2020: a terrible year for life, but a sneakily great year for music.
15) Music by Gestalt, Debussy’s Fawn – With a raucous propulsion of energy that recalls The Bad Plus, Music by Gestalt is a jazz trio that refuses to conform to genre expectations. In addition to formal adventurousness and aggressive timbres and grooves, the group further subverts jazz trio conventions by often utilizing the bass as the primary melodic instrument, which gives their sound a strong sense of originality and vitality.
14) ARTEMIS, ARTEMIS – Featuring seven of the finest living jazz musicians, including trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and clarinetist Anat Cohen, ARTEMIS is a super group that coalesces into something more than just a group of fine musicians getting together. Sure, the playing is phenomenal, but the writing is also varied and exciting.
13) Thundercat, It Is What It Is – Bassist/resident bad-ass Thundercat has a sound and technique on bass that is immediately identifiable, and as a leader he further sets himself apart with a sound that borrows from artists like Herbie Hancock, Jaco Pastorius, and Curtis Mayfield. His latest features a number of killer hooks, and it might be his most accessible record while still staying true to his unique voice.
12) HAIM, Women In Music Pt. III – The sisters Haim continue to create catchy yet nuanced pop gems, but their latest adds a bit more diversity and whimsy to their repertoire. With an assist from former Vampire Weekender Rostam Batmanglij as producer, Women flashes some of the same exploration of unexpected instruments that is found on VW records to create a fresh new take on Haim’s sound without abandoning it.
11) Avishai Cohen, Big Vicious – Though Cohen has built his reputation as a jazz trumpeter, Big Vicious borrows more from ambient rock and classical styles to create a sound that is genuinely unique. Even with its stylistic diversity, Cohen’s warm tone and dexterous playing is the highlight, and it melds all of the record’s disparate parts together into a beautiful collage.
10) Lianne La Havas, Lianne La Havas – British singer/songwriter Lianne La Havas’ self-titled release bristles with an intimate energy that is sparked by her captivating, soulful vocals and introspective rock/R&B grooves. There is a sense of propulsive chill permeating the record that recalls late-era Radiohead, so it is fitting that a high-point is her other-worldly cover of their song “Weird Fishes”.
9) Run The Jewels, RTJ4 – Run The Jewels – the collaboration between rappers Killer Mike and El-P – have built their brand on combining Rick Rubin-esque hip hop-via-rock grooves and production with bluntly vital social commentary. 2020 unfortunately reminded us that issues of equity and basic safety for Black Americans and other oppressed communities are not going away, and RTJ’s barbed lyrics (and hooks) felt as poignant and necessary as ever.
8) Chloe x Halle, Ungodly Hour – Although real-life sisters Chloe and Halle Bailey are in their early 20’s, their music is a tall slice of 90’s R&B that would make Brand & Monica proud (they were discovered and mentored by Beyonce, so this checks out). Their music is much more than catchy hooks and sultry vocals, though, as each track is intricately layered without ever sounding overcooked, and their bass lines in particular stand out as being slyly unique while still fitting perfectly within their style.
7) Fleet Foxes, Shore – Although Shore boasts a sleeker production and more bursts of energy than we’ve come to expect from Fleet Foxes, what remains unchanged is the organic beauty at the core of their songcraft. Tight vocal harmonies that neither sound overproduced nor fail to earn their emotional earnestness continue to elevate their status as the preeminent Americana torchbearers.
6) Laura Marling, Song For Our Daughter – Staking her claim as one of the most consistently brilliant singer/songwriters of her generation, Marling’s seventh studio album is yet another dazzling collection of beautifully written modern folk classics. From the Paul Simon-inspired stomp of “Strange Girl” to the aching simplicity of “Fortune”, Daughter is subtly diverse in its sonic palette. But, as ever, the big draw here is Marling’s vocals, which perfectly emote a full spectrum of timbres that heighten the impact of each song.
5) Fiona Apple, Fetch the Boltcutters – Apple’s latest fits well into her canon, in that sounds different from every other album she’s made yet is unmistakably a Fiona Apple record. The music has a prickly rawness to it with the saloon-esque upright piano and Apple’s searing vocals that oscillate playfully from intimately subdued to primal, but this also manifests itself in the songwriting. Apple’s approach to form is delightfully unpredictable, and the way she whiplashes between different registers, rhythms, and timbres within songs is inspiring.
4) Jacob Collier, Djesse Vol. 3 – As the third installment in his 4-part Djesse project, Collier’s winning streak continues with a shift towards pop, funk, and hip-hop. What hasn’t changed, though, is Collier’s technical virtuosity, mind-melting approach to harmony and rhythm, or his kid-in-a-toy-store approach to song construction or studio experimentation.
3) Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia – Dua Lipa’s sophomore effort was, in many ways, the antithesis of 2020: unabashedly glitzy, unapologetically upbeat, and undeniably revisitable. Nostalgia is pristinely engineered and chock-full of earworms, but each track is also layered with a diverse palette of timbres and deceptive nuance.
2) Go Go Penguin, Go Go Penguin – Soaringly epic yet wholly intimate, this self-titled release from Manchester, England-based jazz trio Go Go Penguin craftily fuses jazz with the neo-psychedelic heartland rock sounds of bands like The War on Drugs. The group explores a shockingly wide palette of sounds for its limited instrumentation, and all three instruments incorporate a nearly orchestral range of timbres. Featuring minimal improvisation and a sound world enveloped in a rich cocoon of reverb, GGP place an emphasis on songcraft that stands as unique within their genre.
1) Moses Sumney, grae – Of all grae’s superlative traits, perhaps the most valuable is its perpetual duality (perhaps not coincidentally, grae was released in two parts, with both dropping in 2020). The music creates so many layers without ever sounding dense or cluttered. Its depth makes the music impossible to classify, which I absolutely see as a positive. The music uses an arsenal of instruments and sounds that all weave together seamlessly, and although almost every track feels like it comes from a different genre or era, the album works remarkably well as a cohesive whole. Uniting everything is Sumney’s intimate yet powerful voice and his lyrical narrative that explores a wide spectrum of identity (Sumney, the son of Ghanaian parents, was honored this year by Queerty as one of 50 heroes “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people”). The album explores a broader theme of isolation that is not only brilliantly constructed from a metastructural perspective, it is also enriching for its emotional honesty.