Slate's Best Albums of 2020

Plus the best songs.

Published: December 04, 2020 18:40 Source

1.
Album • Jun 18 / 2020
Singer-Songwriter Indie Folk
Popular Highly Rated

If there is a recurring theme to be found in Phoebe Bridgers’ second solo LP, “it’s the idea of having these inner personal issues while there\'s bigger turmoil in the world—like a diary about your crush during the apocalypse,” she tells Apple Music. “I’ll torture myself for five days about confronting a friend, while way bigger shit is happening. It just feels stupid, like wallowing. But my intrusive thoughts are about my personal life.” Recorded when she wasn’t on the road—in support of 2017’s *Stranger in the Alps* and collaborative releases with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker (boygenius) in 2018 and with Conor Oberst (Better Oblivion Community Center) in 2019—*Punisher* is a set of folk and bedroom pop that’s at once comforting and haunting, a refuge and a fever dream. “Sometimes I\'ll get the question, like, ‘Do you identify as an LA songwriter?’ Or ‘Do you identify as a queer songwriter?’ And I\'m like, ‘No. I\'m what I am,’” the Pasadena native says. “The things that are going on are what\'s going on, so of course every part of my personality and every part of the world is going to seep into my music. But I don\'t set out to make specific things—I just look back and I\'m like, ‘Oh. That\'s what I was thinking about.’” Here, Bridgers takes us inside every song on the album. **DVD Menu** “It\'s a reference to the last song on the record—a mirror of that melody at the very end. And it samples the last song of my first record—‘You Missed My Heart’—the weird voice you can sort of hear. It just felt rounded out to me to do that, to lead into this album. Also, I’ve been listening to a lot of Grouper. There’s a note in this song: Everybody looked at me like I was insane when I told Rob Moose—who plays strings on the record—to play it. Everybody was like, ‘What the fuck are you taking about?’ And I think that\'s the scariest part of it. I like scary music.” **Garden Song** “It\'s very much about dreams and—to get really LA on it—manifesting. It’s about all your good thoughts that you have becoming real, and all the shitty stuff that you think becoming real, too. If you\'re afraid of something all the time, you\'re going to look for proof that it happened, or that it\'s going to happen. And if you\'re a miserable person who thinks that good people die young and evil corporations rule everything, there is enough proof in the world that that\'s true. But if you\'re someone who believes that good people are doing amazing things no matter how small, and that there\'s beauty or whatever in the midst of all the darkness, you\'re going to see that proof, too. And you’re going to ignore the dark shit, or see it and it doesn\'t really affect your worldview. It\'s about fighting back dark, evil murder thoughts and feeling like if I really want something, it happens, or it comes true in a totally weird, different way than I even expected.” **Kyoto** “This song is about being on tour and hating tour, and then being home and hating home. I just always want to be where I\'m not, which I think is pretty not special of a thought, but it is true. With boygenius, we took a red-eye to play a late-night TV show, which sounds glamorous, but really it was hurrying up and then waiting in a fucking backstage for like hours and being really nervous and talking to strangers. I remember being like, \'This is amazing and horrible at the same time. I\'m with my friends, but we\'re all miserable. We feel so lucky and so spoiled and also shitty for complaining about how tired we are.\' I miss the life I complained about, which I think a lot of people are feeling. I hope the parties are good when this shit \[the pandemic\] is over. I hope people have a newfound appreciation for human connection and stuff. I definitely will for tour.” Punisher “I don\'t even know what to compare it to. In my songwriting style, I feel like I actually stopped writing it earlier than I usually stop writing stuff. I usually write things five times over, and this one was always just like, ‘All right. This is a simple tribute song.’ It’s kind of about the neighborhood \[Silver Lake in Los Angeles\], kind of about depression, but mostly about stalking Elliott Smith and being afraid that I\'m a punisher—that when I talk to my heroes, that their eyes will glaze over. Say you\'re at Thanksgiving with your wife\'s family and she\'s got an older relative who is anti-vax or just read some conspiracy theory article and, even if they\'re sweet, they\'re just talking to you and they don\'t realize that your eyes are glazed over and you\'re trying to escape: That’s a punisher. The worst way that it happens is like with a sweet fan, someone who is really trying to be nice and their hands are shaking, but they don\'t realize they\'re standing outside of your bus and you\'re trying to go to bed. And they talk to you for like 45 minutes, and you realize your reaction really means a lot to them, so you\'re trying to be there for them, too. And I guess that I\'m terrified that when I hang out with Patti Smith or whatever that I\'ll become that for people. I know that I have in the past, and I guess if Elliott was alive—especially because we would have lived next to each other—it’s like 1000% I would have met him and I would have not known what the fuck I was talking about, and I would have cornered him at Silverlake Lounge.” **Halloween** “I started it with my friend Christian Lee Hutson. It was actually one of the first times we ever hung out. We ended up just talking forever and kind of shitting out this melody that I really loved, literally hanging out for five hours and spending 10 minutes on music. It\'s about a dead relationship, but it doesn\'t get to have any victorious ending. It\'s like you\'re bored and sad and you don\'t want drama, and you\'re waking up every day just wanting to have shit be normal, but it\'s not that great. He lives right by Children\'s Hospital, so when we were writing the song, it was like constant ambulances, so that was a depressing background and made it in there. The other voice on it is Conor Oberst’s. I was kind of stressed about lyrics—I was looking for a last verse and he was like, ‘Dude, you\'re always talking about the Dodger fan who got murdered. You should talk about that.’ And I was like, \'Jesus Christ. All right.\' The Better Oblivion record was such a learning experience for me, and I ended up getting so comfortable halfway through writing and recording it. By the time we finished a whole fucking record, I felt like I could show him a terrible idea and not be embarrassed—I knew that he would just help me. Same with boygenius: It\'s like you\'re so nervous going in to collaborating with new people and then by the time you\'re done, you\'re like, ‘Damn, it\'d be easy to do that again.’ Your best show is the last show of tour.” Chinese Satellite “I have no faith—and that\'s what it\'s about. My friend Harry put it in the best way ever once. He was like, ‘Man, sometimes I just wish I could make the Jesus leap.’ But I can\'t do it. I mean, I definitely have weird beliefs that come from nothing. I wasn\'t raised religious. I do yoga and stuff. I think breathing is important. But that\'s pretty much as far as it goes. I like to believe that ghosts and aliens exist, but I kind of doubt it. I love science—I think science is like the closest thing to that that you’ll get. If I\'m being honest, this song is about turning 11 and not getting a letter from Hogwarts, just realizing that nobody\'s going to save me from my life, nobody\'s going to wake me up and be like, ‘Hey, just kidding. Actually, it\'s really a lot more special than this, and you\'re special.’ No, I’m going to be the way that I am forever. I mean, secretly, I am still waiting on that letter, which is also that part of the song, that I want someone to shake me awake in the middle of the night and be like, ‘Come with me. It\'s actually totally different than you ever thought.’ That’d be sweet.” **Moon Song** “I feel like songs are kind of like dreams, too, where you\'re like, ‘I could say it\'s about this one thing, but...’ At the same time it’s so hyper-specific to people and a person and about a relationship, but it\'s also every single song. I feel complex about every single person I\'ve ever cared about, and I think that\'s pretty clear. The through line is that caring about someone who hates themselves is really hard, because they feel like you\'re stupid. And you feel stupid. Like, if you complain, then they\'ll go away. So you don\'t complain and you just bottle it up and you\'re like, ‘No, step on me again, please.’ It’s that feeling, the wanting-to-be-stepped-on feeling.” Savior Complex “Thematically, it\'s like a sequel to ‘Moon Song.’ It\'s like when you get what you asked for and then you\'re dating someone who hates themselves. Sonically, it\'s one of the only songs I\'ve ever written in a dream. I rolled over in the middle of the night and hummed—I’m still looking for this fucking voice memo, because I know it exists, but it\'s so crazy-sounding, so scary. I woke up and knew what I wanted it to be about and then took it in the studio. That\'s Blake Mills on clarinet, which was so funny: He was like a little schoolkid practicing in the hallway of Sound City before coming in to play.” **I See You** “I had that line \[‘I\'ve been playing dead my whole life’\] first, and I\'ve had it for at least five years. Just feeling like a waking zombie every day, that\'s how my depression manifests itself. It\'s like lethargy, just feeling exhausted. I\'m not manic depressive—I fucking wish. I wish I was super creative when I\'m depressed, but instead, I just look at my phone for eight hours. And then you start kind of falling in love and it all kind of gets shaken up and you\'re like, ‘Can this person fix me? That\'d be great.’ This song is about being close to somebody. I mean, it\'s about my drummer. This isn\'t about anybody else. When we first broke up, it was so hard and heartbreaking. It\'s just so weird that you could date and then you\'re a stranger from the person for a while. Now we\'re super tight. We\'re like best friends, and always will be. There are just certain people that you date where it\'s so romantic almost that the friendship element is kind of secondary. And ours was never like that. It was like the friendship element was above all else, like we started a million projects together, immediately started writing together, couldn\'t be apart ever, very codependent. And then to have that taken away—it’s awful.” **Graceland Too** “I started writing it about an MDMA trip. Or I had a couple lines about that and then it turned into stuff that was going on in my life. Again, caring about someone who hates themselves and is super self-destructive is the hardest thing about being a person, to me. You can\'t control people, but it\'s tempting to want to help when someone\'s going through something, and I think it was just like a meditation almost on that—a reflection of trying to be there for people. I hope someday I get to hang out with the people who have really struggled with addiction or suicidal shit and have a good time. I want to write more songs like that, what I wish would happen.” **I Know the End** “This is a bunch of things I had on my to-do list: I wanted to scream; I wanted to have a metal song; I wanted to write about driving up the coast to Northern California, which I’ve done a lot in my life. It\'s like a super specific feeling. This is such a stoned thought, but it feels kind of like purgatory to me, doing that drive, just because I have done it at every stage of my life, so I get thrown into this time that doesn\'t exist when I\'m doing it, like I can\'t differentiate any of the times in my memory. I guess I always pictured that during the apocalypse, I would escape to an endless drive up north. It\'s definitely half a ballad. I kind of think about it as, ‘Well, what genre is \[My Chemical Romance’s\] “Welcome to the Black Parade” in?’ It\'s not really an anthem—I don\'t know. I love tricking people with a vibe and then completely shifting. I feel like I want to do that more.”

