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.