1. Shore / Fleet Foxes

And in your rarified air I feel sunblind
I'm looking up at you there high in my mind

Only way that I made it for a long time
But I'm loud and alive, singing you all night, night

Shore is a magnificent.  It is an instant American classic.  Its perfect folk-pop songs glisten in the sun, soaring with optimism, a glorious antidote to almost everything in 2020.  That’s that, Robin Pecknold sings, we’re a long way from the past—I’ll be better off in a year or two.

On his fourth Fleet Foxes record, Pecknold is generous and thoughtful, paying homage to friends and looking down the road with renewed conviction.  He is undeniably a songwriting genius in the ranks of Brian Wilson, Paul Simon, and the nineteen artists he tributes in “Sunblind,” the year's best song, including passed on heroes Richard Swift, Elliot Smith, David Berman, and Arthur Russell.

While stuck in New York City, Pecknold went for drives upstate along the Hudson River Valley.  It was a form of escape and helped him collect lyrics for the bright music he was recording.  Where 2017’s Crack-Up was anxiety-riddled, knotty, and nocturnal, Shore is a soothing morning breeze, welcoming listeners to every pleasing aspect of Fleet Foxes' oeuvre: multi-part harmonies, sweet melodies, choral arrangements, and intricate folk-based orchestrations.

Pecknold’s recording process included playful flourishes.  Shore is flush with rich instruments: electric harpsichords, treated congas, vibraphones, an organ belonging to Fela Kuti and a drum kit belonging to Frank Sinatra.  The guests are wonderful too.  The Westerlies play trumpets and trombones.  Grizzly Bear’s Christopher Bear (drums) and Daniel Rossen (guitars) play on multiple tracks.  Hamilton Leithauser’s small children provide backing vocals.  After hearing unknown Uwade Akhere sing “Mykonos” in an Instagram clip, Pecknold wrote opener "Wading in Waist-High Water" to showcase her sparkling voice.  On “Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman,” he uses a sample of Brian Wilson counting and giving instructions on how to layer vocal harmonies during the Pet Sounds sessions.  “Hearing that clip, when I was a teenager,” Pecknold recounts, “more than any other thing made me want to get into overdubbing and making songs.”

While the songs are meticulous, they are also transportive and life-affirming.  There are near-mythic pop anthems (“Sunblind,” “A Long Way Past the Past”), featherweight folk whimsies (“Featherweight”), summer morning solos (“Wading”), quiet reveries (“I’m Not My Season”), late-night torches (“Quiet Air / Gioa”), and chamber-pop grooves (“Cradling Mother”).  Every moment is richly textured and destined for timelessness.

“I resent lyrics sometimes,” Pecknold said.  “I’ll spend all this time on a melody or a chord progression, and then I can ruin the song with a bad lyric.  It’s very delicate.  You can’t have a classic song with bad lyrics.”  It’s clear he knew what he had with Shore and, fortunately, his lyrical prowess meets each moment, incisive and evocative.  Unlike past efforts, where his stories conjured deep forests, ancient ruins, or weathered protagonists, his subjects here are rooted in the present, reaching out for deeply personal connections.  “The whole [pandemic] experience gave me so much additional perspective on what community means, what death means, what gratitude means, what privilege is,” he said.  “This is my least personal album.  I wanted it to be mostly about how I felt about other people.”

Those feelings—gratitude, humility, and love—permeate every joyful sound of the year’s best album.  #GiveThanks

2. Have We Met / Destroyer

Just look at the world around you

Actually, no, don’t look

January feels like a long time ago.  Who knew then that Dan Bejar would end up sound tracking 2020? It should not have come as a surprise, his sardonic voice long a surveyor of apocalypses great and small.  Did you realize it was hollow?  Like everything that’s come before, you are gone.  The idiot’s dissonant roar.  That exquisite gong struck dumb . . . cue synthesizer . . .

Have We Met is Bejar’s third Destroyer masterwork alongside Rubies and Kaputt.  His hermetic observations are fierce poetry.  His longtime producer John Collins' soundscapes are the perfect foil.  Though Bejar's signature drawl may be daunting for the uninitiated, his 13th album is one of his most accessible entry points because of the record's massive synthesizers, crackling drum loops, and wicked guitars, parts seemingly lifted from a studio dustbin after decades.

Eerily presupposing the pandemic, Bejar recorded vocals at night at his kitchen table in Vancouver, singing into a microphone connected to his laptop.  He sent the clips to Collins, who worked on the songs on his iPad at his home in Seattle and turned the wordsmith's visions into exquisite odysseys.  “I’d just give the whole thing to John and have him just blow it up, flesh it out—swap my crappy fake drums for cool drums, play bass, make the synths cool and not generic, and make the songs move.”

