunions is not an easy album by any stretch, mostly because you can sense the instability and struggles both internal and external that wrack it. Where The Nashville Sound saw him confront the demons he tried to put behind him, Reunions is where he’s forced to look both further outwards and inwards than ever, towards the deeply held roots of his vices, the insecurities in his relationship, and the roots of a conservative ideology where he looks to attack the very foundational ideals of an entire political movement, challenging not on specific figures or totems or events but on their sense of morality. I said that The Nashville Sound would divide his audience if not his social media presence, but Reunions was the album that really cut to the roots - and when you pair it a sense of uncertain dread that runs through every bit of subtext, every implication, across certain moments of this year it was almost too anxious to revisit, just too much. But he knows enough to allow us to catch a breath - and while I’m not sure it matches with Isbell’s best in the 2010s, it’s still potent all the same.

5. I mean, we’re already here when it comes to loaded politics, let’s keep going!

Run The Jewels - RTJ4

Best Song: ‘walking in the snow’

I said when I reviewed RTJ4 that I was concerned how well it would hold up outside of the moment of the uprisings of last summer - I wasn’t sure the album held up to the past two projects, despite trying to capture the visceral energy of Run The Jewels 2 and expansiveness of RTJ3, and going back to it now, I agree with that assessment. I also still think it’s one of the best rap albums of 2020 because I’m comparing it against impossible standards and it’s not like the broader societal problems highlighted at the roots of RTJ4 are going away. And again, we might know what we’re getting - the production is colourful, immense, and bangs like you would not believe, El-P and Killer Mike trade bars that only pick up greater complexity, the guest stars all deliver, and while I think the over-the-top stylized banditry can clash with how raw and real the politics have to be in 2020 - it’s a tonal balancing act that felt shakier than ever here - they at least seem to get the stakes and crushingly immense challenges ahead, where in taking down unjust hierarchies and systems they can’t afford the luxury to be martyrs, and the smartest thing this album does is show more of that underlying humanity and struggle. They’re four for four, people - hell, with Killer Mike’s 2012 album you could argue they’re five for five - a run that is damn near unprecedented even beyond the moment in 2020. And beyond that moment, they had a lot of the right words for the right time.

4. Now one thing I highlighted was the psychological wear that both rappers faced - and I’ll admit, dealing with that weight either through finding your tranquility or spewing forth an inferno is kind of two sides of the same coin on my list. You needed that in 2020… so when you have an album that’s not just going to take you into that territory, but drag you down every nightmarish step of the ride…

Open Mike Eagle - Anime, Trauma & Divorce

Best Song: ‘everything ends last year’

It seems like Open Mike Eagle and I both had some of the worst years of our lives right before the nightmare of 2020 - and his way to heal from it was taking us on that ride. By far his most direct and personal project to date, it’s an album that strips away a lot of the deflection and artifice of intricate wordplay and challenging production for something more lean and focused, and where Open Mike Eagle is self-aware enough to pull back the camera. He does not look nor sound his best on this album, that doesn’t pull punches with every small awkward step that contributed to things falling apart, but even moreso doesn’t deny any culpability he might have… which if anything makes it sting all the deeper. And when he retreats into flights of fiction as a divorcee and single dad on the cusp of a bad midlife crisis, where he’s all the more acutely aware of how pathetic it might look in comparison with societal expectations and machismo, there’s a genuine power in how that artifice can give him real self-care to build his way out. And there’s such pathos in doing that work and finding that core, not just with the fact that these might be some of the catchiest and darkly funny moments Open Mike Eagle has had since Hella Personal Film Festival, but also that he did find some form of relief by the end… or at least he’s going to keep on trudging and looking forward. The definition of an album that takes you on a roller coaster of emotions - and even outside of providing the desperately needed escape in October of 2020, it’s a ride worth taking.

3. So I just described that balance between tranquility and rage that populates a lot of my list - but there’s a big exception, one that effectively came out of nowhere to steal my year… and here it is.

