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linernotesandseasons · 4 years ago

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My 20 Favorite Albums of 2020

MY 20 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2020

LISTEN HERE!

2020 has been a long year. A year full of unrest, darkness, death, depression, & a global pandemic. In 2020 I turned to these songs & albums for comfort. I gained 20 new favorite works of music that I will hold onto for the rest of my life. I have been making this end of the year favorite albums list since 2012, so this is my ninth annual list! For this year, I talked about where, when, & why I fell in love with the following 20 albums. These are the albums that I used to mark Time & Space this year. These are the albums that I will return to and remember the chaos, calm, & comfort of 2020. I also made a 60 song Spotify playlist with a few songs from each album (two of the albums aren’t available on Spotify) that you can listen along with HERE! Ok, here they are, in no particular order, my 20 favorite albums of 2020!

ANGELICA GARCIA / Cha Cha Palace

Angelica Garcia’s dynamic, groundbreaking sophomore album Cha Cha Palace was released on February 28, 2020 to a pre-COVID America. On that Friday I had dropped off my ballot for a local Colorado election and went to Larimer Lounge and saw Seratones play a sweaty rock show. I had no idea what was coming or what was about to change. Cha Cha Palace bookmarked my next couple weeks of waiting, and the CD lived in my car for quite a few essential-worker-commutes through a shut down, sheltered Denver into the Spring. Fittingly, Angelica Garcia’s bombastic, authentic energy is where we begin my list of my favorite albums of 2020.

If you listen close to Cha Cha Palace, Garcia will tell you a lot about her roots. For starters, she duets with her mother Angelica Maria Garcia on the traditional, vocal swirl of “La Llorona” (”The Weeping Woman” from the 1940′s) and also her grandmother Filomena Garcia with a darker, more foreboding take on “La Enorme Distancia.” Roughly translated “The Enormous Distance” is a Mexican folk song originally by Jose Alfredo Jimenez, the king of Ranchera (Mexican Folk music) in Mexico in the 50′s & 60′s. Garcia proudly weaves her Mexican & Salvadorian roots into all the colorful corners of Cha Cha Palace, but it is on the standout, song of the year contender “It Don’t Hinder Me” where she truly gives you a glimpse into her youth growing up in East LA & then Richmond, VA (Richmond’s Spacebomb Records released Cha Cha Palace!) Over one of the crunchiest, wailing-est electric guitars you’ll find on this list, Garcia lets her vocals flutter & soar as she sings about being a kid; peeling mangos in the kitchen, being yelled at to make your bed, dogs in the street, jaywalking to the corner store with your cousins, peering through a chain-link fence, a backyard party playing “Suavamente,” feeling left out, alone, or alienated. Garcia stands up for the kids in America who look & feel like her, like they don’t belong. With her lyrics and her voice (seriously listen to this album, she can really sing) shutting down haters at every turn “But what they say now - It don’t hinder me! It don’t hurt!” Elsewhere, Garcia uses that powerful, elastic voice to drive the bouncy, laugh out loud funny “Karma the Knife,” the looped, rhythmic “Agua De Rosa,” and personal favorite (another song of the year contender!) “Lucifer Waiting.” Riding a thumping synth line, twinkling keys, a great low-end bass, and her own yells & yelps; Garcia lets her enunciation take the song places. The way she draws out the “Luuuuucifer” and the way she stacks up “waiting in the cooorrrrnnneerrrr.” Cha Cha Palace is a masterpiece and Garcia’s vocals & rhythms will take you on a journey through Mexico, Salvador, & Virginia, before ending up right back in east LA where, as Garcia would put it “In American identity, there is no one face.”

“Born of the bones from under east LA / Cultura Chicana is alive today / I want some freedom with my pan dulce / Been wearing my roots & flying this flag / I see you but you don’t see me / Jicama! Jicama! Guava tree / I’ve been trying to tell you but you just don’t see / Like you I was born in this country...”

ANJIMILE / Giver Taker

I was late to the party on Anjimile, but Giver Taker has been a comforting companion during the last few tumultuous months of 2020 here in Denver. Part of the allure of Anjimile (full name Anjimile Chithambo, but they release music as simply Anjimile-emphasis on the “Jim” please) is that these songs have been growing and being rebuilt & remade for quite some time, much like the maker themselves. Billed as a debut album (out on Father Daughter Records-I went ahead and hit for the cycle, that’s what I call buying the vinyl, CD, AND cassette!) many of the songs on Giver Taker have been around for years, solo versions & demos Anjimile recorded by themselves, found here fleshed out with gorgeous, layered production & instrumentation. Chorally trained, Anjimile’s distinctive voice drives these songs, at times stately & elegant (like in the measured “1978″ and the blooming “Your Tree”), but with the capability to be sultry & charming like on the bouncy, effervescent “Baby No More.” The instruments on Giver Taker are lovely; horns, strings, reeds, banjo, congas, all played by a full cast of collaborators. Much like Angelica Garcia wearing her roots on her own 2020 album (see above!), Anjimile’s roots are found all over Giver Taker. The gorgeous album cover painting has a background of sugarcane plants, native to Malawi (where Anjimile’s family is from) and behind that, the river from “The Lion King” (one of Anjimile’s favorite films!) “Maker” deals with Anjimile’s spirituality, and the idea that, as they put it...

"The realization that just as I could build my own sense of spirituality & build my own faith and relate to a God of my understanding, I could do the same thing with my gender and my sexuality. And that's what I did.”