And move they do.  The songs pulse with jittery life, hidden spaces, and unexpected consequences. They drive and turn and float in seductive ways, evoking similar noirish scenes listeners visited in Kaputt: late-night streets, dark corners, empty buildings, or rain-soaked city parks.  I find the silence unbearable?  What does that say about the silence?  And your empty pen?  And this ridiculous paper?

No couplet is wasted.  Bejar's riveting lyrics capture more in essence the irony and tragedy of our personal isolation and institutional disintegration.  Went to America, went to Europe, it's all the same shit.  He is cynical about the big things and wryly optimistic about the little things, keeping the door slightly ajar for the forgotten or misunderstood.  And he appreciates a little dramatic flair.  We throw the game and, oh, how good it feels to be drunk on the field . . . again.

It seems Bejar eyed 2020 before it really got going, another rough beast slouching toward a strange kind of doom, and he wisely shrugged and kept his cool distance, releasing another magnum opus just before the fires started.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed your stay.
Here in the city of the dying embers.

3. The Avalanche / Owen

We are fragile and hopeful and wounded.  We just need to be heard sometimes.  And when we do, we pray someone is listening.  On Mike Kinsella's 10th and best solo album (always as Owen), he shares deeply personal struggles related to sobriety, divorce, and self-defeat.  He laid bare his soul and augmented my own in 2020, over and over again.

After deep diving in American Football (Kinsella's seminal emo band) during quarantine, it was another boon when he quietly released The Avalanche in June.  His life appears tattered on the record, but there are breaches to repair, maybe, as his shimmering guitar and resonant voice carry the hope of reclamation.  Recorded in Bon Iver’s Wisconsin studio with member/producer Sean Carey at the helm, the production introduces subtle pedal steel guitars, strings, and electronic sounds to the mix, accentuating one of the most gorgeously sad records of recent memory.

It’s hard to call The Avalanche a confessional record when Kinsella has long exposed his fault lines.  But something here is honest and heartbreaking in unmistakably 2020 ways, resulting in a vulnerability that is transgressive and captivating.  “New Muse” is one of the year’s best tracks, with beautiful sweeps of guitars and backing vocals that ache with self-doubt and plead for renewal.  Dear Lord, he sings, let me be anything but bored or in love.  After the sorrow of parting, he needs a new muse: if she sings for me, I'll sing for you.

On “Dead for Days,” Kinsella describes his father’s death from a head injury—likely due to inebriation—and poignantly worries he could meet the same fate: “Tell my Mom she was right all along / And tell my kids this is where my head hit.”  It is sobering speculation.  As the song cracks open parallels, he warily acknowledges he will try a different path from his father: “This is what a life in flux looks like / I ain’t got a bed to rest my head / This is how I hide from a guilt that won’t subside / I ain’t got a good reason for leaving."

“On with the Show” throttles like an American Football track, its intricate guitarwork supporting Kinsella as he liberates himself in ironic self-pity: “This is the role I was born to fake / a crucified villain, middle aged / I memorized my lines / and taught myself to cry / On with the show!”  Though a reputation for screwing up precedes him, he is willing to perform with unvarnished gusto.

Sitting in the album's heavy center, “The Contours" ruminates over his recent divorce and cuts deep with self-deprecation.  “I’m in therapy / She’s in therapy / Turns out all the answers / Are just questions / For next week’s session.”  As the song closes, ambient swells of noise grow still and he cannot let go: “Do you mind if I stare? / Or if I put my hands here? / Can I call you mine? / For one more night?”  It is devastating and moving songcraft, which is what Kinsella keeps getting right, year after year.

It is often a strange aesthetic truth: the more specific, the more universal.  The Avalanche hit me hard and buoyed me up at the same time.  Kinsella's problems are not my own; however, by sharing his inner world in such painstaking candor--alongside his stunning musicianship--it unlocks empathy and understanding and resolve.  He sings, we listen, muses together.

4. The Ascension / Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens’ eighth record is a discordant head trip.  He is tired and worn thin.  He wrestles with inner and national demons, his weary gaze moving beyond the personal to the cultural, deeply exasperated about the state of our discontent.  “I have changed,” he said.  “I’ve grown old and world-weary.  I’m exhausted.  I’m disenchanted.  I’m a curmudgeon.”  For the first time, Sufjan says, “I’m speaking to you.  You are the subject of this record.  You, the listener.” 

