Albums of 2020

[super nintendo chalmers]

Protomartyr today ya humps!

[dad]

Protomartyr today ya humps!

Ultimate success, indeed.

[epilogue]

Current ranking of the 2020 albums I've heard so far (updated):

Fetch The Bolt Cutters - Fiona Apple
Gigaton - Pearl Jam
RTJ4 - Run The Jewels
Gaslighter - The Chicks
That's How Rumors Get Started - Margo Price

Set My Heart on Fire Immediately - Perfume Genius
Suite For Max Brown - Jeff Parker
Dias Raros - Melenas
Homegrown - Neil Young
Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee

Reunions - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Wake UP! - Hazel English
Women in Music Pt. III - HAIM
grae - Moses Sumney
Punisher - Phoebe Bridgers

Angular Blues - Wolfgang Muthspiel, Scott Colley, Brian Blade
After Hours - The Weekend
The Loves of Your Life - Hamilton Leithauser
Rose In The Dark - Cleo Sol
Are You Gone - Sarah Harmer

For Their Love - Other Lives
Song For Our Daughter - Laura Marling
Expectations - Katie Pruitt
SAWAYAMA - Rina Sawayama
Sideways to New Italy - Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

La vita nuova - Christine and the Queens
Folk N' Roll, Vol 1: Tales of Isolation - J.S. Ondara
Saturn Return - The Secret Sisters
Muzz - Muzz
Notes On a Conditional Form - The 1975

Petals For Armor - Hayley Williams
Thank You Ancestor Finger - Harper's Jar
American Death Squad (EP) - Jeff Ament
Eclipse - Addy

Bonny Light Horseman - Bonny Light Horseman
The New Abnormal - The Strokes
Straight Songs of Sorrow - Mark Lanegan
Future Nostalgia - Dua Lipa
Likewise - Frances Quinlan

Beginners - Christian Lee Hutson
color theory - Soccer Mommy
Heavy Light - U.S. Girls
From Liberty Street - Mapache
Invisible People - Chicano Batman

Music To Be Murdered By - Eminem
Marigold - Stu Larsen
3.15.20 - Childish Gambino

[chewm]

new Illuminatti Hotties is one of the most entertaining and engaging punk-ish records I've heard in a while, love it

[digster]

I didn't know they (or she?) were putting another out. Their debut is really fun.

[chewm]

Looks like it's a mixtape or something, it was a.. strange release cycle, mainly due to the Tiny Engines (their previous label) debacle and their attempt to get out of there. I was aware of the band but I don't think it would have been really in my radar had it not been for Sad13, Lucy Dacus & PUP tweeting about this "occult classic" that was up in soundcloud for 24 hours.

It's a weird, uncompromised mess of an album, and also a big "fuck you", it's really good.

[psychobain]

new Jarvis Cocker (Pulp) project



Fontaines D.C (hottest irish band right now?)

[verb_to_trust]

New Bush album baybeeeee!!!

[verb_to_trust]

It's no Bushwick Blues but it's nice to have Delta Spirit back all the same:

https://youtu.be/II6FFc8aej8

[psychobain]

[VinylGuy]

Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee is a great one.

I couldnt get into Protomartyrs.

[Jorge]

Wow the Ambrose record is beautiful! I might even like it better than Origami Harvest

[Mickey]

Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee is a great one.

Yeah I really love this one. Gorgeous and fun.

[chewm]

it's her best in a while, Katie's voice is just

[VinylGuy]

Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee is a great one.

Yeah I really love this one. Gorgeous and fun.

yeah, it grabbed me on my first listen.

[surfndestroy]

Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee is a great one.

Yeah I really love this one. Gorgeous and fun.

yeah, it grabbed me on my first listen.

Enjoying it a lot. There’s something about the easy rhythm having me craving some Stones. High praise indeed.

[Brett]

Mini-reviews of 2020, Part 3:

McLaren - Hard Times
Another highlight of the year is this little mini-album by Toronto multi-instrumentalist Matt McLaren, his first solo outing. Matt brings along a bunch of his pals to flesh out the jazzy funk instrumentals that evoke nighttime drives, chilled out parties, and other such things that are in direct opposition to the album title. It's a gem from a music community that is overflowing with riches and still stands out with its own identity.

See Through 4 - Bog Standards
The first of two albums by the new four-piece version of Pete Johnston's See Through Music project, this is a more tightly structured jazz than what one might normally be used to. The 8 pieces on this album are all rearrangements of songs that Johnston wrote for his first See Through band, See Through Trio (piano, bass, sax), and it seems the missing ingredient from that first group was drums, as the new arrangements breathe a life into the compositions that didn't exist before. As with all All-Set! Edition releases, this also features an immaculate recorded sound thanks to engineer, mixer, and masterer Fedge.

See Through 4 - False Ghosts, Minor Fears
This second album consists of seven songs written specifically for the quartet formation, though this contemporary version of the band has a slightly different lineup (the original band, featured on the first album, was trumpet, sax, bass, and drums, while this one switches out the trumpet for piano and drummer Nick Fraser replaces Jake Oelrichs). It's also mixes in some of Johnston's love for prog rock à la See Through 5 to balance out the through-composed jazz that beats at the heart of almost all of Pete's music. Hard for me to say which of the two albums I like more; I guess it comes down to whatever day of the week it is.

Pearl Jam - Gigaton
There's nothing I can say about this that hasn't already been said in the 1000+ pages of discussion on here. It's super weird to have a Pearl Jam album as possibly my favorite release of the year in 2020, and it has pushed them back into relevancy for me to the point that they might be my favorite band again. I know that there's probably something psychological about the whole situation in regards to our new Covid-influenced life, current events, and the oddly prescient nature of the songs' subject matter making the album resonate in a way that it might not have had it come out last year.

Dun-Dun Man - P-->a-->n-->d-->e-->m-->o-->s 1-->10
Ten demos of what will hopefully be a fully-fledged Dun-Dun Band album sometime in the future, all played by the Dun-Dun Man himself, Craig Dunsmuir. Minimalist style phasing fused to a relaxed Afro-Carribean groove, there's quite a lot of charm here despite the relatively unrefined nature of the material. This more like an appetizer than an entree, since now I'm all stoked up about a potential release that might never exist.

Kanada 70 - Lavi Hcra II and Lavi Hcra III
In addition to the above Dun-Dun demos, Craig Dunsmuir has also been opening up his archives of various recordings, most notably a series of collections of his Kanada 70 material, originally released in Toronto as nearly two dozen free CD-Rs in the late '00s. Lavi Hcra I was released in 2017, but all this new free time inspired Craig to put together two more. The first collection was almost all new to me, the second one was about half familiar, half new, and the third was also mostly new (between the three collections, there are currently 60 tracks and I know there's more yet unreleased). It's neat to hear the stuff I already knew alongside the tracks they were originally released with. A bit of everything in the Dunsmuir sound world here: homemade dub, electro, scuzzy rock, West African guitar pop, noise, etc.

[epilogue]

Wow the Ambrose record is beautiful! I might even like it better than Origami Harvest

Finally got around to this. Really loved it.

[i got bugs]

New Bush album baybeeeee!!!

Haha i was just about to post how I just downloaded this.. when was the last time they made music??

[Toots McSharty]

Protomartyr today ya humps!

Fuck yes