In “Ndimakukonda” Anjimile sings in their parent’s native Chichewa, and powerful closer “To Meet You There” sticks with you long after the album ends. From a gorgeous finger-picked opening, the stage is set. A hurricane off the coast of Florida, a queer, trans kid searching from Texas to Florida to Boston for the truth. Simple words about the end, or maybe the beginning. Then the song swells with drums & strings & horns and transports you away from any of those states, dancing through clouds & waterfalls, maybe with Zazu & Simba & Nala. Voices swell, singing along with Anjimile, lifting up praise “I celebrate your celebration! I revel in your revelation! I holler in your hallelujah! In plain view your azaleas grew!” an inspiring ending to a truly inspirational & exciting album.

“After death, after life / I was up half the night / Hurricane never came / Not for me, not again...:

AMERICAN AQUARIUM / Lamentations

There is a point about two minutes and 46 seconds into American Aquarium’s dramatic, title track opener “Me & Mine (Lamentations)” that makes me feel something every time I hear it. The song starts simply enough. A finger picked acoustic guitar (maybe it’s his trademark 1968 cherry red Gibson J45?!) and BJ Barham’s trademark North Carolina drawl singing about blue collar hard luck. The farmers, the coal miners, his grandfather, the hard work, but also the Darkness on the Edge of Town, “unpaid bills, broken homes, & opioid addiction.” The true story of the disenfranchised American South. Another sad one from the king of sad songs. But then... He pivots. The same pivot Barham used to change his life from alcoholic, road-worn, burnout, to his current credo of hard work & effort. A glimmer of hope as he growls “You see me & mine we ain’t the kind to sit around, idle & complain!” With that, a minor note rings out and the song plunges headlong into a true anthem. This isn’t your typical folk/country/pop/flannel/americana whatever bullshit. American Aquarium will punch you in the face with songs about the value of hard work and standing up for what you believe in. The last three minutes of “Me & Mine” explode into fuzzed out electric guitar, signifying that Lamentations (their eighth studio album!) is deeper and more meaningful than anything American Aquarium has done before. Songs about fighting to change your bad habits & addictions. Songs about challenging your parents religion and calling out (and maybe internet shaming!) your racist uncle. From the southern Petty-ness of sing-alongs “Before the Dogwood Blooms” and “Starts With You” (one of the songs I sang the loudest to in my car this year) to the expected sad ones, and even a special, dark one named after North Carolina tobacco (”Brightleaf & Burley”) about the socioeconomic impact of the illegalization of marijuana in the South! Throughout Lamentations rings with American influences, but challenges current American values.

This is not a band that I would’ve picked as one of my favorite current bands. It makes sense actually, looking back. I grew up on country radio in western slope Rifle, Colorado. KMTS played Garth, Tim McGraw, Travis Tritt, Toby, Kenny, Dierks, and all my high school friends were gun-shooting, camping, fishing good ol’ boys. Later in college, I fell again for Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, FGL, etc cuz it was “country.” I always knew that Petty, Springsteen, Fleetwood, & Neil Young were technically better, but it’s hard to deny a good pop-country sing along chorus when you’re four beers deep and riding windows-down on a dirt road. Hell, even Phoebe Bridgers (keep reading-if you didn’t think Punisher would make this list you’re crazy!) sings about singing along to some “America first rap-country song.” (Spoiler alert, she’s talking about how modern country isn’t actually country, and not Lil Nas X. “Old Town Road” rules and i know 100% that Phoebe & BJ & Darius Rucker would agree!). Anyway, back to the American Aquarium mythology. I saw them on a whim, drunk & newly single at the Marquis Theater (holy goddamn do I miss the Marquis and LIVE MUSIC!) back in late Summer 2015. I ordered a Tecate tall boy at the bar (the 24oz kind) and worked my way into a diehard crowd drinking & singing along. Wolves was brand new and BJ opened with “Man I’m Supposed To Be.” I hadn’t been to many small shows like that at that time (been to a couple hundred since!) and I loved how people sang & danced & drank & ACTUALLY SANG! When the Burn. Flicker. Die. songs hit, I was hooked. Over the last five years I’ve had a blast at every AA show and I’ve come to appreciate the value of live, original, independent, rock & roll! I appreciate how BJ encourages us to work hard, get lucky, and GET BETTER! When the time comes (maybe not till we’re all vaccinated and it’s 2022 or whatever) I can’t wait to hear these songs the way American Aquarium intended. I’m going to walk into a dark, sweaty rock&roll club, I’ll order a Mexican beer and a shot of American whiskey, crowd in with people, and I’m gonna sing along to "The Luckier You Get” so fucking loud.

“I was born in the shade of a longleaf pine / The proud southern son of Caroline / Proud of who I am & where I’m from / But I ain’t so proud of how far we’ve come... / Down here we’re still fighting for all the wrong reasons / Old men still defend these monuments to treason / To the right side of history, we’re always late / Still arguing the difference between heritage & hate / The only dream that ain’t worth having / Is the one you won’t chase down / They say sing your songs, boy & shut your mouth / But I believe in a better South...”