He reaches for love in the chaos, but the chaos overwhelms.  The music seemingly swallows up his best intentions in America’s post-fact and conspiratorial world.  The Ascension substantially modifies his Age of Adz electronics to heighten our troubling descent; it is glitchy, frenetic, and digressive.  “Lamentations” skitters across the floor with bleeps and disembodied vocals.  “Die Happy” repeats its only lyrics (“I wanna die happy”) as the track grows increasingly darker and claustrophobic, waves of synths and drumbeats and choral harmonies rushing in, building up, and squeezing the air out of the room.  Sufjan asks on “Ativan”: Is it all for nothing? Is it all part of a plan?  The disquieting track is aptly named after a drug that treats anxiety.  (“Put the lotion in the basket / Now jump off the overpass / It takes some time before the skin comes off.”)  “Death Star” is a retro-future house dirge, something that could be played in the alleyways of Bladerunner’s Los Angeles.  (“Trash talk, violate / Witness me resist the hate / It’s your own damn head on that plate / Death star into space.”)

Amid the confrontations, there are moments of pop splendor.  “Video Game” is a 80’s synth-pop ode to self-empowerment and defying the culture, easily the most radio-friendly track Sufjan has ever recorded.  (“I don’t care if everyone else is into it / I don’t care if it’s a popular refrain / I don’t wanna be a puppet in a theater / I don’t wanna play your video game.”)  “Sugar” is a melancholy but buoyant dance track, channeling Prince and pleading for connection during serious relationship troubles.  “Tell Me You Love Me” seeks solace in a radiant electro-R&B slow jam.  (“My love, I’ve lost my faith in everything / Tell me you love me anyway / My love, I feel myself unraveling / Tell me you love me anyway.”)

Dismissing concerns about being didactic or preachy, Sufjan notes this simple truth: “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and how many songs have I written about my own personal grievances [with] judgment against myself, self-deprecation, and sorrow?  I was like, No, I don’t want to write another song about my dead mother.  I want to write a song that is casting judgment against the world.”

But the most powerful moment is where Sufjan casts judgment against himself, too, second guessing everything he’s ever done.  The arresting title track is a staggering confessional and may be the saddest song he has written (which is saying something), mostly because he considers giving up, wondering whether his holy aesthetic efforts have been nothing but performative and immaterial.  Is this the disciple’s path?  Look at where we are at!  We chose this!  Unlike “Impossible Soul,” which closes out The Age of Adz, there is no immediate catharsis. 

But the prophecy fell back as it gave me an invitation
Show them what is right, show them what is blessed
But now it strikes me far too late again
That I was asking for too much of everyone around me
 
And now it frightens me, the dreams that I possess
To think I was acting like a believer when I was just angry and depressed
And to everything there is no meaning, a season of pain and hopelessness
I shouldn’t have looked for revelation, I should have resigned myself to this
I thought I could change the world around me
I thought I could change the world for best
I thought I was called in convocation
I thought I was sanctified and blessed

But now it strengthens me to know the truth at last
That everything comes from consummation, and everything comes with consequence
And I did it all with exultation while you did it all with hopelessness
Yes, I did it all with adoration while you killed it off with all of your holy mess
 
What now?
What now?

5. Your Hero Is Not Dead / Westerman

This is easy money.

Will Westerman's debut, Your Hero Is Not Dead, is meticulous and unbound by time.  It will have devoted followers decades from now fawning over its technical proficiency, lucid lyrics and melodies, and obsessive nods to myriad influences.  Distilling sounds as disparate as Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth, Talk Talk's The Spirit of Eden, and a variety of folk musicians from Arthur Russell to Nick Drake, the 28 year-old Westerman drifts across the artier part of the '70s and '80s soft rock landscape with gorgeous precision. 

The British singer-songwriter released successful singles and EPs after winning several "country night" competitions in London clubs.  With the aid of noted producer Bullion aka Nathan Jenkins (Sampha/David Byrne), Westerman takes his spacious bedroom pop to abundant worlds while emphasizing every negative space to subtle but thrilling effect.  He floats in and out of the frame as both lead and backing vocals, giving the strange impression he is standing inside and next to his own record. His peculiar sound feels lasting, a place for continuous exploration, owing to an alluring combination of his evocative voice, confessional lyrics, and curious musicianship.

It almost seems inappropriate to listen to the record without headphones, a concern which likely stems from my endless walks with the dogs in the spring of 2020.  Westerman's cool gaze over his life and the rest of the world--cautious, thoughtful, and pointed--provided 40 minutes of heady respite and resulted in endless listens. 

