My favorite music of 2020

Weird year, weird music. Or maybe just so much music? It was overwhelming, and Spotify makes it easy to get smashed by the deluge. More often than not these days, I’m listening to what is usually called something like ambient, focus music, or new age. Lots of instrumentals. Lots of droney, surging waves of sound. I really like that for focusing, and because I write all day it’s nice to have something buzzing in the background. So here’s what I loved in 2020. Not all of these are new for 2020, but all of them were new to me for 2020.

• SAULT – Untitled (Black Is): Funky in all the best ways, enraged and angry and hopeful and celebratory. When I first heard SAULT a couple months back, they got my hips shaking. Now they have my head shaking. Essential listening in 2020.

• Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher: A nearly perfect sequence of songs. So much Elliott Smith here. Beautiful, haunting, and possibly my favorite of all year.

• Fleet Foxes – Shore: Resurrected from my mid-2000’s heyday, Fleet Foxes emerged triumphant with this (somewhat homogenous) collection of songs. When the album takes flight, it really soars.

• Chihei Hatakeyama + Hakobune – It is, it isn’t: This 2014 album was the soundtrack to my slip into sleep for 263 days of 2020. Beautiful, angelic, delicate. And if there isn’t a better song/album title for 2020, it’s “It is, it isn't.”

• Hamilton: What a joy. What an incredible artistic accomplishment. I resisted listening to the soundtrack before seeing it on stage, and while I still haven’t seen it performed live, I have seen it on Disney+ about 87 times. In a tumultuously political year, Hamilton reminded me over and over that the American experiment continues.

• Jakob Bro, Thomas Morgan, Joey Baron – Bay of Rainbows (Live at the Jazz Standard, New York /2017): I’m a sucker for subtlety, and these three jazz pros bring some of the most ethereal music to the stage with this quick set.

• The Necks – Three: Good lord this is a frantic, hectic, shape-shifting collage of frenetic energy. But like the best drone music – where melodies and rhythms shift almost imperceptibly until the whole thing if far removed from where it started – Three dives headfirst into the sublime, disguising masterful subtlety as brute force.

• Adrian Lenker – Instrumentals: Transcendent noodling and birdcalls.

• Ariana Grande – Positions: Hot damn. Pop music at its best. Don’t sleep on that descending perfect fourth.

• Taylor Swift – folklore: The flipside of Positions. This was on repeat for a while. Possibly the best National album since Boxer.

• Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters: There’s not a lot more to say about this album. It’s something different every time I listen to it. And while it is most definitely a defiant, angry, important statement, I probably would have put it on this list on the strength of “Heavy Balloon” alone.

Some thoughts on radio

While I was writing my second novel, The Shadow of the Chandelier, I got into classical music. My wife was pregnant, and I was either staying up late or getting up early, writing at a furious pace, trying to finish as much of the second draft as possible before the baby was born. I'd be up late, listening to WDPR out of Dayton. They play an uninterrupted overnight program hosted by Peter Van de Graaff. Every time the music came to a close, Van de Graaff emerged from the silence with this deep baritone to tell you about how the next piece was connected to the last. I'd stop every time, fingers poised above the keyboard, listening -- tracing a line with him through styles, genres, decades, dances, countries and centuries. He helped me see the evolution of the music across geographic and chronological space. It's a great program that takes you on a journey, Van de Graaff curating your experience.

Radio is special in that way. I'm not here to bemoan the fact that most radio is dying a slow, commercial-fueled death, but to celebrate its existence, yet, in this on-demand world. There's something wonderful about letting go of media decisions and letting someone else guide your experience. You don't get that chance very often, but it's available if you know where to look. 

I'm sure part of what drove my taste toward classical was the discovery of The Public Radio, a kickstarter with the goal of creating a simple radio tuned to a single channel -- the channel you listen to the most. In the company's mindset, we listen to one station 94 percent of the time.

We ordered two, one tuned to the classical station and the other to our local NPR station. They're beautiful little devices, mounted on the inside of a mason jar lid, with a telescoping antennae and a single knob. Two AA batteries power it for weeks, and it sounds clear across the spectrum.

The other thing that's dropped into my life is Radiooooo.com --  a sweet little app/website that's the answer to a question I didn't even know I was asking:  Where would I find French Cafe music from the 1930s? Tap on a country, select a decade and hear records published from that country and era. It's still buggy, but I'm sure they'll work those kinks out. What Radiooooo.com has achieved is an amazing curated experience for music lovers. Let the app take you where it may, with minimal instruction from the user.

I love these things -- they excite me in this future-world we suddenly live in.

One, a message delivered to your home by the power of the electromagnetic spectrum, the other through the DSL line. Both driven by the elegance of letting someone else curate your experience.