AMERICAN TRAPPIST / The Gate

There are two specific moments on The Gate that I especially love. If you’ve followed my yearly favorites list at all, you know that Joe Michelini (who fronts American Trappist & fronted River City Extension) is one of my favorite living songwriters. But after the relative lightheartedness of 2018′s Tentanda Via, 2016′s self-titled, & 2012′s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Anger (miss you River City!) The Gate is a goddamn dark, noisy masterpiece. The guitars are heavier, multiple songs contain 1-3 minute instrumental intros before the vocals enter, and frontman Michelini cuts loose with loud whoops (exclamations? yells? excited moments of pure joy/energy/anger release?!) that are captured perfectly just as the songs hit their respective peaks. The first moment is found on track three, as the laid-back guitar of the backwards-looking “Moses (Revisited)” starts to really pick up. At four-&-a-half minutes, another guitar enters and Michelini starts to quicken his pace. “Have you got something to say?” he asks more urgently, then as the guitars start to really wail “Ask me how I felt, living like I was. My future on the run...” Then he hollers and the guitar explodes into a monstrous solo. Most of the album is contained between that whoop and the next whoop not encountered till track 10. In between, “...Rides Again” recalls River City Extension’s under-appreciated farewell album Deliverance with it’s more uplifting, wandering guitar, and the title track uses a mix of whispery vocals, repetitive falsetto, and an ungodly low baritone to create a vampire-y “Unfresh Dirtwolf” vibe. “Active Recovery” rides a straight forward rock & roll riff and near-spoken-word delivery into a delightfully fuzzy guitar solo. Finally we’ve reached my personal favorite, get on the big train and take a ride with “The Real Thing.” If you’ve paid attention at all, this is a classic American Trappist tune. A repeating, echoing riff, a steady drive, and then three minutes in, the song just jumps the tracks and grows wings. The kind of song that makes me want to be back at live shows. The kind of song that makes me want to be drinking cheap beer at Larimer Lounge, hugging the east wall, sweat & noise & rock & roll, “what if love was nothing like the real thing?...” and then Michelini bookends the “Moses...” whoop with another one, setting it free. The music so energized & electric that I whoop along without realizing it. I wrote a little more about my special connection with The Gate this year (besides for those whoop-alongs!) a Retrospective Anthology Mix I made for myself and The Mix I traded (along with a pair of brand new red shoelaces!) for an advanced copy of The Gate way back in April! Thanks American Trappist! As long as you keep making em, I’ll keep putting em my end of the year favorites list. The Gate is special.

“I’m decomposing, underreacting / I do the right thing but nothing happens / It is within me / It is within me to love somebody...”

BARTEES STRANGE / Live Forever

The songs on Bartees Strange’s debut album Live Forever carry an instant sense of Nostalgia & familiarity. Maybe it’s the mix of influences that I love (Bon Iver, Fall Out Boy, mid 2000′s emo, pop-rock, & hip-hop etc...!) maybe it’s the way Bartees manages to make those “old” influences sound new, fresh, exciting, and completely at home with his voice & production. Whatever the reason, every time I hit play on Live Forever (usually in the kitchen, beer-in-hand), it feels like an old friend. It feels like I’ve known these songs for the last five years, like they’ve always existed. The way his voice twists around & around, up & down in “Jealousy,” the way the Aaron Dessner-esque guitars & synths stab in on “Mustang” (a nod to Bartees’ hometown of Mustang, OK), and the way “Boomer” wastes absolutely no time with it’s “Aye bruh aye bruh aye bruh” intro. Pure, comforting, exciting magic.

Bartees Leon Cox Jr. came up in a band as Bartees & The Strange Fruit. A nod to Nina Simone, a National covers EP (!), and a supercharged debut full length later, here we are in 2020 with Bartees showing up on a ton of end of the year lists. Bartees hails from Washington DC (by way of Mustang, Oklahoma) originally from England, son of an opera singer, lover of music. I am so thankful this album exists in this time and I (and a ton of other music fans get to enjoy it!) Bartees had made his technical debut (a The National covers album!) as a black kids’ response to not seeing enough people of color in the audience at National shows. When it comes to blending his influences, he talks about hip-hop saying “I love how rappers rap about dreams – money & cars & pretty girls & big houses & buying their mom a yacht. Expansive, out of this world, unbelievable shit, & sometimes they get it. It's like this very big Christian principle of like speaking things into existence in a way. When I look at rock music, it's like, ‘I'm sad.’ I'm like, ‘Yo, let's bring a hip-hop ethos to it.’ Like, I want to write rock songs about, like, ‘I want to be the biggest artist in the world.’” Big dreams Bartees, big dreams. I love Live Forever and I can’t wait to see what’s next!

“To have a life you love but know you’re undeserving / Last night I got so fucked up, near lost my job / It’s nice to think that folks are near, waking up was hard this year...”

DUA LIPA / Future Nostalgia

It seems like every year when I start creating this list, there is one big radio album that I listened to and loved so much, that it’s impossible not to include. Last year it was Lizzo, 2018 had Janelle Monae, & 2017 Kendrick Lamar. This year that big, undeniable pop radio album is Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. With nods to a wide swath of club genres, as well as pop, disco, & funk, 25 year old Dua Lipa sounds confident and full of swagger on her sophomore album. She’s already released a DJ mix alternate version of the entire album! It’s sometimes hard for me to describe why I love certain pop songs, but Future Nostalgia feels so easy. Smooth synths & keys, elastic, rubbery basslines, a mix of Nostalgic (and maybe futuristic?!) influences, and Dua’s energetic vocals driving everyone to the dance floor. She channels Prince & The Beegees, mixing 70′s disco & 80′s funk, everything danceable, fluid, & modern. My favorite lyrical moments on the album are when she lets her feminism show through, like on the opening title track “No matter what you do I’m gonna get it without you. I know you ain’t used to a female alpha” and on the dark, catchy closer “Boys Will Be Boys” that talks about rape culture, mansplaining, & slut-shaming. But my personal favorite memories of Future Nostalgia come from taking it along on a few camping trips in the Colorado mountains. Criss-crossing the Continental Divide with the windows down, sunlight streaming through, belting out “If you don’t wanna see me, dancing with somebody!” to high alpine lakes & pine trees.