2.
Album • Oct 30 / 2020
Avant-Garde Jazz Vocal Jazz
Noteable

With *Artlessly Falling*, the follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 release, *Code Girl*, guitarist and MacArthur Fellow Mary Halvorson takes an already intriguing quintet lineup and slightly but significantly expands it. By adding Maria Grand not only on tenor saxophone but also vocals, she manages to create a small de facto horn section (Grand with trumpeter Adam O’Farrill) as well as a kind of mini-choir (Grand with vocalist Amirtha Kidambi). The resulting harmonized lines and ethereal passages broaden Halvorson’s compositional reach. Bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara bring out all sorts of textural and interactive elements and power the rhythm forward during charged improvisations. But the most beguiling presence of all has to be that of Robert Wyatt, UK art-rock pioneer and founding member of Soft Machine—a longtime hero of Halvorson’s who makes an exception to his announced 2014 retirement to appear with her. His vocals on “The Lemon Trees,” “Walls and Roses,” and “Bigger Flames” have a gentle yet mysterious quality, quite distinct in the high and low registers. He’s relaxed and in command when dealing with Halvorson’s challenging melodic shapes, and that sense of calm balances the music’s prickly timbres and dissonant avant-rock, free-jazz energy.

3.
Album • Jun 26 / 2020
Dance-Pop Disco
Popular Highly Rated

When it came to crafting her fourth album, Jessie Ware had one word in mind. “Escapism,” the Londoner tells Apple Music of *What’s Your Pleasure?*, a collection of suitably intoxicating soul- and disco-inspired pop songs to transport you out of your everyday and straight onto a crowded dance floor. “I wanted it to be fun. The premise was: Will this make people want to have sex? And will this make people want to dance? I’ve got a family now, so going out and being naughty and debauched doesn’t happen that much.” And yet the singer (and, in her spare time, wildly popular podcaster) could have never foreseen just how much we would *all* be in need of that release by the time *What’s Your Pleasure?* came to be heard—amid a global pandemic and enforced lockdowns in countless countries. “A lot of shit is going on,” says Ware. “As much as I don’t think I’m going to save the world with this record, I do think it provides a bit of escapism. By my standards, this album is pretty joyful.” Indeed, made over two years with Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford and producers including Clarence Coffee Jr. (Dua Lipa, Lizzo) and Joseph Mount of Metronomy, *What’s Your Pleasure?* is a world away from the heartfelt balladry once synonymous with Ware. Here, pulsating basslines reign supreme, as do whispered vocals, melodramatic melodies, and winking lyrics. At times, it’s a defiant throwback to the dance scene that first made Ware famous (“I wanted people to think, ‘When is she going to calm this album down?’”); at others, it’s a thrilling window into what might come next (note “Remember Where You Are,” the album’s gorgeous, Minnie Riperton-esque outro). But why the sudden step change? “A low point in music” and \"a shitty time,” says Ware, nodding to a 2018 tour that left her feeling so disillusioned with her day job that her mother suggested she quit singing altogether. “I needed a palate cleanser to shock the system. I needed to test myself. I needed to be reminded that music should be fun.” *What’s Your Pleasure?*, confirms Ware, has more than restored the spring in her step. “I feel like what I can do after this is limitless,” she says. “That’s quite a different situation to how I felt during the last album. Now, I have a newfound drive. I feel incredibly empowered, and it’s an amazing feeling.” Here\_,\_ Let Ware walk you through her joyous fourth record, one song at a time. **Spotlight** “I wrote this in the first writing session. James was playing the piano and we were absolutely crooning. That’s what the first bit of this song is—which really nods to musical theater and jazz. We thought about taking it out, but then I realized that the theatrical aspect is kind of essential. The album had to have that light and shade. It also felt like a perfect entry point because of that intro. It’s like, ‘Come into my world.’ I think it grabs you. It’s also got a bit of the old Jessie in there, with that melancholy. This song felt like a good indicator of where the rest of the album was going to go. That’s why it felt right to start the record with that.” **What’s Your Pleasure?** “We had been writing and writing all day, and nothing was working. We\'d gone for a lunch, and we were like, ‘You know, sometimes this happens.’ Later, we were just messing about, and I was like, ‘I really want to imagine that I\'m in the Berghain and I want to imagine that I\'m dancing with someone and they are so suggestive, and anything goes.’ It\'s sex, it\'s desire, it\'s temptation. We were like, ‘Let’s do this as outrageously as possible.’ So we imagined we were this incredibly confident person who could just say anything. When we wrote it, it just came out—20 minutes and then it was done. James came up with that amazing beat, which almost reminds me of a DJ Shadow song. We were giggling the whole time we were writing it. It\'s quite poppy accidentally, but I think with the darkness of all the synths, it’s just the perfect combination.” **Ooh La La** “This is another very cheeky one. It’s very much innuendo. In my head, there are these prim and proper lovers—it’s all very polite, but actually there’s no politeness about. So it’s quite a naughty number. The song has got an absolute funk to it, but it’s really catchy and it’s still quite quirky. It’s not me letting rip on the vocal. It’s actually quite clipped.” **Soul Control** “I had Janet Jackson in my head in this one. It’s a really energetic number. There is a sense of indulgence in these songs, because I wasn’t trying to play to a radio edit and I was really relishing that. But it’s not self-indulgent, because it’s very much fun. These are the highest tempos I’ve ever done, and I think I surprised myself by doing that. I wanted to keep the energy up—I wanted people to think, ‘When is she going to calm this album down?’” **Save a Kiss** “It’s funny because I was a bit scared of this song. I remember Ed Sheeran telling me, ‘When you get a bit scared by a song, it usually means that there’s something really good in it.’ My fans like emotion from me, so I wanted to do a really emotive dance song. We just wanted it to feel as bare as possible and really feel like the lyrics and the melody could really like sing out on this one. We had loads of other production in it, and it was very much like a case of James and I stripping everything back. It was the hardest one to get right. But I’m very excited about playing it. It has the yearning and the wanting that I feel my fans want, and I just wanted it to feel a bit over the top. I also wanted this song to have a bit of Kate Bush in there and some of the drama of her music.” **Adore You** “I wrote this when I got pregnant. It was my first session with Joseph Mount and I was a bit awkward and he was a bit awkward. When I\'m really nervous I sing really quietly because I don\'t want people to hear anything. But that actually kind of worked. I love this—it shows a vulnerability and a softness. Actually it was me thinking about my unborn child and thinking about, like, I\'m falling for you and this bump and feeling like it\'s going to be a reality soon. I think Joe did such an amazing job on just making it feel hypnotic and still romantic and tender, but with this kind of mad sound. I think it’s a really beautiful song. It was supposed to be an offering before I went away and had a baby, to tell my fans that I’ll be back. They really loved it and I thought, ‘I can\'t not put this on the record, because it\'s like it\'s an important song for the journey of this album.’ I’m really proud of the fact that this is a pure collaboration, and I have such fond memories of it.” **In Your Eyes** “This was the first song that me and James wrote for this whole album. I think you can feel the darkness in it. And that maybe I was feeling the resentment and torturing myself. I think that the whirring arpeggio and the beats in this song very much suggest that it’s a stream of consciousness. There’s a desperation about it. I think that was very much the time and place that I was in. I’m very proud of this song, and it’s actually one of my favorites. Jules Buckley did such an amazing job on the strings—it makes me feel like we\'re in a Bond film or something. But it was very much coming off the back of having quite a low point in music.” **Step Into My Life** “I made this song with \[London artist\] Kindness \[aka Adam Bainbridge\]. I’ve known them for a long time. In my head I wanted that almost R&B delivery with the verse and for it to feel really intimate and kind of predatory, but with this very disco moment in the chorus. I love that Adam’s voice is in there, in the breakdown. It feels like a conversation—the song is pure groove and attitude. You can’t help but nod your head. It feels like one that you can play at the beginning of a party and get people on the dance floor.” **Read My Lips** “James and I did this one on our own, and it’s supposed to be quite bubblegummy. We were giving a nod to \[Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force song\] ‘I Wonder If I Take You Home.’ The bassline in this song is so good. We also recorded my vocal slower and lower, so that when you turn it back to normal speed, the vocals sound more cutesy because it sounds brighter and higher. I wanted it to sound slightly squeaky. My voice is naturally quite low and melancholic, so I don’t know how I’m going to sing this one live. I’ll have to pinch my nose or something!” **Mirage (Don’t Stop)** “The bassline here is ridiculous! That’s down to Matt Tavares \[of BADBADNOTGOOD\]. He’s a multi-instrumentalist and is just so talented and enthusiastic, and I also wrote this with \[British DJ and producer\] Benji B and \[US producer\] Clarence Coffee Jr. I think it really signified that I had got my confidence and my mojo back when I went into that session. Usually I\'d be like, ‘Oh, my god, I can\'t do this with new people.’ But it just clicked as sometimes it does. I was unsure about whether the lyric ‘Don\'t stop moving’ felt too obvious. But Benji B was very much like, ‘No, man. You want people to dance. It’s the perfect message.’ And I think of Benji B as like the cool-ometer. So I was like, \'Cool, if Benji B thinks it cool, then I\'m okay with that.’” **The Kill** “There’s an almost hypnotic element to this song. It’s very dark, almost like the end of the night when things are potentially getting too loose. It’s also a difficult one to talk about. It’s about someone feeling like they know you well—maybe too well. There are anxieties in there, and it\'s meant to be cinematic. I wanted that relentlessly driving feeling like you\'d be in a car and you just keep going on, like you’re almost running away from something. Again, Jules Buckley did an amazing job with the strings here—I wanted it to sound almost like it was verging on Primal Scream or Massive Attack. And live, it could just build and build and build. There is, though, a lightness at the end of it, and an optimism—like you’re clawing your way out of this darkness.” **Remember Where You Are** “I’m incredibly proud of this song. I wrote it when Boris Johnson had just got into Downing Street and things were miserable. Everything that could be going wrong was going wrong, which is behind the lyric ‘The heart of the city is on fire.’ And it sounds relatively upbeat, but actually, it\'s about me thinking, ‘Remember where you are. Remember that just a cuddle can be okay. Remember who’s around you.’ Also, it was very much a semi-sign-off and about saying, ‘This is where I’m going and this is the most confident I’ve ever been.’ It was a bold statement. I think it stands up as one of the best songs I\'ve ever written.”

