JUST WHAT WE NEEDED, ANOTHER BEST OF 2020 LIST: THE MUSIC
They say that the worse the year, the better the music - in which case 2020 should have produced the best albums since (say) Iraq War 2.
Whether this is the case depends on who you ask, of course. But for me, I’ll say 2020 was a noticeably strong year for music, at least compared to recent years, in which the typical experience for me was five or six albums I felt really strongly about, and the rest being good but not earth-rocking or life-changing. And the ones at the top end of the spectrum were, more often than not, artists/bands that had at least 25 years of experience.
The latter sentence is more or less true for 2020. However, the top 12 really knocked my socks off, and you have to get down to no. 17 before you reach the ones that fit into the “good but not awesome” category.
So, two obvious questions come to mind:
Is this the product of 2020 being by all accounts a socio-politically crap year?
No idea. Personally I think it’s a myth that hard times produce better art. On the other hand, it’s fair to say a few of these capture the 2020 zeitgeist from different perspectives. In any case, after a year like this, I can’t say that getting better art as a result is an even trade.
Does it matter that it’s getting harder for me to discover new artists I like?
Probably not - partly because 2020 was a year for the musical equivalent of comfort food, and partly because I’m hardly a bellwether for the state of modern music anyway. As always, it’s also a matter of what registers on my radar, and how much time I have to listen to it.
As such, I can also put some of the blame on 2020 being a tumultuous year on a personal level in terms of two major funerals and an all-new job, which canceled out the advantages of having to work from home. Oh, and of course there’s the joy of witnessing the city I’ve called home for almost 25 years turning into an authoritarian police state, while the country of my birth appears headed in a similar direction. Doomscrolling doesn’t lend itself to focused musical exploration.
Don't get me started.
Anyway. Here’s what I got.
[PRODUCTION NOTE: If this is too many words, just scroll down for the playlist.]
dEFROG’S TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2020
1. Lucinda Williams, Good Souls Better Angels (Highway 20/30 Tigers)
I admit being late to the Lucinda Williams party. I’ve known about her for years and heard a couple of tracks early in her career, but never managed to explore further until recently. And now I’m kicking myself for waiting so long. This album - her 15th - is reportedly louder and crunchier than previous albums. Someone somewhere described it as “Muddy Waters meets The Stooges” - replace Muddy with Steve Earle and you’d be closer, IMO. Anyway, it totally rocked my world - it’s a rough and gritty record, and it’s arguably the album that somehow best sums up how many of us are feeling at the end of 2020 - angry, weary and fed up, but somehow hopeful.
2. Citizen Bravo, Raymond MacDonald and Friends, Return to Y’Hup: The World of Ivor Cutler (Chemikal Underground)
Ivor Cutler was an eccentric Scottish poet who generally sang his poems playing a harmonium with little if any accompaniment. His poems ranged from quirky observation to bonkers nonsense. Two Scotland-based musicians - Citizen Bravo and Raymond MacDonald - assembled a collective to put together this tribute album of Cutler covers featuring a wide range of guest stars including Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian), Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) and Robert Wyatt, among others. The sheer variety of it is stunning, and somehow - like the best tribute albums - it manages to transform Cutler’s songs into something new without sacrificing the oddball essence that made the songs special to begin with.
3. Steve Earle, Ghosts of West Virginia (New West)
This concept album about a 2010 West Virginia mining explosion that killed 29 miners is the product of Steve Earle being asked to contribute songs to a theatrical play about the disaster. This album is those songs plus a few more he wrote three more to complete it. Lyrically it’s familiar territory in that Earle has always had a sympathetic ear for the American working class and a flair for storytelling. What’s different this time - according to Earle - is that the songs were deliberately written to find common ground between him and his working-class fans who don’t share his political views. I don’t know how well he succeeded in this age of hyperpartisan politics, but it’s one of the best albums he’s done in a long time. Earle’s voice is pretty rough even by Steve Earle album standards, but it serves the material well.
