The Best Albums of 2020
Anxious Sound
10
Nobody Lives Here Anymore
Cut Worms
17-Song LP
Released October 9 on Jagjaguwar
Favorite tracks: Unnatural Disaster, Last Words to a Refugee, All the Roads, Veteran's Day, Walk With Me, The Golden Sky
09
Love Touched Time and Time Began to Sweat
Pool Holograph
13-Song LP
Released October 2 on Sunroom
Favorite tracks: Italics, Figure and Ground, Life by the Power Plant, In a Mist, Mirror World, Asleep in Spain (feat V.V. Lightbody), Harbor Lights, Vanishing Point
08
The experience of repetition as death
Clarice Jensen
5-Song LP
Released April 3 on Fatcat
Favorite tracks: Daily, Day Tonight, Metastable
07
Love is the King
Jeff Tweedy
11-Song LP
Released October 23 on dBpm
Favorite tracks: Love is the King, Opaline, A Robin or A Wren, Even I Can See, Save It for Me, Troubled
06
Shore
Fleet Foxes
15-Song LP
Released September 22 on Anti-
Favorite tracks: Wading in Waist-High Water, Can I Believe You, Jara, Featherweight, For A Week Or Two, Young Man's Game, I'm Not My Season, Going-to-the-Sun Road, Shore
05
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (OST)
Julia Holter
13-Song LP
Released July 12 on Back Lot Music
Favorite tracks: Opening, Bus To New York, Leaving the Restaurant, Arriving in the City, Stealing Money (Extended), Never Rarely, Bus Ride Home, Song for Autumn
04
Ultimate Success Today
Protomartyr
10-Song LP
Released July 17 on Domino
Favorite tracks: Day Without End, June 21, Michigan Hammers, Modern Business Hymns, Bridge & Crown
03
May You Be Held
Sumac
5-Song 2xLP
Released October 2 on Thrill Jockey
Favorite tracks: A Prayer for Your Path, May You Be Held, The Iron Chair, Consumed
02
Atlas Vending
METZ
10-Song LP
Released October 9 on Sub Pop
Favorite tracks: Pulse, Blind Youth Industrial Park, Hail Taxi, Draw Us In, Sugar Pill, Parasite, A Boat to Drown In
01
Rarities 2007-2010
Women
5-Song EP
Released October 2 on Flemish Eye
Favorite tracks: Bullfight, Service Animal, Grey Skies
During its all-too-brief 3+ years, Calgary art-rock group Women created two of the best post-punk albums I have ever heard: the self-titled Women (2008) and Public Strain (2010). Beautifully bleak, unsettled, and idiosyncratic, Women's sound is a captivating, often subdued synthesis of dissonant noise, atmosphere, and asymmetrical melody. At its most affecting, it nods to the hooky sensibilities of 1960s pop, masterfully reimagined and distorted through their chilly grey-sky filter: “...the sound of vintage psychedelia bleached of its color.” (Pitchfork)
The songs on Rarities 2007-2010 are some of their best, and they hint at what Women might have done next had the band not fallen apart so quickly. The highlight of the EP is “Bullfight,” a song originally released on the Women / Cold Pumas / Fair Ohs / Friendo split 7-inch (Faux Discx, 2011). Here, the bright, punctuating guitar notes interwoven by Patrick Flegel and the late Christopher Reimer (1986-2012) superbly complement the jaunty, rhythmic undercurrent created by Matt Flegel (bass) and Mike Wallace (drums). It's the perfect soundscape for Patrick's haunted, often inflectionless vocals, which, tuned with the guitars, achieve a uniquely melodic quality. “Bullfight” resonates with an affecting beauty that dares to suggest something close to optimism as it fades out. Contrasted with the desolate, subterranean palette of much of the band's other material, it represents an uplifting and unforgettable coda.