“Did a full 180, crazy / Thinking ‘bout the way I was / Did the heartache change me? Maybe / But look at where I ended up / I’m all good already / So moved on it’s scary / I’m not where you left me at all, so...”

EZRA FURMAN / To Them We’ll Always Be Freaks

LISTEN/BUY ON BANDCAMP

Ezra Furman is one of the most important, lifelong favorite artists that I discovered in 2020, and even though To Them We’ll Always Be Freaks isn’t exactly a proper new album (cannot fucking wait for the next one Ezra!) it only felt right to include this collection of demos and behind the scenes material from 2016′s unbelievable Transangelic Exodus on my 2020 list. The basic story is this, Ezra Furman makes a lot of music/records, solo or with a lot of musicians. The Harpoons, The Visions, by herself. They recall a lot of things; punk, soul, doo-wop, plain old American Rock & Roll, being yourself, being whoever you want to be, being alone, all the things that matter. For Transangelic Exodus she wanted to do something different, to abandon her instincts. To “get weird.” To make “A record of maximal impact, maximal originality & excitement.” If you haven’t heard Transangelic Exodus, it is all of those things and more. I recommend you wait till a cold night in your kitchen, pour yourself a stiff drink, & listen to it front-to-back... LOUD. I missed it in 2016 (& for a few years after) but I was lucky enough to hear Ezra in time to catch her at the Bluebird last year and it was one of the best live performance I’ve ever seen. Also, Bandcamp exclusives are what fueled my Friday mornings through Covid times, giving money to artists & causes that I love. Ezra has done SO MUCH since 2016 (last year’s Twelve Nudes is a pysch-punk masterpiece!) and To Them We’ll Always Be Freaks (aka Making Ourselves Up in the Rearview Mirror) (aka “Wing That Shit”) borrows its name from the absolutely transcendental, broadway-esque “Suck the Blood from My Wound” which was the opening track on Transangelic Exodus. It is a collection of “demos, rehearsals, & shots in the dark” from an important record that means a lot to a lot of people. Rather than diving into the fun differences of all these demo versions, I wanted to quote myself from February, the feelings that I had immediately after seeing Ezra that night, totally present at the Bluebird...

I was able to be present for an hour and a half. To let go, to suspend, to kick against things and break down barriers that I have built myself in my own mind. It is so important to do that for ourselves and everyone has to work to find their own different methods of getting there. Some people never do, but it is still important for us to encourage & push them. A needling supportive jab of growth. For me, it has always been music. Most viscerally rock & roll (Ezra’s electric guitar playing stirs a power in my body & brain that I can’t put into words… like it could make me fly. Like Peregrine Falcon fucking fly. Or deadsprint all the way to San Francisco) but always all kinds of music. The power to broaden my horizons. To teach me things. To understand someone else. To see the world (politics, religion, sexuality, the true self, humankind) through new eyes. “Skin on my fingers peeling, making way for my new form.” To hear someone say who they are (who they really are) and to believe them. I want that for myself. To know who I really am. To feel beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I should do and who I should be. And to believe me. I am inspired by Ezra and hundreds of others, to push forward through doubt. To find myself even in the darkest shadows of doubt. To scream at doubt and befriend it. To wrap it up in the backseat of a red Camaro and keep driving. Last night I glimpsed something like Utopia. As Ezra says about her Jewish practice of Shabbat (google it!) “It’s like touching Utopia, weekly. It reminds us of what we want the world to be like” And it was like touching utopia. Like a breath of Spring breeze. Like change. Keep digging. All the way down. Till you’re standing upside down in an alternative world. It’s beautiful there, magic is possible. I know because… because well… Ezra told me.”

“For the immigrant / For the refugee / For the closeted / For the out / For the vulnerable / For the homeless / For the searching / This record is an exercise in empathy / A ripening of nightmares & a sudden blooming of spirit / It’s a protest record / Dreamed in dark corners of the heart of a queer grandchild of Holocaust survivors / & what if you had to leave your home because the government was after you? / May our vulnerability & difference be a window into the lives of those who are deeply threatened by institutional callousness & hatred / And may this spur us to great courage & kindness / ‘Do not oppress a foreigner: you know the feelings of the foreigner for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt’ Exodus 23:9...”