6. folklore / Taylor Swift

Everything has been said and written about Taylor Swift’s surprise “indie” album folklore, a wistful and nostalgic late-summer record showcasing the strongest songwriting of her career.  Ten of the tracks were co-written by The National’s brilliant multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner, who shares stately piano/guitar arrangements alongside Swift’s sharp storytelling.  Longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff ably lends his meta-pop instincts to the other six tracks.  Justin Vernon shows up for a brilliant duet.  It is all grand and escapist and deeply magical.  The record was written and recorded remotely and only recently did everyone meet up to play the songs live from Dessner’s upstate New York recording studio.

The best moments, for me, are the lyrical climaxes in each song, where Swift’s narratives arrive at their emotional payoffs with perfect refrains: see “the last great american dynasty (“I had a marvelous time ruining everything!”); “exile” (“I gave so many signs”); “mirrorball” (“I’m still trying everything to keep you looking at me”); “august” (“For the hope of it all”); “this is me trying” (“At least I’m trying”); and “invisible string” (“All along there was some invisible string tying you to me”).  It's been a long time since our culture shared a musical moment together; folklore had tweens, college students, and dads in minivans across the country singing these same moments together.

In the years ahead, folklore will unsurprisingly top lists of Swift’s best albums.  It will also be remembered for being the record of 2020, when we needed something safe to run off with during the August of our unease, something reassuring and recognizable, which is what Swift is and was, daring us to dream for just a bit longer.

7. The Universal Want / Doves

Hello, old friend
It's been awhile
It's me again

When I heard Jez Williams blitz not one but two guitar solos on "Prisoners," it was exhilarating during our weird pandemic summer, like your favorite mate showing up out of nowhere.  The surprise lead single for Doves' fifth album was chock full of acoustic/electric guitars, electronic swells, ooohs and aaahs, and Jimi Goodwin's rough and reaching vocals, displaying the best instincts of the Manchester trio.  When The Universal Want proved to be just as potent from top to bottom, it was a godsend. 

Twin brothers Jez and Andy Williams (drums) met Goodwin (bass) in high school and formed various dance-rock groups in the '90s.  Their trailing rhythmic impulses threaded through their first album as Doves in 2000 and underscored the band's unique sound through three more until going on hiatus in 2009.  

In the crowded Britpop field at the turn of the century, Doves squeezed in as a strange companion.  Less important than Radiohead, edgier than Coldplay, more atmospheric than Travis, and much cooler than Muse, the band grew a devoted following at home and indie-level success abroad.  When I saw the trio in a small club (with My Morning Jacket opening), they were about to score the number one record in the U.K. with 2002's supernal The Last Broadcast, which goes to show the Brits often have a better ear than we do.

After staying out of view for more than a decade, The Universal Want charted at #1 in the U.K., which is absolutely stunning for 50-year-old guys in a rock group, especially in today's competitive and decidedly non-rock/pop-saturated scene.  Wisely, the band does not stray from its autumnal sound but dives deeper into its spell with a set of fan-pleasing tracks that play to their strengths and are among their very best.  The record's dense layers of electronics, complex rhythms, and squalls of guitars come close to prog-rock, as the music seeps into every nook and cranny, but it is still more roughhewn and groovy than overly mathy.  

While a sad and weary beauty hangs about, The Universal Want is propulsive and cathartic, with deep wells of feeling storming through the knotty arrangements.  It is a maximalist grower, the best kind, encouraging listen after listen, rich, angular, and spacey. 

8. The Slow Rush / Tame Impala

The D Man's biggest concert disappointment of 2020 was missing Tame Impala at Vivint Arena.  But time is a strange and shifting thing, as almost every song on The Slow Rush explores, and my feeling is we will cross paths down the road because the universe is on our side.

After the canyon-sized grooves on the instantly classic Currents, Kevin Parker moves toward dreamy coastlines on his fourth record.  The eminently likable Australian mostly ditches the guitars from Currents and homes in on euphoric textures with slithery basslines and spacey synthesizers.  The result is heady and smooth, an alchemy of disco, psych-rock, and hip-hop, hitting on decades of touchstones while sounding in and out of time.  If you think you hear echoes of Pink Floyd, Bee Gees, Duran Duran, Prince, or others, you probably do.

Per usual, Parker played every instrument and mixed every sound on The Slow Rush.  His studio wizardry over the past decade has created an aesthetic world that is wholly his own, an idiom that can only be Tame Impala.  It is what the best artists do.  While recently hitting the stratosphere by selling out arenas and headlining festivals is a triumph, it is this singular vision of trailblazing but highly-accessible pop music that has captured a global fanbase and this listener's repeated listens.  