4.
Album • Apr 17 / 2020
Singer-Songwriter Indie Folk
Popular

All copies of the cassette are now sold out. They will ship to arrive on or around the release date of June 19. SO THIS TAPE STARTED while the entire band was decamped at an undisclosed location working on the next Mountain Goats album, and I had brought books with me to read, and one of them was Pierre Chuvin’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, which I was reading as research material for another thing I’m working on; and it’s been a long time since I sat around playing music and thinking about antiquity, but I used to do it all the time, and several of you know that because the old tapes are all littered with stories about Ajax and Agamemnon and the cult of Cybele, stories which, when I was learning them, got me so fired up that as soon as I got out of class I’d drive home in my yellow 1969 Superbeetle and write songs about them. At our undisclosed location, one morning, immersed day and night in our work but also beginning to get the feeling that the increasingly febrile pitch of the newsfeed would continue to rise until it reached registers not seen in a while, I had a thought—what if the next Mountain Goats album was just songs about these pagans? And I wrote down the title “Aulon Raid.” I GOT HOME about seven days later and the world was a very different place by then, and I took my old boombox down from the shelf where it sits flanked by brass deities from a former period of my life, and I got a wild idea to stand it on its end to reduce the unpleasant clicking that made it unusable—the hum & grind are one thing, basically ambient noise that adds to the pleasure of the sound if you’re into it, but the clicking I’m talking about developed sometime in the early 2000s and is not a conscriptable effect, it renders the Panasonic unusable. Unless you stand it on its end, I learned, by accident, one day during the early weeks of the new days. AS THESE DAYS WERE DEVELOPING, I realized, as I’d feared a week before, that the work schedule my band and I had planned for spring probably wouldn’t be panning out. The four members of the band split up our touring income equally, nightly pay & sales of merchandise; before we split up that income, we pay several people from gross receipts: Brandon, our soundman and tour manager of over a decade; Trudy, who works the merch table with style and flair; and Avel, who manages the stage no matter how unmanageable I become. I can’t do what I do without these people and I take great pleasure in trying to make their job a fun place to work. All seven of us rely on the Mountain Goats for our paycheck. The boombox and I knew we had to do something. Back in the early nineties, when I’d first met Peter Hughes, I wanted to make a tape to be on his label, Sonic Enemy. It was Christmas break and I was on a hot streak, so I decided to try to make a full tape over the course of the break. That tape became Transmissions to Horace, which consisted entirely of work done on a daily basis during that span. I haven’t tried anything like that in a while. I WROTE A SONG EVERY DAY for the next ten days while reading A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, starting with “Aulon Raid” and working in exactly the style I used to work in: read until something jumps out at me; play guitar and ad-lib out loud until I get a phrase I like; write the lyrics, get the song together, record immediately. Those original lyrics, exactly as written on the cardstock I save from comic books I buy, with corrections and everything, will be randomly inserted into orders; each is one of a kind, an original first draft of the lyrics to the first all-boombox Mountain Goats album since All Hail West Texas. It seems unlikely that I will ever again offer original drafts of lyrics for sale or otherwise, but pandemics call for wild measures. I dedicate this tape to everybody who’s waited a long time for the wheels to sound their joyous grind: may they grind us into a safe future where we gather once again in rooms to sing songs about pagan priests & hidden shelters, and where we see each other face to face. Hail the Panasonic! Hail the inscrutable engines of chance! Hail Cybele! —John Darnielle, Durham, NC, March 2020

5.
by 
Album • Sep 18 / 2020
Neo-Soul
Popular Highly Rated

When the largely anonymous UK collective Sault released *Untitled (Black Is)* in June 2020, it arrived on the heels of global unrest spawned, this time, by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. That album spoke to the profound grief and rage that so many Black people (and their allies) felt, offering a lifeline and a balm at the perfect moment. *Untitled (Rise)* comes three months later, celebratory in its spirit and poetic in its motion—the fresh air inhaled after a summer of drowning. Soulful disco and buoyant funk inform the album from the outset. “Strong,” complete with regal marching band flourishes, beckons to listeners to get up and move: “We\'re moving forward tonight,” a vocalist commands in the early seconds of the opener. “We won\'t back down tonight.” What follows is a monument to resilience and Black people\'s ability to conjure joy under any circumstances, and the songs keep the freedom of the dance floor (or the square) in their center. “I Just Want to Dance” is an intoxicating collage of percussion, while the loose groove of “Fearless” and the kineticism of “Street Fighter” keep up the energy. Elsewhere, “Son Shine,” with its affecting gospel choral arrangements, connects spiritual history with the present, a reminder that so much of this magic has long been intertwined with the sacred: “Let the son shine through my pain, so we will rise.” Towards the back, the tempo slows into the meditative, strings replace the much of the percussion, and the spaces between lyrics become more prominent leading into “The Black & Gold,” a solemn instrumental that evokes peace or rest. The final track offers one last thematic tie: the pain but also the divinity, a guilty world and the preservation of innocence. At its core, *Untitled (Rise)* is about duality and holding multiple truths in a single heart; it asks and extends levity while ensuring, also, that we do not forget.