FIONA APPLE / Fetch The Bolt Cutters

If you love end of the year lists as much as I do, then you’ve probably read enough about Fetch The Bolt Cutters already. In fact, a few of the albums on this list (spoiler alert, Phoebe & Sault coming! Keep reading!) were so good, so immediate, that my entire social media feed was filled with seemingly nothing else for days stretching into weeks. Fiona Apple coming out of hiding to release her first album in eight (?!) years was one of those moments. Thinkpieces, interviews, and then the inevitable, deserved flood of end of the year lists. As someone who missed most of Fiona in the 90′s and 2000′s, Fetch The Bolt Cutters felt like a revelation. Like finding a brand new, fresh faced artist, fully formed, rebellious, and 100% herself. Turns out Fiona has been doing this shit since I was 10 years old! With an aggressive, current-world-situation-necessitated title lifted from Gillian Anderson’s detective in “The Fall” (she’s trying to save a locked up woman from a serial killer) Fetch The Bolt Cutters is as determined & relentless as it sounds. Pianos twinkle & spiral, drums pound & knock, Dogs bark (one of them is her pit-bull-boxer mix Mercy), pots & pans bang, bells ring, and Fiona herself uses her voice as one of the most versatile instruments, shrieking & whispering, hissing & howling, defiant & absolutely riveting. In fact, almost everything about the music that Fiona Apple makes is head turning and Fetch The Bolt Cutters reminds me of so many things that made me fall in love with music in the first place. It feels free & it makes me feel free. She defied her record label who wanted her to follow a normal album rollout for an October release, and released it in April instead because she felt like it was needed at the time. She recorded most of the album at her house, on garageband and her iPhone. The songs are angry, defeated, cathartic, triumphant, & sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Her writing is honest & heartfelt, working through trauma for herself from as far back as middle school. Fiona refers to her brain-stuff-writing as balls of yarn saying...

“You’ve got these stories you’re not telling anybody. Each one of those stories is like this little ball of yarn. If you don’t express them, they end up getting tangled together inside. Then it’s really hard to sort through them. I got some balls of yarn out in this album and wove them into something I can actually work with...”

Through it all, Apple’s vocals, lyrics, & rhythms are so fresh, so innovative, so exciting, that I feel like I’ve discovered a brand new artist. Thanks Fiona for unraveling that yarn for the last 25 years!

“Hurricane Gloria in excelsis deo / That’s my bird in my tree / My dog & my man & my music is my holy trinity / Tony told me he’d describe me as ‘pissed off, funny, & warm’ / Sebastian said I’m ‘a good man in a storm’ / Back then I didn’t know what potential meant / & Shemeika wasn’t gentle & she wasn’t my friend / But she got through to me & I’ll never see her again / I’m pissed off, funny, & warm / I’m a good man in a storm / & when the fall is torrential I’ll recall / Shameika said I had potential...”

JOY OLADOKUN / in defense of my own happiness (vol. 1)

Joy Oladokun grew up going to church religiously in small town Arizona. Inspired to play guitar by seeing Tracy Chapman on VHS, she wrote her first song about Aragorn from “Lord of The Rings”. There are parts of Joy’s music, truths in the deep, deep melodies & lyrics that I will never understand. She is a Queer, Black woman born to Nigerian parents, dealing with (and singing about) life challenges that I will never know. But then, there is also a magic & familiarity that I feel in Joy’s songs, because we have connections that only we can have. Connections that come from thinking about the same things from our formative years. The way she writes about growing up in the church, the way she challenges the church, the way she pushes her family & friends still in the church to be better. Musically, in defense of my own happiness (vol. 1) (all lowercase please!) sounds like Joy’s own map of America. Folky, woodsy Arizona, some LA soul & production, and big Nashville choruses, like contemporary radio. But the writing found in these songs is different & essential. Effortlessly cool lead single “Smoke” opens the album with the line “yesterday I left my joint sitting on the counter...” Oh yeah, she loves to get high! (sorry church, I’m 100% sure Jesus doesn’t care about marijuana!) Riding an undeniably catchy chorus, and drums & keys that carry the song down a blacktop road, this one got a TON of play this Summer when we in Colorado were trapped in wildfire smoke and I made my littlest sister this Smoke & Fire Mix. After “Smoke” she tackles identity & religion on the Mat Kearney-esque (look him up!) Nashville folk-pop of “Sunday” & “Bad Blood” saying,

"The biggest privilege of being a songwriter is being able to write the type of song that I needed to hear when I was younger, 'Sunday' is the song that 12-year-old Joy, seated in the back of church youth group, needed to hear. She needed to hear that you can be queer & happy. Queer & healthy. Queer & holy. She needed to see married women kissing & playing with their kids."

It’s inspiring that Joy chooses to use the word privilege in that quote instead of responsibility. The privilege of being a songwriter is the impact you can have on others. Joy has been outspoken about social justice, both inside & outside the church, and has continued to release singles challenging the racism running rampant in America. Her heartbreaking “Who Do I Turn To?” deals with the fear that comes with simply being black in America. “Mercy” features a verse from rapper Tim Gent and touches on the current pandemic (and the off-the-deep-end religious turn Kanye has taken). Finally the album closes with the gorgeous, finger-picked, I-wanna-do-better ballad “Too High” (oh yeah, when she gets high she gets... too high!) and “Younger Days.” A peaceful, soul-inflected closer, with Joy’s vocals swelling & wandering through her life & memories to the conclusion “Who I was would be proud to see the person I became...”

“Sometimes I get jealous of jesus for falling asleep in the middle of the storm / Sometimes you gotta feel like drowning to be reborn / Oh I haven’t slept in three days / I know I’ve gotta find my way / Through all of this smoke...”