4. X, Alphabetland (Fat Possum)
X return to duty with their eighth album, which is also their first since 1993, and their first with guitarist Billy Zoom since 1985’s Ain’t Love Grand. It was released to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their debut album Los Angeles. And boy is it good. Musically and thematically it slots in effortlessly among their best early records - and not just because three of the songs here were written during their early days and have appeared before in demo form (except “Cyrano deBerger’s Back”, which appeared on 1987’s Zoomless See How We Are). That said, the last track - “All the Time in the World” - is an odd one, with jazz piano, Robby Krieger on guitar and Exene doing a spoken-word piece about death. It’s good, but it feels like a tacked-on bonus track, since the song before it, “Goodbye Year, Goodbye”, is a perfect closer to the set. Still, leave it to X to throw you a curveball. Overall, it’s everything you’d ever want in an X album.
5. Best Coast, Always Tomorrow (Concord Records)
Best Coast won me over with their jangly sophomore album The Only Place. However, their follow-up California Nights didn’t really resonate with me for some reason. I suspect the problem was me, not them, as their latest LP has brought me back onside. In many ways it’s an improvement, with a more mature and slightly harder edge, and solid songwriting from Bethany Cosentino. And while confessional albums about sobriety and life lessons aren’t usually my thing, Cosentino avoids the traps of sanctimony and emo whinery. Even if she didn’t, she and Bobb Bruno dress it all up in such delightfully harmonious power-pop candy that I wouldn't have the heart to complain.
6. Yello, Point (Universal/Polydor)
I enjoyed Yello’s 2016 comeback album Toy, which showed they hadn’t lost their sense of humor or their ear for a decent pop tune. Point is more focused and … well, to the point, with shorter songs (everything here is between three to four minutes) and more funk, but they still have a lot of fun lyrically and sonically, with Dieter Meier and Boris Blank seemingly deploying every tool, vocoder and plot device in their sonic toolbox, and having a blast in the process. This may not be the album 2020 deserves, but it’s arguably the one we needed.
7. Throwing Muses, Sun Racket (Fire Records)
Kristin Hersh reconvenes Throwing Muses seven years after their “comeback” album Purgatory/Paradise, which I loved. Their tenth album brings back the same 90s core line-up of Hersh, Bernard Georges and David Narcizo, and where Purgatory/Paradise was a 67-track multimedia affair, Sun Racket has been billed by music critics as a return to form - which is true in the sense that it’s a straightforward album of 10 tracks. But musically it’s a heavier and more experimental affair, as though Hersh was trying to find the perfect balance between TM’s alt-rock sound, her math-rock project 50 Foot Wave and her solo albums. In any case, this is the most focused and arresting TM album in a long, long time.
8. Ninni Forever Band, Uusi Yhtye (Jukan Musiikki)
Retro 80s indie rock from Finland? Step right this way. Ninni Forever has been around for awhile in the Finnish music scene, and this is her third album with Ninni Forever Band. Nena seems like an obvious reference point, but so are Wipers to an extent. Anyway, there’s quite a few earworms on here. The lyrics are in Finnish, but it sounds like they’re having fun, so that’s fine.
9. Rough Francis, Urgent Care (Lilibridge Music)
Rough Francis was started by brothers Bobby (Jr.), Julian and Urian Hackney, who happen to be the sons of Bobby Hackney, who formed proto-punk legends Death with his two brothers in the early 70s. How’s that for a band bio? The younger Hackneys reputedly got into punk without even knowing about their dad’s band, but when they decided to start their own, they adopted the name Rough Francis - the name under which their uncle David released one single. The comparisons to Death are inevitable, but this isn’t Death Mk 2 or ‘Sons of Death’ - Rough Francis have more in common with the likes of Rocket From The Tombs and Fugazi. This is their third release, and the first one I’ve heard - and I am impressed. Loud, powerful, angry and something to say - my kind of punk.
10. Enemy Radio, Loud Is Not Enough (SpitSLAM)
Enemy Radio (formerly Public Enemy Radio) is an offshoot of Public Enemy featuring Chuck D, DJ Lord, MC Jahi and the 1SWs, which (according to their bio) was purportedly created as a way get back to the roots of hip-hop when it really was two turntables and a microphone. Whatever you want to call it, they’ve been doing live shows for some time - this is their debut album, and ironically it’s a better Public Enemy album than PE’s official 2020 release (which has its moments but not as many as this one). I’m not sure why exactly - I don’t think it’s because of the absence of other members (even Flavor Flav appears on a few tracks). Maybe the stripped-down approach allows the excellent music samples to emerge from the usual clamor. Either way, Chuck D and Jahi are as topical and angry as ever, and frankly, who could blame them?