6.
Album • Nov 06 / 2020
UK Drill UK Hip Hop
Noteable

“I have to represent. There’s no other choice for me,” Dutchavelli tells Apple Music. “People that make it out of where I’m from, they quickly dissociate themselves because they think it’s better for their brand or whatever. Growing up in these streets, I’ve seen how much talent is out here—and not just in music. So I’m trying to bring the value up of where I’m from. I want it to rise *with* me.” Hailing from the stretch of East London once dubbed the “Murder Mile,” Dutchavelli powerfully redraws the image and fearsome reputation of his Hackney home turf across mixtape *Dutch From the 5th*. Having climbed to prominence in 2020 with a wave of unflinching drill anthems, the gravel-toned MC serves an assured debut of chilling street tales. Opener “Kaka” builds around a skittering flow fraught with tension, “Zero Zero” recounts his journey from jail cell to main stage, and “Never Really Mine” opens an unexpected window into Dutchavelli’s softer side. “Drill artists, we get put into a box so quick,” he says. “It’s important for me to show that I have more to offer. I’ve always loved music, but it was like I never really felt any love back. Now I feel it, 100%.”

7.
Album • Jun 12 / 2020
Post-Bop
Noteable

Following up the dreamy mélange of string quartet, hip-hop, and abstract jazz that was 2018’s *Origami Harvest*, Oakland trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire returns with *on the tender spot of every calloused moment*, revisiting the hard-hitting acoustic sound of his working quartet with pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown (the same lineup that recorded 2017’s *A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard*). In the confines of the studio, they’re not a bit less energized and audacious. There’s a certain loose and limber authority and turn-on-a-dime polish in such pieces as “Blues (We measure the heart with a fist),” “Tide of Hyacinth” (featuring percussionist/vocalist Jesus Diaz), and “An Interlude (that get’ more intense).” Akinmusire’s recent work with veteran Chicago avant-gardist Roscoe Mitchell inspired the busy and insistent “Mr. Roscoe (consider the simultaneous).” (It’s worth noting that Archie Shepp wrote the liner notes for this album, remarking of Akinmusire, “This is the cat!”) The guest vocal by Genevieve Artadi of KNOWER on “Cynical sideliners” finds Akinmusire playing gentle accompaniment on Rhodes, revealing new facets of his musicianship. “Roy” is a soulful ballad homage to the tragically departed Roy Hargrove, a dear friend and role model, while the closing “Hooded procession (read the names outloud),” with Akinmusire on solo Rhodes this time, alludes to the ongoing injustices that have catalyzed the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a continuation of what has become a series, starting with “My Name Is Oscar,” “Rollcall for Those Absent,” and “Free, White and 21” from previous Akinmusire albums. The fact that he articulates no names, only a sequence of resonant sustaining Rhodes chords, lends a certain inscrutable mystery and gestural power to the track.