Gabe Lee - Honky Tonk Hell

Best Song: ‘30 Seconds At A Time’

This is going to sound nuts, but bear with me, I’ve been thinking this all year: Gabe Lee feels like the Han Solo of indie country, in that he’s a bit of a scoundrel with rough edges, but he’s got so much wry charm and charisma that you wind up looking past it, especially when his colourful and varied blend of country is so warm and appealing to the ear! And yet what’s kind of astounding is that outside of that baseline appeal, there’s not a ton to say about Honky Tonk Hell - sure, the writing is terrific and his Dylan-esque rasp picks up real soul whenever he belts, and the production has so much character, and he runs through hookups like Dion’s ‘The Wanderer’, but the fact there is that buried eye for sympathetic detail that tempers his scoundrel side with genuine heart. This is an album that could have easily gotten away with the outlaw posturing, but the fact he doesn’t bother leads to more interesting framing and a more distinctive album that became so easy to revisit in 2020, especially on vinyl. Mark my words, Gabe Lee has already been one of the most slept-on indie country acts of this past year, and yet his immediate appeal on performance and delivery makes him one of the easiest to recommend. This guy is going places, and you should hear him.

2. I’m shocked this album wound up so high on my list, because I don’t really think it’s better than his debut. It’s close, and this has only grown on me with repeated listens, and it’s absolutely a more consistent project, but it was an album that didn’t blow people’s minds like that debut did. At the same time, call it either dirt emo or just plain indie country, Ruston Kelly knocked out of the park.

Ruston Kelly - Shape & Destroy

Best Song: ‘Under The Sun’

Now I do get why people might have been slower to embrace Shape & Destroy - it doesn’t have the surging, climatic high points of Dying Star, even if the experimentation is often still there, just nestled into the compositions and production in subtle ways that show Kelly is a far more innovative artist than he got credit. But that’s also not the point of Shape & Destroy - following in the wake of his debut, this is an album that shows Ruston Kelly finding real love, and then having to do the hard work to sustain and keep it, which means confronting his own vices and angst and doing the quiet work that’s way less flashy, even as he can’t quite shake the feeling it all might be for naught in the end. The comparison I made at the time was to another album on this list, Chilombo by Jhene Aiko, but Kelly has to drill deeper. not just doing the work of self-care for his partner, but himself, and there’s a core of hope and even optimism that keeps this album chugging forward to grow and build. Yeah, the divorce from Kacey Musgraves does add a quiet sense of real tragedy to a lot of the project that you can tell he didn’t intend, but if anything that deepens the album’s weight. And as such, this feels therapeutic, to breathe deeply, confront your own very human failures, understand how they’ve shaped you, accept what you can’t change and burn away what you can. And for the longer, more meditative moments, this nearly became the album that was my surprising soundtrack for 2020… but for one exception.

1. It wasn’t going to be anything else.

Spanish Love Songs - Brave Faces Everyone

Best Song: ‘Kick’

I’m not going to mince words: with Brave Faces Everyone, Spanish Love Songs made one of the best pop punk and emo albums I’ve ever heard in my life. Impeccably produced, amazingly well-paced, melodically consistent to a fault - as in I’m fairly certain some people have noted the majority of it is all in the same damn key - but still with enough visceral diversity in the grooves and solos and content so that every song can stand out. Then there’s Dylan Slocum’s delivery, a righteous, shredded howl that leaves everything on the table with a post-hardcore tremble and yet a sense of catchiness that could go toe-to-toe with anyone in the genre. Most importantly he makes it seem real and immediate and with this content, it’s the only way it would work - wracked between a generational divide, drug addiction, depression, imposter syndrome, a genuine fear of society’s collapse and gross inequalities around you, all amidst a sense and understanding of poverty and class that gives the band the sort of teeth many bands would never dare touch, it’s all too much - and that’s the point. This is an album that dares you to dismiss it ironically or use privilege to deflect, because those are criticisms the band has already weathered in facing reality and they’ve come out the other side with genuine urgency, so if there’s a punk band that resonates more strongly in our times especially for my generation, I’m not sure you could name them! Of course the flip side is that being this raw and direct can be genuinely hard to listen to, and I know peers who simply found it way too real… and there were points in 2020 where I thought it’d be the same for me. But then I’d keep coming back to the core of this - where no matter how much the loser gets kicked and bloodied and where self-destruction might be the sensible career choice, they don’t give up. Optimism might be the radical life choice, but it’s the only one they can justify making, and for as much as this cut so deep this year, by the end you’re left with the hope that there’s a way that things can be fixed and made better. It’s going to be long, hard, and deeply frustrating, but we still have time, and we can still get there - the apex point of staring in the face of midwestern emo’s ennui and coming out the other side stronger for it. And I’m not one to make bold predictions, specifically around the word ‘classic’.. but I can imagine this will be a cult touchstone in five years or less - it has that transcendent power. It’s probably not the first time you’ve seen this on a list on YouTube, but here it is: Brave Faces Everyone, by Spanish Love Songs, the best album of 2020 - let’s see if this year ahead can find gems to match it.