11. Negativland, The World Will Decide (Seeland)
Negativland return with this companion piece to last year’s True False. Where that album explored the difficulty of sorting fact from fiction in today’s multimedia arena, this album dissects the technologies that promise to “fix” that (potentially at the expense of our privacy and agency) in the form of a digitally connected utopia - from apps, social media influencers and virtual reality to big data, AI and smart speakers that essentially turn your entire house into a microphone connected to Apple, Amazon and Google. Musically it’s the usual Negativland template - a dense barrage of media samples set to dance beats, with Dave “The Weatherman” Wills making a few appearances. If you found Negativland’s sound collages annoying before, this won’t change your mind. As someone who not only likes Negativland’s collage techniques but also follows these digital technologies for a living, I find this fascinating and probably more accurate than you might think.
12. The Pretenders, Hate For Sale (BMG)
It’s sort of remarkable to reflect that The Pretenders have only recorded 11 albums in 40 years. But then for a good chunk of that time, The Pretenders was basically Chrissie Hynde and whoever she could corral into the studio at the time, usually with mixed results. It seems the Pretenders are always at their best when they’re a proper band, or at least when Martin Chambers is part of the equation. That's the case here with album #11, with Chambers back in the studio for the first time since 2002, along with James Walbourne and
Nick Wilkinson, who have served since the late 00s. The result is the strongest Pretenders album in a really long time, with solid songs and a stripped down sound that gets back to their roots. It’s also incredibly focused, with a tight running time of 30 minutes. And of course Hynde sounds as great as she ever has.
13. AC/DC, Power Up (Columbia)
This is AC/DC’s 17th album, and famously it’s the album that by rights shouldn’t exist. Between the death of Malcolm Young, Brian Johnson losing his hearing and Phil Rudd getting arrested, AC/DC looked pretty much done a few years ago. So naturally they got the band back together, which is what you’d expect from a band whose work ethic has always been “man down, move on”. But just as Back In Black paid its respects to Bon Scott, Power Up is very much a salute to Malcolm, not least because all of the songs here are older unused songs co-written by him. Between that and nephew Stevie Young (who officially replaced Malcolm on 2014’s Rock Or Bust), Power Up is very much business as usual for AC/DC. The only thing more amazing than the fact that this album got made is that they’ve been doing the exact same thing for 46 years and still they make it sound fresh.
14. The Budos Band, Long In The Tooth (Daptone)
Sixth album from the Staten Island band that specializes in psychedelic instrumental Afro-funk that could easily serve as the theme music for any given low-budget late-60s action/horror/spy film. It’s only been a year since their previous album, which I mention because they don’t usually work that fast. Whatever the reason - gigs cancelled by COVID, 15th anniversary celebration, or they’re just on a roll - Long In The Tooth delivers more the same but in a good way, if you dig funky horn-driven instrumentals with delay pedals and Coffey-esque guitar riffs.
15. Bob Mould, Blue Hearts (Merge)
Bob Mould is back, and boy is he pissed. Which may be a good thing. Last year’s Sunshine Rock - his attempt to channel a little positive energy at a time when it seemed we could use some - had its moments but overall didn’t work for me. Blue Hearts pulls a full 180, with Mould and his guitar in full-on rage mode. He hasn't sounded this furious since probably Sugar’s Beaster EP. The result is an exhausting yet cathartic roar. In a way it’s more of the same from the Mould universe - but it’s also the Mould album we arguably needed to hear this year.
16. Cornershop, England Is A Garden (Ample Play)
There’s always been more to Cornershop than “Brimful of Asha”, but their mix of T.Rex boogie and electronica tends to impress critics more than the general public. I’ve generally liked them, and their latest album delivers pretty much everything you expect from a Cornershop album - 70s glam grooves with happy upbeat melodies delivering coded political commentary. No new ground broken, but you can dance to it.