8.
Album • Mar 06 / 2020
Contemporary Country Singer-Songwriter Country Pop
Noteable

“When I feel like I have a lot of heavy on my records, you need the humor to balance that out,” Brandy Clark tells Apple Music. Her third studio album, the Jay Joyce-produced *Your Life Is a Record*, opens with the former—the sweeping, heartfelt breakup ballad \"I’ll Be the Sad Song\"—while tracks like \"Long Walk\" and \"Bigger Boat\" offer moments of levity and respite from unpacking the complexities of romantic relationships. \"Both \[types of songs\] are better because of the other,\" she says. \"Because of \'I\'ll Be the Sad Song,\' \'Long Walk\' probably plays a little funnier.\" Here Clark offers insight into the wit and the wisdom of each track on *Your Life Is a Record*. **I’ll Be the Sad Song** \"Well, I\'m a lover of sad songs. As many times as things work out in life, they also don\'t work out. That doesn\'t mean that they weren\'t important. One of my favorite lines on the whole album is \'If your life is a record, people and places are the songs.\' It\'s why I chose to title the album *Your Life Is a Record*. Somebody\'s going to be your sad song and you\'re going to be somebody else\'s. I couldn\'t be your happy song. But at least we had a song. It is that old saying, \'It\'s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved.\'\" **Long Walk** \"That\'s something my mom always used to say. If I would get upset about somebody doing something, she\'d say, \'You know what? Just tell them to take a long walk off a short pier.\' It was the last song written on this record. I was on Twitter and there was a guy that was saying some pretty mean things about another female artist. I rarely comment on that stuff. But it made me so mad that I said, \'Buddy, you need to take a long walk off a short pier!\' Trust me, this artist did not need me defending her. She\'s a pretty big star. But it made me really mad. As soon as I tweeted it, I thought, \'Well, I better write that tomorrow because somebody else is going to see it and write it.\' So I went in and wrote that with Jesse Frasure and Jessie Jo Dillon.\" **Love Is a Fire** \"The title is from an old Joan Crawford quote. I had gone down this rabbit hole when Ryan Murphy\'s *Feud* was on. One night I was reading about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and I came across this quote. Joan Crawford said, \'Love is a fire. You just don\'t know if it\'s going to warm you or burn you.\' I thought, \'Man, isn\'t that true?\' So with that, we just played on fire as much as possible without it getting too on the nose.\" **Pawn Shop** \"That one came when I was reading a Stephen King book. In the book, there was a pawn shop and the guy who owned the pawn shop was talking to somebody and said, \'I\'ve got the job of teaching people that something\'s not worth what they think it is.\' That really struck me. Nobody goes in the pawn shop on their best day, like if they\'re pawning a wedding ring or a guitar. But then there\'s also the helpfulness that someone else comes in there to start another dream. There\'s a real sadness in a pawn shop and then there\'s the hopefulness of a secondhand dream.\" **Who You Thought I Was** \"It\'s always hard when you end up not being who somebody thinks you are. Kind of like \'I\'ll Be the Sad Song,\' you don\'t want to be anybody\'s sad song. A lot of times, if I\'ve disappointed somebody I love—be it a lover, be it a friend, a parent—there\'s that moment where I just think, \'God, I wish I could just go back to being who they thought I was before I messed up here.\' Then I wrote with Jonathan Singleton and Jessie Jo Dillon and they were a lot of help.\" **Apologies** \"I had somebody in my life that was always apologizing to me. I had written down \'You\'re so good at apologies. I wish you\'d be better at not having to say them.\' It\'s hard, you can say you\'re sorry and you can hope it makes it better. But a lot of times it doesn\'t. Sometimes for the person saying they\'re sorry, what they really need is for the other person to forgive them so they can be able to forgive themselves. That\'s probably my favorite part of that song, at the very end: \'If you can forgive me, baby, I can forgive me.\'\" **Bigger Boat (feat. Randy Newman)** \"I love the movie *Jaws* and I love when Roy Scheider turns around and says, \'We\'re going to need a bigger boat.\' I\'ve thrown that out in so many writing rooms and just gotten looked at like, \'What\'s that?\' I wrote with Adam Wright, and we were in the getting-to-know-each-other phase of the day. He tells me that his son is obsessed with the movie. I said, \'That\'s so funny. I\'ve always wanted to write a song called \"Bigger Boat,\" just make it about the state of the world or, in particular, our country.\' He totally got it and we wrote the song.\" **Bad Car** \"I wrote that one with Jason Saenz, and it was his idea. It hit me because I think we\'re tied to things. The reason why we\'re tied to an old car, or our first apartment that we\'d never want to go back to, is because of the life we lived in them, and, a lot of times, the people who were alive when we had those things. I think that\'s why we want to hang on to them.\" **Who Broke Whose Heart** \"You hope, in a breakup, you get to where you forget about who ruined whose credit and whose dad hated who. You just get to the point where it\'s like, \'We loved each other and I\'ve forgotten the rest.\' That\'s where that song started. I saw something that said, \'All I know is I loved you. I forget the rest.\' It hit me incredibly hard. It hit me the way \'Who You Thought I Was\' hit me. It\'s probably the most bombastic song on the record, as far as the horns and stuff. Then of course it\'s got the big curse word in it. I think that song is where we all hope to be when we start a breakup or a divorce.\" **Can We Be Strangers** \"That one is the one that\'s more at the beginning of the end \[of a relationship\]. We\'ve all been there, where it\'s like, \'God, my heart is hurting so bad. I wish I could go back to when I didn\'t know you.\' When you were just a random face in a crowd and not a voice that would stop a room for me. It\'s definitely my favorite song to sing on this record.\" **The Past Is the Past** \"That was probably the biggest butting of heads that I had with the record label, and we didn\'t have a lot of butting of heads. They wanted it to start the album and \'I\'ll Be the Sad Song\' to end. I felt very strongly about it. \'The Past Is the Past\' is very bittersweet. But it\'s got a lot of hope in it. So to me, you start the album with \'I\'ll Be the Sad Song,\' which there\'s not a lot of hope in, and you end with \'The Past is the Past.\' The song feels, to me, like you\'re driving away...and that\'s when you can finally move on.\"

9.
Album • Apr 17 / 2020
Art Pop Singer-Songwriter Progressive Pop
Popular Highly Rated

You don’t need to know that Fiona Apple recorded her fifth album herself in her Los Angeles home in order to recognize its handmade clatter, right down to the dogs barking in the background at the end of the title track. Nor do you need to have spent weeks cooped up in your own home in the middle of a global pandemic in order to more acutely appreciate its distinct banging-on-the-walls energy. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. Made over the course of eight years, *Fetch the Bolt Cutters* could not possibly have anticipated the disjointed, anxious, agoraphobic moment in history in which it was released, but it provides an apt and welcome soundtrack nonetheless. Still present, particularly on opener “I Want You to Love Me,” are Apple’s piano playing and stark (and, in at least one instance, literal) diary-entry lyrics. But where previous albums had lush flourishes, the frenetic, woozy rhythm section is the dominant force and mood-setter here, courtesy of drummer Amy Wood and former Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg. The sparse “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is backed by drumsticks seemingly smacking whatever surface might be in sight. “Relay” (featuring a refrain, “Evil is a relay sport/When the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch,” that Apple claims was excavated from an old journal from written she was 15) is driven almost entirely by drums that are at turns childlike and martial. None of this percussive racket blunts or distracts from Apple’s wit and rage. There are instantly indelible lines (“Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up” and the show-stopping “Good morning, good morning/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), all in the service of channeling an entire society’s worth of frustration and fluster into a unique, urgent work of art that refuses to sacrifice playfulness for preaching.