9. American Foursquare / Denison Witmer

American Foursquare is a gift for the homebound.  Patient and observant, Denison Witmer's acoustic record carefully follows his family life and resounds into the halls of your own head and heart.  His graceful songs are filled with appreciation and wonder for his wife, his kids, his friends, and his recent return to his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  The songs do not seek to question or solve but to unfold what is most fulfilling.  Music critics often ignore records about domestic life—contented, no less—but this 41-year-old married father of five found it deeply moving.

After relocating his family from Philadelphia to a 100-year-old house in Lancaster, Witmer started a carpentry business and took a long break from recording.  American Foursquare is his first album since 2013 (released on Sufjan Steven’s Asthmatic Kitty label) and is created with the same attentiveness you imagine he crafts the Mennonite furniture in his workshop: sturdy, plainspoken, and heartfelt.  “I’ve two children and a wife," he sings, "when the day folds over, I don’t have much extra time." 

Witmer’s guitar fingering is lovely and understated, accompanied here by pianos, strings, and drums.  His arrangements typically expand in the middle with beautiful choruses and bridges, where his pleasing voice shares little discoveries he is making each day.  He sings about his old home (“An American Foursquare / On a tree-lined avenue / What am I going to do now?”); raising strong children (“How do you raise a confident and sensitive child? / Why would you cage an animal that wants to run wild?”); the salve of music (“Lay me down / on a river of music / and push me out / back into myself”); and his former life touring with dear friends (“Six weeks straight on the road / driving late after the shows / sleep in places nobody knows").  

On "Simple and True," to ease his restlessness and make himself useful while his wife is out of town, Witmer folds laundry, washes dishes, and rearranges furniture. "Then I found your picture and put it in a frame / Thought about how ten years later I still feel the same."  It plays out like your home, or a home you would like to visit, unfussy and filled with abiding love.

The stunner is "Birds of Virginia," backed by the talents of Karen and Don Peris from The Innocence Mission.  It is Witmer's devotional to his wife and one of the most resplendent you will hear.

You are the light of my home
you are the mother of my children
You are the calm and my wild
You are my everything
You are the birds of Virginia

As his imagery evokes scattered birds taking flight, it is an apt metaphor for the expansiveness and mystery of the women we may share our lives with, transcending from the ordinary into something approaching the divine.

10. Suddenly / Caribou

Dan Snaith is a Canadian house wizard.  With a doctorate in mathematics from Imperial College of London, and as the son of a math professor, he had an uphill battle convincing his parents he could earn a living making music.  His lo-fi, DIY psychedelia on 2003's Up in Flames spawned a successful cult following.  Since then, under the moniker Caribou, he has taken his compositions to ultra-deluxe places, and Suddenly might be his best record yet.

Six years after Our Love’s high gloss takes on house, hip-hop, and garage, Snaith continues to smother his music with strangely reassuring and soulful earworms.  His incredible ear for production emphasizes every drum beat or hi-hat, resulting in a maximalist headphone experience.  His affability also engenders a deep connection to his listeners, especially here as his honeyed falsetto results in the finest singing of his career.  Though his lyrics address his family's recent struggles, you might miss them initially because of the songs’ playful exuberance. 

He seemingly repurposes a lost Scandinavian electro-pop hit from the early ‘90s on “Never Come Back."  He splices a woman’s voice to serve as the backbeat for a trippy R&B bouncer on "New Jade."  He sings about losing someone close while a bed of dreamy synths provides melancholic uplift on "You and I": you can take your place in the sky / I will find a way to carry on down here.  He gradually transforms "Magpie" from bedroom pop into a well of sadness, while he chases the blues away on “Ravi” with lilting, disembodied vocals and his simple closing words: It’s always better when I’m with you / And you hold me like you used to do.

On centerpiece single, “Home,” Snaith cuts up little-known R&B 70’s singer Gloria Barnes’ expressive vocals (“Baby, I’m home, I’m home”) into a deeply inviting refrain, recalling the creative use of his Marvin Gaye sample from his mesmerizing 2014 track “Can’t Do Without You.” The result is a song that sounds simultaneously fresh and well-worn, the kind of heady warmth that is increasingly Caribou’s impressive ply and trade.