17. Tawny Newsome and Bethany Thomas, Material Flats (Bandcamp)
Tawny Newsome and Bethany Thomas have been singing together for 15 years as backup singers for just about every bar/tribute band in Chicago, but decided to break out on their own after teaming up with Jon Langford of Mekons fame to sing leads vocals on his 2016 solo album Four Lost Souls. This is their first album as themselves, and it’s strikingly good. Musically it’s a blend of alt-rock, punk, soul and folk (with a dash of disco), a description that doesn’t really do it justice since Newsome/Thomas’ vocal arrangements are the real attraction, as is the reasonably solid songwriting.
18. Algiers, There Is No Year (Matador)
This is the third album from James Franklin Fisher and crew, and in a sense it’s more of the same apocalyptic mashup of gospel, soul and electropunk with call-and-response vocals and Fisher generally preaching harsh history lessons and certain doom if we fail to learn from them. Their second album didn’t quite live up to the terrifying howl of their debut, and while this one doesn’t quite bring it back to the same level (if only because the middle third flags in intensity), Algiers still manage to create a sense of otherworldly dread that still sounds like nobody else I’m aware of.
19. Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn, Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you combined Appalachian bluegrass with Chinese folk songs, here’s your chance to find out. Wu Fei is a world-renowned virtuoso on the guzheng, while Washburn plays Grammy-level Appalachian banjo. The pairing isn’t as odd as it might seem - for one thing, Washburn speaks and sings fluent Mandarin (and actually once planned to study law in Beijing and work in US-China relations before she gave it up for a music career), and she and Wu have been friends for a long time. Also, the guzheng and the banjo blend seamlessly, as do the folk music traditions associated with each. That said, this album overall seems to lean more heavily towards Chinese folk with Appalachian seasoning rather than the other way around. But it sounds gorgeous either way. I dig it, but if Chinese folk music doesn't interest you, I don't know if this would change that.
20. The Third Mind, The Third Mind (Yep Roc)
If you’d have told me on New Year’s Day that one of the first new music releases to grab my attention in 2020 would be a supergroup with Dave Alvin and members of Camper Van Beethoven covering Alice Coltrane, Paul Butterfield Blues Band and 13th Floor Elevators in the style of a Miles Davis free-jam session, I’d have said you were nuts. And yet. If you like late 60s acid rock with lengthy wigout jams - or pastiches of same - you may like this. It may be derivative, but no more so than what Alvin used to do with The Blasters and, well pretty much his whole career. The only real negative thing to say is that it’s a shame the project relies mostly on covers - they’re good covers, mind, but the one original track (“Claudia Cardinale”) suggests Alvin and crew are perfectly capable of writing their own pieces, and the results might have been even more interesting.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Psychedelic Furs, Made Of Rain (Cooking Vinyl)
Whether it's a consequence of age or geography, I’ve always felt that the Psychedelic Furs - as good as they were - were a band that could have only really existed in the 80s. Which might be true, and yet their out-of-nowhere new album (their eighth, and their first in 29 years) kicks off with four songs that are as good as anything they’ve ever done. Unfortunately, after that, it’s an uneven mix of filler and songs that are good but don’t live up to the opening tracks, though the closing track comes close. Still, while it may not be the comeback I didn’t know I needed, it’s a welcome return nonetheless.
Luke Haines and Peter Buck, Beat Poetry For Survivalists (Omnivore Recordings)
Well, here’s a combo that never occurred to me. Generally speaking, whatever you think of REM, Peter Buck’s collaboration projects are often interesting. Still, despite Buck’s contributions, along with Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon, it still sounds more like a Haines solo album, with Haines doing the singing (or sneering, really), and apparently writing most of the lyrics, which are jam-packed with pop-culture references covering the sorts of things Haines tends to be interested in - Ramones, Pol Pot, Andy Warhol, the Carpenters, 80s hairdressers, occultist/rocket scientist Jack Parsons, French rock and roll, the Enfield poltergeist, Bigfoot, and a post-apocalyptic radio station that only plays Donovan songs. Not as great as it sounds when you describe it like that, but better than you’d expect. I don’t know if it will hold up to repeated listens - there’s some good stuff here, but whoever is playing that recorder, after a bit I want to just yank it out of their hands.