10.
by 
Album • Feb 28 / 2020
Noteable

If we’re comparing it to the year prior, 2019 was something of a quiet one for Atlanta MC Lil Baby. Sure, he featured on singles by DaBaby, Lykke Li and Yo Gotti, among others, but ever since 2018’s *Street Gossip*, Lil Baby seemed content simply to share the sauce with collaborators. With the release of *My Turn*, however, Baby has declared that he’s finished letting anyone else spread their wings and is ready to reclaim his spot atop hip-hop’s throne. *My Turn* is of course built on Lil Baby’s verbose and ever formidable bar construction and under-heralded wordplay. Songs like “Grace” and “No Sucker” find him in fine form, rapping, as he admits outright on track 13, that he’s still got “Sum 2 Prove”. Guests on the project lean towards animated yet high-calibre MCs like Future, Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Wayne, while frequent collaborators Quay Global, Twysted Genius and Tay Keith hold down the production. Songs like “Emotionally Scarred” and “Hurtin” show a more vulnerable side of the MC, but their respective follow-ups “Commercial” and “Forget That” show us that the turn-up is never far. “Woah”, the 2019 hit that gave an already popular dance a proper anthem, is here, as is the Hit-Boy-produced “Catch the Sun”, which first appeared on *Queen & Slim: The Soundtrack*—two songs Lil Baby may have included to remind us that we’ve always gotten the best of him, even when we’ve wanted more.

11.
Album • Jul 24 / 2020
Singer-Songwriter Folk Pop
Popular Highly Rated

A mere 11 months passed between the release of *Lover* and its surprise follow-up, but it feels like a lifetime. Written and recorded remotely during the first few months of the global pandemic, *folklore* finds the 30-year-old singer-songwriter teaming up with The National’s Aaron Dessner and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff for a set of ruminative and relatively lo-fi bedroom pop that’s worlds away from its predecessor. When Swift opens “the 1”—a sly hybrid of plaintive piano and her naturally bouncy delivery—with “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit,” you’d be forgiven for thinking it was another update from quarantine, or a comment on her broadening sensibilities. But Swift’s channeled her considerable energies into writing songs here that double as short stories and character studies, from Proustian flashbacks (“cardigan,” which bears shades of Lana Del Rey) to outcast widows (“the last great american dynasty”) and doomed relationships (“exile,” a heavy-hearted duet with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon). It’s a work of great texture and imagination. “Your braids like a pattern/Love you to the moon and to Saturn,” she sings on “seven,” the tale of two friends plotting an escape. “Passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long.” For a songwriter who has mined such rich detail from a life lived largely in public, it only makes sense that she’d eventually find inspiration in isolation.

12.
Album • Aug 28 / 2020
Nu Jazz Psychedelic Soul Avant-Garde Jazz
Popular Highly Rated

When LA-based vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow isn’t releasing such underground R&B gems as *Overload*, she records as the one-woman ensemble Jyoti (a name bestowed on her by the late Alice Coltrane). But *Mama, You Can Bet!*, the third Jyoti release after *Ocotea* and *Denderah*, is the first to feature Muldrow’s singing. There are still instrumental cuts, including “Zane, The Scribe,” “Swing, Kirikou, Swing!,” “Hard Bap Duke,” and “The Cowrie Waltz,” which capture her way with sonic mystery, atmospheric harmony, and abstract funk as compellingly as ever. There are also two head-turning Charles Mingus “Geemixes”: “Beemoanable Lady,” which employs Eric Dolphy’s yearning alto sax as raw material in a collage of Muldrow’s radical design; and “Fabus Foo,” based on “Fables of Faubus,” with its punctuated horn theme lurking strangely within. There are elements of acoustic jazz texture that Muldrow often brings to the fore, but also timbres that evoke West African drumming, or electronic sound sources that are more elusive, even unidentifiable. The sparse and haunting meditations “Orgone” and “Quarrys, Queries” are in a category of their own, evidence of Muldrow’s next-level compositional gift.

13.
by 
Album • Sep 29 / 2020
Experimental Rock
Popular
14.
by 
Album • Jun 19 / 2020
Neo-Soul
Popular Highly Rated

Released on Juneteenth 2020, the third album by the enigmatic-slash-anonymous band Sault is an unapologetic dive into Black identity. Tapping into ’90s-style R&B (“Sorry Ain’t Enough”), West African funk (“Bow”), early ’70s soul (“Miracles”), churchy chants (“Out the Lies”), and slam-poetic interludes (“Us”), the flow here is more mixtape or DJ set than album, a compendium of the culture rather than a distillation of it. What’s remarkable is how effortless they make revolution sound.

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