11. Notes on a Conditional Form / The 1975

 

Though it may not reach quite the same heights as its stellar predecessor, Notes on a Conditional Form is a sprawling and daring and dizzying record from Britain’s biggest band.  Ranging across 93 minutes, the Manchester-based pop stars cover it all: symphonic instrumentals, computer escapades, UK garage tracks, acoustic strummers, new wave anthems, R&B ballads, piano soft rockers, and sample-laden love songs.  It is a lot.  After the critically-acclaimed A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, most bands might pare it down and chase tentpole hits, which Matt Healey seems to be able to write in his sleep.  But The 1975 are evolving into a very different 21st century pop animal, seeking out wide-screen explorations across multiple genres while retaining their pop-oriented instincts.

Healey’s lyrical digressions still drive the band’s scruffy, millennial charm.  Self-referential, hyperactive, and empathetic, he writes about losing a sense of personal security, strange party conversations, new floor plans, bad dates, and a couple's arguments; the sort of things you would expect from a 31-year old omnivorous aesthete in the middle of a heady social life and an unexpected run on the world's stage.  Given the tight-knit band's massive success, little wonder he saves his deepest affections for closing track "Guys," a love song about his bandmates: Right then I realized you're the love of my life.   

Drummer/producer George Daniel deserves the most love.  His boundary-hopping soundscapes are luxuriant and complex, ably serving Healey's stops and starts and whims.  They also exude a steady sense of contemplation; no matter the subject, his multi-faceted arrangements breathe cinematic life into quiet or manic moments.

After the band's first two records garnered a huge fan base with big synth-pop hooks, few listeners could have predicted the experimentation or virtuosity coming on Inquiry and Notes.  But having seen The 1975’s fantastic live show, where every impulse is on full display, it is not a stretch to believe in their current and future canonical power.

12. See You Tomorrow / The Innocence Mission

See You Tomorrow is so small and quiet, it is majestic.  It is a sunlit daydream, snug in your book-lined living room or safe on your Sunday drive, where Karen Peris’ magical voice carries hope and empathy and healing.  And it is arguably the trio’s best record since 1999’s Birds of My Neighborhood with numerous tracks rivaling ruminative classics like “Lakes of Canada.”

The trio of spouses Karen and Don Peris (guitar) and Mike Bitts (bassist) may be the most important but unheralded folk musicians of our time, to say little of their influence in mainline Christian circles in the vein of Sufjan Stevens or Denison Witmer.  Over the past 30 years, the Lancaster, PA musicians have released 12 intimate albums together.  Recorded in the Peris basement and dining room, See You Tomorrow’s production is homespun and beguiling, delicately highlighting every guitar strum, piano chord, organ drone, and drum brush.

The Innocence Mission’s songs always revel in the quotidian, the enchanted things you can see and hear and touch.  Peris sings about playing guitars in the home, walking in the wondrous air, speaking with loved ones, and remembering paintings in churches.  There are coats, skies, fields, spires, lakes, stones, chairs, and boats.  There are conversations and secrets and riddles.  It is all understated and thrilling.  

The emotionally vivid subjects may draw tears on first listen.  During standout track “On Your Side,” Peris dreams about her dead mother, where she is in Paris and sipping coffee and smiling.

She’d say, I never have let you out of my sight, I have not gone
She’d say, the light is bright around you now
I’m always on your side

When I first shared the song with Shelley, it was precisely what she needed, an affirmation from above and a simple balm that stirred up deep yearning for her own departed mother.

Likewise, when Peris sings see you tomorrow on “The Brothers William Said,” it is one of the most hopeful things recorded this year, seemingly sweeping away our fraught isolation with beautiful violin crescendos.  Don’t pay attention to them, okay? she sings.

The kindness of your face
Does not go unrecognized,
has not refused to shine
in this most difficult time. 

It is another precious prayer on a record filled with them.

13. Making a Door Less Open / Car Seat Headrest

Making a Door Less Open, Car Seat Headrest’s 12th album, split critics and longtime fans but grabbed me by the collar during our unnerving spring.  It's the band's first release after triumphant nights at the Garden and Hollywood Bowl last year--amazing stuff when you consider Will Toledo was releasing records from his bedroom on Bandcamp just a few years ago.  His buzzy and beat-driven electronic textures—with spectral nods to Bowie and Trent Reznor—felt thrilling and wholly unique in 2020.  

“Weightlifters” hums and skitters, as Toledo sings about music blasting, the sound of machines, a place where all his prayers are answered and his secret visions sprawl.  “Can’t Cool Me Down” came to him when he was sick with fever, resulting in spare bass lines and synthesizers underpinning lyrics about an unquenchable spiritual thirst.  His talky bridge is straight Talking Heads, strange and groovy.  