THE KILLERS / Imploding The Mirage

I knew Imploding The Mirage would be on my 2020 Favorites list months before it was actually released. It reminded of when Josh Ritter released some super important singles during the Summer/Fall 2015 (a very transformational time for me). Similarly the singles from Imploding The Mirage��(The Killers sixth studio album!) came right on time earlier this Spring & Summer. Mirage’s first single was the classic Killers get-out-of-town anthem “Caution” and it arrived on March 12, early on in the pandemic and under stay-at-home orders. “Caution” introduced me to “the featherweight queen” and found me many nights dancing in the kitchen, the volume turned up on Lindsay Buckingham’s wailing outro guitar solo. “Caution” was my number one most streamed song on Spotify in 2020. After that came “Fire In Bone.” A groovier track, released in April with gorgeous peacock single art (the only art from the album that isn’t painted by the wonderful Thomas Blackshear) and fallen for in June, dancing with my brothers & sisters at the lake, one of the first times we had hung out during quarantine. One of my goals with this year’s list is to remember the exact moments when I fell in love with a song or album, and that moment for Imploding The Mirage was playing “Fire In Bone,” right here...

Shortly after that, opening track “My Own Soul’s Warning” had me dancing in the shower and the lovesick, ultimate Flowers jam “Dying Breed” had me rolling down my windows and belting along till August when Imploding The Mirage finally got it’s official release. I have non-guilty-pleasure-loved The Killers since Hot Fuss (and accidentally downloaded a virus on my best friends desktop computer trying to download a "Mr Brightside” acoustic version off of some weird site on dial-up internet in Silt, Colorado in the mid-2000s!) and it’s exciting to know that Flowers & Co. can still do something that sounds phenomenal (thanks Shawn Everett!) in 2020. Oh and... word on the street is that they got a follow up coming in early 2021 so yeah... The Killers killin’ it.

“Cause it’s some kind of sin / To live your whole life / On a might’ve been / I’m ready now / I’m throwing caution / What’s it gonna be? / Tonight the winds of change are blowing wild & free...”

MIPSO / Mipso

After years of encouragement, and with gentle but insistent nudges from my partner’s father; Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Mipso finally made it on my end of the year Favorites list with their sixth full length album! I had seen them way back in 2016 at the Lost Lake Lounge here in Denver (probably on his recommendation), they were touring on their first few albums, still more bluegrass-y, but I loved them and I loved their “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” cover. Since then, Lila’s dad would send us their music, send us stickers through the good ol’ USPS, and Mipso kept honing their craft. Smoothing out their folk, adding pop influences, with sharp songwriting, and warm, Appalachian instrumentation. And, as Lila’s dad says, if you close your eyes, it might as well be Paul Simon singing.

The four members of Mipso share songwriting and frontperson duties equally and each member brings their own depth & humor to the band. Guitarist Joseph Terrell’s (he’s the Paul Simon sound-alike) songs are brighter & folkier. “Never Knew You Were Gone” is a gorgeously, wistful, violin-led, apocalyptic opener. “Hey Coyote” reminds me of Christopher Porterfield & Field Report from Wisconsin, with it’s gentle plucking and mystical lyrics about Wile E. Coyote & Coyotl, the Native American mythology version of the trickster. “Help” is maybe the biggest & darkest folk tune on the album, a minor tinged, string-y burner, that dives into a huge chorus. Mandolinist Jacob Sharp leads the rhythmic & driving “Hourglass” and the late-night rain of “Just Want To Be Loved.” Double Bassist Wood Robinson gets in on the fun with the comforting, wandering of “Shelter.” But it is violinist Libby Rodenbough’s contributions to the album that make it truly great. Her impassioned vocals & lyrics command “Your Body” over an insistent banjo. She visits the darkness on the enchanting, cheater’s tale “Like You Never” and revisits the apocalypse mentioned in track one, on her rollicking closer “Wallpaper Baby.” Finally, it is her tender folk that ties the whole story together on “Big Star.” She sings of the end of time; of swimming & Summer & Colorado. A true classic, a lost Gregory Alan Isakov telescope, mountain stream tune. In the zine accompanying Mipso’s release, they introduce the album this way...

“Future Readers,

Times are tough. You probably know this... Shit has lately been hitting the fan in a big way. Maybe chickens coming home to roost is a better metaphor, since we’re talking about history. Maybe a bunch of chickens have roosted on a giant fan, and they’re finally shitting... We recorded the album back in the latter half of 2019. when all We The People had to worry about was rampant income inequality, a sham democracy, & rising oceans. Ah, the good old days. At least now people can’t pretend it isn’t there. Beats the nineties! A Japanese theme park recently released a set of guidelines aimed at reducing the spread of airborne droplets of the virus on rollercoasters. ‘Please scream inside your heart’ they said. We hope you enjoy our album.”

Thanks Mipso, this one is special. And thanks Lee Cummings! From Chapel Hill to Ashville, Carrboro to Greensboro, this is an album I’ll hold onto for awhile.

“We went down to the water / With a blanket in the back / Had some candy from Colorado / Let the sunlight lay us flat / I awoke from the strangest vision / You & me at the end of time / Would you believe that big star was missing / But I found in your eye... / We went down to the water / When the red was in the clouds / Cracked the windows like kid summer / Like we were breaking out / We went down to the water / Never mind the rising tide / After all we are the daughters / Of unbelievers running wild...”