Sparks, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (BMG)
The Mael Brothers return with album no. 24, this time with a full band. And while it’s full of the usual witticisms and satirical observations, it’s also tinged with existential dread and increasing frustration with a society obsessed with iPhones, success and suburban lawn care whilst the world slowly burns. Which is fine, but I found this to be a bit of a letdown, and I’m not entirely sure why. It may just be that many songs just don't have the right hooks to rope me in - or maybe it’s just too long. There’s quite a few good Sparks songs here, but quite a lot of filler as well.
Buscabulla, Regresa (Ribbon Music)
Debut LP from electropop duo Raquel Berríos and Luis Alfredo Del Valle, who started in New York but returned to their native Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017 to help rebuild. The Spanish lyrics are full of anger and despair at the state of things, but musically it’s the sort of relaxed, deceptively laconic dreampop that bands like Ivy and Smoke City used to do. Which is fine, although the overall effect only really comes across if you either understand Spanish or have a translation of the lyrics. Also, it’s pleasant to listen to but nothing really stands out. Still, I discovered this late in the year so that might change after a few listens.
MISCELLEANEOUS DEBRIS
BEST LIVE ALBUM
Mara Balls, Ratina Live ’18 (Stupido Records)
Technically it’s the only live album I heard this year, but I liked it, not least because it marks my first time listening to singer-songwriter Mara Balls, who trades in fuzzy, heavy psychedelic desert blues - only in Finland instead of an actual desert. Her guitar sound is the main attraction for me, reminiscent of early Kyuss or St Vitus - that muddy low-pass sound with lots of overdrive, with added wah-wah and delay for flavor. Anyway, this is the soundtrack of her new concert video from a set she and her band performed at Ratina stadium in 2018. If you like your guitar heavy and muddy, this may be for you.
BEST P-FUNK TRIBUTE ALBUM WITH AUTHENTIC P-FUNK CONTENT
Octavepussy, George Clinton and Parliament, Straight From #1 Bimini Road (There Is A Whole In My Record Records)
Octavepussy is a funk band from The Netherlands heavily influenced by Parliament/Funkadelic. Evidently they’re so good at it that at some point George Clinton ended up collaborating with them, bringing in members of Parliament/Funkadelic along with him. This particular album isn't their first collaboration, but it positions itself as a sequel to The Motor Booty Affair. However, apart from the title and the spoken-word intro there’s no obvious connection. In fact, the album is mostly either covers of select Parliament classics or re-recordings of Octavepussy songs with added authentic P-Funk participation. Which isn’t bad, and it’s a lot of fun, but I would have liked to see them come up with an actual MBA sequel instead.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF 2020
Webb Wilder, A Night Without Love (Landslide)
The Last Of The Full Grown Men returns with an album full of love songs, and it is doing nothing for me. There’s a couple of decent songs, but the album as a whole lacks the weird humor of his earlier records, which for me was always made him stand out. That’s all I got to say about it.
THE ALBUM I CAN’T EXPLAIN
The Garages, The Garages Kill The Gods (Fourth Strike Records)
I’m not really sure what to make of this, as their bio is mostly fiction (I think). As far as I can tell, The Garages are a band comprising members of the Seattle Garages blaseball team (that’s not a typo - that’s Blaseball as in the online gonzo horror baseball video game) who write songs about blaseball. They write and record them quickly, because The Garages had a number of releases in August 2020, which is a month after the game was launched, and they’ve released over ten more albums/EPs since this one, some of which may or may not be different bands. Anyway, musically it’s lo-fi retro pop-grunge, and it’s okay for what it is, but I suspect you have to be into blaseball to appreciate it.
THE ALBUM I REALLY WANTED TO LIKE
Blue Oyster Cult, The Symbol Remains (Frontiers)
This is BOC’s 15th studio album, and their first in 19 years. It’s not exactly a comeback in the sense that BOC have been active all this time, just not recording any new music. In any case, with a number of “classic” bands releasing surprisingly good late-era albums in the last couple of years, I was cautiously optimistic that BOC would do the same. And, well, not quite. To be sure, there’s three of four good songs that do capture that classic BOC essence, but others sound like they’re trying too hard to sound relevant in the modern metal scene. It might be a stronger album if they’d kept it at 10 tracks instead 14.
And so much for 2020.
Meanwhile, here's the inevitable Spotify playlist sampler.
Play it loud,
This is dF
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