“Deadlines (Hostile)” pounds out a simple back beat while Toledo gathers frenetic vocal steam like Isaac Brock on the skids: Am I on your mind / is it what you like? / covered under your sleeve sometime.  “Deadlines (Thoughtful)” gets weirder, like a NIN space march, with knobs twiddling an undercurrent of dread, as his so-called old compassion bubbles up and transforms him into something unrecognizable.   

The record peaks near the end with “Life Worth Missing” and “There Must Be More Than Blood”; they search for big rock statements in a year with few of them.  After grabbing his lover’s hand, Toledo suddenly sees new moves on “Life Worth Missing”: I feel it break, I feel the weight / of anger, pain and sorrow / breaking out of me.  It is a revelatory step forward, accelerated by another meta leap on “There Must Be More Than Blood.”  He ponders life and death and seems ever-so-close to finding answers, however ineffable.

There must be more than blood
that holds us together
there must be more than wind
that takes us away
there must be more than tears
when they pull back the curtain. 

He closes with one of 2020's best lyrical passages, as he contemplates life stretching out before him, reaching a paradoxically sobering and hopeful epiphany.

I was flying on a redeye
My hand dropped to the aisle
I could see myself clearly
For the first time in awhile
There was nothing but lines
Nothing but outlines
My gut sank like a stone
But I heard another voice say
"We all walk alone”

14. Imploding the Mirage / The Killers

 

Brandon Flowers met the moment in 2020.  He rolled the dice with earnest arena rock anthems and raised spirits from the desert dust.  “My Own Soul’s Warning” throttles forward with guitars and keyboards lifted from The War on Drugs, Arcade Fire, and The Boss, reaching for the ultimate human connection: I just wanted to get back to where you are!  His nights are cut up like a knife, but he wakes up each day ready to sing it out, understanding there are few frontmen able to fill a massive bill, let alone offer big-tent rock as a type of redemption.

It is not a stretch to call this a fully fleshed out Mormon rock album.  Using recognizable themes and language, Flowers is Spirit drenched and available for transformation, seeking repentance (“My Own Soul’s Warning”), fidelity in marriage (“Dying Breed”), and personal transcendence (“Fire in Bone”).  His sincerity is authentic and rings with the faith’s best universalist echoes.  It should light a fire in the hardest hearts, dark nights and dustbowls be damned.

I have seen The Killers live in New York City (Hot Fuss) and Las Vegas (Wonderful Wonderful) and the band is better and bigger deep into its life.  The guests on Imploding the Mirage are also significant in the wake of longtime guitarist Dave Kuenig’s open-ended departure.  Adam Granduciel lends guitars and keys to the breezy “Blowback,” k.d. lang stretches out vocal vistas on “Lightning Fields,” and Weyes Blood adds strange urgency to “My God.”  But the best moment belongs to Lindsay Buckingham, the recently fired Fleetwood Mac legend and notable curmudgeon.  When his circling guitar solo chases the wind on the sky-scraping "Caution," it is the kind of revivalist rock ecstasy that Flowers was born to chase too.

15. Inlet / Hum

Hum performed its alternative hit “Stars” on MTV’s 120 Minutes when I was in high school. Unassuming in t-shirts, glasses, and cut-off jean shorts, the Champaign, Illinois band crunched and blazed for five amazing minutes.  It is still one of the all-time best television performances.  And the same no-frills attitude permeates Inlet, the band’s stellar fifth album.

Completely in character for the band's low-key mystery, Hum essentially disappeared for 22 years and then dropped Inlet without a word.  It is the softest heavy you will hear, all dark purple hues and blissfully melodic shoegaze that sounds exactly like the record’s cover: spacey, swirling, and not quite earthbound.

Like Slowdive’s recent return, Hum is not merely mining its ‘90s canon and searching for newfound relevancy.  Hum is here.  Its hypnotic guitars are immersive, wave after wave of driving fuzzy shred burrowing into your brain.  Its classic “loud-quiet-loud” dynamics are there at times, too, but its mostly a record of spiraling propulsion with Matt Talbot’s deadpan delivery and oddball lyrics in tow.

The technical precision of their four-piece chemistry and the luxuriousness of their dynamics make it difficult to pinpoint where this subgenre sits.  Post-hardcore, melodic metal, and shoegaze come close, but Inlet is a peculiar and pleasing foray for the band, like a small arm of the pulverizing sea claiming new territory.

16. Songs / Adrianne Lenker

On the year's most romantic song, "anything", which is destined to soundtrack a movie montage in the future, Adrianne Lenker shares her immediate desires.  A violin seeps in and pulls out her gentle guitar arpeggios, teasing out the tactile simplicity of human passion.