PHOEBE BRIDGERS / Punisher

The Phoebe Bridgers mythology grows with every tweet, every guest feature, every new project, every new skeleton suit, and every Grammy nomination. It’s almost hard to believe Punisher is only her second solo full length, but if you’re following the fake_nudes mythology you know that she’s been busy in the years between Stranger in the Alps (her impressive debut) and Punisher. She formed supergroups with Lucy Dacus & Julien Baker (boygenius) and Conor Oberst (find Better Oblivion Community Center on my 2019 Favorites list). If you’ve talked to me about music this year at all, you know that Punisher has been a favorite talking point, as much for its typically dark Phoebe masterpieces about mental health, alien abduction, & depression, as for how it has overtaken the entire indie world. Phoebe fucking Bridgers has achieved legend status. The day I fell in love with Punisher was September 1st, when I hiked up across from Red Rocks Amphitheater to stream Phoebe playing THIS show and gaze longingly at the Rocks, wishing I could be inside. Watching a full moon (song) come up in the West, Phoebe playing to my East, drinking beer & reading lyrics, It was cathartic & special but goddamn did I miss live music in 2020.

Ok... on to the songs. Punisher begins innocently enou... umm... it actually begins with a TERRIFYING minute of soft, unsettling sound, a “DVD Menu” track playing after the horror movie has ended, that moment when you’re both sitting there, stunned & pale, too scared to get up and go turn the light on, googling “______ movie ending explained,” and considering death, dismemberment, and I don’t know, alien abduction. I burned myself my own Punisher CD with “DVD Menu” as both the opening & closing tracks because... (spoiler alert) I Know The End. Getting up to turn the light on doesn’t help much, as “Garden Song” is a haunting, ear-worming, whisper of a song that tells a decidedly LA (most of these songs reference SoCal in some way and I love it!) tale about the Rose Parade, killing nazis, growing a garden, and ends with a happy plot twist. Surprise, Phoebe’s got everything she wanted! “Kyoto” was the big single (the “Motion Sickness” as it were), a green screen miracle, a monster uplift of a chorus complete with horns, finds Phoebe singing about boredom & international travel. I personally love the back-to-back of “Chinese Satellite” & “Moon Song” and I feel like they capture Phoebe’s ability to combine the mundane & the heartbreaking & the wryly funny all in the same couplet. She has a lot of great jokes hidden on Punisher (why aren’t more people talking about how funny she is?!) like when she ends “Kyoto” singing “Guess I lied. I’m a liar, who lies. Cause I’m a liar.” There’s a jogging joke in “Chinese Satellite” (a song about not believing in God) about running around “Why would somebody do this on purpose?” and in “I See You” she sneaks in “If you’re a work of art, I’m standing too close!” and if you know the joke in “I Know The End” then you know! That brings us to the emotional centerpiece of closer “I Know The End.” A true road song, written on an epic road trip Phoebe took through Northern California; all Wizard of Oz, Arcade-Fire-Mountains-Beyond-Mountains-Sprawl past outlet malls, all the way to the end of the world. I won’t spoil the ending if you haven’t heard it, but it’s a cathartic, deserving send off to 2020, and I’ve screamed out loud to it in my car more than anything else this year. Love you Phoebe, Love Punisher, absolutely can’t wait to see what’s next.

“Driving out into the sun / Let the ultraviolet cover me up / Went looking for a creation myth / Ended up with a pair of cracked lips / Windows down, scream along / To some America first rap-country song / A slaughterhouse, an outlet mall / Slot machines, fear of God / Windows down, heater on / Big bolt of lightning hanging low / Over the coast, everyone’s convinced / It’s a government drone or an alien spaceship / Either way, we’re not alone / I’ll find a new place to be from / A haunted house, with a picket fence / To float around & ghost my friends / I’m not afraid to disappear / The billboard said ‘The End Is Near’ / I turned around, there was nothing there / Yeah, I guess the end is here...”

ROACHE, MOONCHILD, KILEY / Improvised Sessions

LISTEN/BUY ON BANDCAMP

I have so much fun making this list every year. I start a draft in January, update and change things as the year goes on, and agonize over my final cuts until usually December (or sometimes January of the next year or later!) I enjoy writing about why I loved the albums I chose, and I enjoy reading everyone else’s end of the year lists and finding new favorites. I also love the randomness of it all, and I love love LOVE that albums like Roache, Moonchild, Kiley Improvised Sessions exist. This album was released exclusively for free (or name-your-price!) to bandcamp on Christmas Day, features almost no vocals, a wide swath of exciting instrumental music. Mostly electronic, guitars, keyboards, & drums; at times abrasive, at times relaxing, a true masterpiece. Long live Bandcamp! What can I tell you about Roache, Moonchild, Kiley? Honestly not much! I know of them from seeing Fiona Moonchild absolutely shred guitar for Scott Yoder on a tiny stage at the Lion’s Lair on Colfax in early 2019. She was theatric & phenomenal, equal parts Bowie & Heavy Temple, Mazzy Star & The umm... Beatles?! One the greatest live shows I’ve ever seen (small venue or otherwise) & then Yoder, Moonchild & crew packed up and headed back to the Pacific Northwest. Roache was a new find, singer, artist, instrumentalist (harmonica maybe? the credits are minimal!) and Conor Kiley is an unknown. The music is alluring. The first four tracks (”First” “Second” “Third” & “Fourth” obviously!) swing between bouncy, noisy, jazzy piano, and down tempo grooves. “Desert Underground” employs a mournful harmonica over plinking Western guitar and “Fire” brings fuzzed out, grungy guitar and finally some growling vocals from Roache. The last two tracks put everything to bed instrumentally and the album fades out into bandcamp obscurity. The credits provide only a few hints to the recording saying...