I don’t wanna talk about anything
I wanna kiss, kiss your eyes again
Wanna witness your eyes looking
I don’t wanna talk about anyone
I wanna sleep in your car while you’re driving
Lay on your lap when I’m crying

Though quarantine enhanced the intimate beauty of Songs, it would understate just how subtle and stirring Adrianne Lenker’s solo album is.  Her hushed folk is more elemental and raw than Iron & Wine’s allusive narratives or Julia Byrne’s stately elegies.  With inscrutable images of love and loss, the Big Thief lead vocalist designs deeply personal mosaics under the quiet spell of her vulnerable voice and acoustic guitar.  It feels like we are witness to her fragile act of creation, hearing the deep ache of her collagist thoughts for the very first time. 

“two reverse” reaches out in unbridled longing.  (“Is it a crime to say / I still need you.”)  She sings about her grandmother, her shared recipes, and cries from the woods, but it is difficult to decipher except for its emotionally resonant heartbreak.  “ingydar” juxtaposes lush chords against scenes of decay, where everything eats and is eaten.  (“The horse lies naked in the shed / Evergreen anodyne decompounding / Flies draw sugar from his head.”)  It is disquieting and strangely alluring as she contemplates life and its disintegration.  Her whispers close out "zombie girl," where she turns attention to the living after an unpleasant dream: “I cover you with questions, cover you with explanations, cover you with music, what’s on your mind?”

Somehow, Lenker draws us even closer as the record winds up.  “not a lot, just forever” reveals private details of her budding relationship.  (“And your dearest fantasy / is to grow a baby in me / I could be a good mother / And I wanna be your wife / not a lot, just forever.”)  She cleverly observes they are “intertwined, sewn together” as “the rock bears the weather.”  On “dragon eyes", under blooming stars on a warm summer night, huddled close together in their bedroom, she sums up Songs with its most fitting refrain:  I just want a place with you, I just want a place.

17. Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace

 

It is June 2020.  Nick Cave walks into London’s Alexandra Palace alone.  He sits down at a grand piano in the middle of the room and plays 22 career-spanning songs for almost 90 minutes.  That was the show.  This is the record.  With its recent release, I have spun it only one time.  It is spare and powerful.  And it is bound to climb this list and to be an important part of his formidable canon.

Important footnote: ever the artist's artist, Nick Cave's third act has been a staggering aesthetic achievement.  At 63, he is better than ever and his longtime collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis has recently produced some of the most soul-searing music they have made together.  Since turning 50, his four-album run reached riveting heights on Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen, their vivid lyrical and emotional intensity burning with spirits and desire after the tragic death of his 15 year-old son.  The songs are some of the best I have ever heard, daunting to visit but impossible to shake off.  

He is a minor prophet from the badlands, baritone shaking with fierce defiance, unearthing truths and staring straight into the glint of dread and loss, broken but unbowed.

18. Total Freedom / Kathleen Edwards

 

After releasing four roots-rock albums from 2003 to 2012 (including one produced by Justin Vernon), Kathleen Edwards hung it up.  She opened a café near Ottawa and called it Quitters.  She was burned out and tired of chasing the dream, even though her music was always well received.  After an invitation to write songs in Nashville, including one that ended up on Maren Morris’ #1 country album, Edwards decided to jump back into the studio one more time—thankfully.

Total Freedom is clear-eyed and level-headed and the best country-rock album of the year.  As Edwards settles into middle age, she sings with a generous and direct spirit about the touring experience (“Glenfern”), tough relationships (“Hard on Everyone”), and tender moments (“Birds on a Feeder”).  Her wisdom feels hard won, if not unsparing.  Love is simple math, she sings, and I can be a total pain in the ass.

There are no missteps, no shaking the rust off.  Edwards is observant and self-deprecating, although whether all the songs are autobiographical it’s hard to tell.  On “Options Open,” the pedal string guitar soars with possibility even as she jokes about meeting a lover at the tire shop, quipping they will always have a parking lot.  On “Fools Ride,” a mid-tempo acoustic strummer about a relationship mistake, she slyly rebuts “love is blind” with “whoever bought that line is a real sucker.”  On “Who Rescued Who,” steady drums and guitars propel the song as she sweetly sings about the serendipity of a dog's saving love.  

Finally, on the standout closer, “Take It with You When You Go,” she seeks relief from the pain of a breakup, asking for him to take it all as he leaves.  It is the same stuff of a hundred thousand country songs, heavy on her shoulders like the summer rain.  It works here, again, timeworn and true.