“A cathartic release, recorded on tape in the Summer of 2020. This album was recorded on occupied Duwamish land.”

SAMANTHA CRAIN / A Small Death

Samantha Crain is a Choctaw songwriter from Shawnee, Oklahoma. She is six days younger than this writer (34!) and has been putting out strong, sturdy-but-tender folk albums since 2007. On her sixth full length, 2020′s A Small Death, Crain writes about the mundane and the essential in a way that brings her stories and her truth to electrifying life. Blooming from front to back with energy, depth, emotion, & powerful instrumentation, A Small Death is one of my most favorite albums of this year. When Crain announced A Small Death, she referenced the title as the idea that “everything is always starting over again, all the time.” She talked about her own experience with starting over after multiple car accidents had left her immobilized, unable to use her hands, unsure if this album (or any album) would ever be made by her again. You can hear in these songs her frustration and her defeatedness, but also her celebration, her determination. From the desperate swell of gorgeous first single and opener “An Echo” to the ebullient push of “Pastime,” and the resigned melancholy of “Tough For You.” Crain’s instrumentation holds up to the songwriting, and her band uses flourishes of trumpet, clarinet, accordion, saxophone, and pedal steel (both the mournful-country kind in the late-night-heartache of “High Horse” and the honky-tonk country kind in the blistering, defiant closer “Little Bits”). Crain touches on her Choctaw heritage proudly, both in “Holding to the Edge of Night” when she sings “I am a legend of this land here; I am a keeper of this life.” and most notably in the penultimate track “When We Remain” sung in Choctaw, a tradition Crain carries over from her 2017 album You Had Me At Goodbye. Crain’s songwriting is wonderfully intimate, A Small Death is full of deeply personal memories, old friends, roommate challenges, love, & ephemera (a bar tab, a parking ticket, photo booth strips, stubs from movies & baseball games, an 8-ball, a $20 dollar bill!)

My favorite tracks are the louder ones, “Reunion” is a bouncy, soulful swing about seeing high school friends and “watching exes eye the spouses, but I came alone, I think it’s glamourous.” Haha! “Garden Dove” rides a straight up NIrvana/grunge riff into a bellowing love song. I’ll close by sharing my two favorite personal memories with A Small Death. In July, I had streamed the record but probably hadn’t really heard it you know? (there was a lot going on this Summer) and Chris Porterfield from Field Report (his new one Brake Light Red Tide is beautiful, though not on this list!) posted about “Holding to the Edge of Night” after midnight saying... “I dare you to go outside and listen to this song right now. This new Samantha Crain record is everything.” Naturally I took the dare, walked out under the moon, and laid down on the sidewalk to actually listen to “Holding to the Edge of Night” I felt, as Crain so deeply & eloquently puts it that “evening was my prize.” A truly great, classic song that I will listen to on night walks for the rest of my life. Lastly, in August, for my birthday, my partner asked me to pick a record to listen to, and she made fancy drinks to-go in Denver’s Cheeseman Park. Watching the sunset from the hill under the columns at Cheesman and thinking about how Crain talks about memory in “Joey” when she sings...

“Sometimes I feel like my memories never happened. Could you remind me, take me back for a night? Was it ever real? I don’t feel like that girl anymore. Was it heavenly? I don’t even see through those eyes anymore. A hundred small deaths, a hundred before. I am a revolving door. I am a revolving door...”

“What’s that silence inside me that expands into the dark? / With the traffic lights all changing for no one anymore / The karaoke laughter tumbling out the door / My eyes well with contemplation of the pleasures I endure / Holding to the edge of night...”

SAULT / Untitled (Black Is)

Where to start with Sault?! They put out two albums this year?! They put out two albums last year?! Nobody knows exactly who is in the band?! Sault is what I love about music, what I love about new music! I wrote an alternative version of this list where I referenced everyone who has released two albums this year (?!) because honestly I like Sault’s second of the year album Untitled (Rise) a whole lot too! I mean Bartees had his album of National covers, Phoebe has her orchestral Punisher companion EP, Shamir has two very different exciting records!, not to mention Hiss Golden Messenger’s two full live albums and uh... Folklore & Evermore. But anyway, what can I tell you about Sault that you haven’t read on however many end of the year lists already?! A collective of young artists, internet sleuthing has led me to believe possible members include London soul singer Cleo Sol, American rapper Kid Sister, & producer Inflo. A wonderfully rich blending of genres: R&B, house, disco, post-punk, boogie, dub, gospel, reggae, funk, soul, spoken-word, & protest chants.

Released into a world in turmoil, with Black Lives Matter protests erupting outside my door, Untitled (Black Is) is an album very specifically not made for me. Released into a world that I’m a part of. Protesting injustices in a system that I work within. Music with a purpose. Music so rich & wonderful, with a message we cannot continue to ignore. The only response I could have to Sault’s albums is to do better. To work harder. To take to the streets. To call out systemic racism so embedded in our culture, in my workplace, in my friend groups, in my family. When they released the album on June 12, it was posted with these words...

“We present our first ‘Untitled’ album to mark a moment in time where we as Black People, & of Black Origin are fighting for our lives. RIP George Floyd & all those who have suffered from police brutality & systemic racism. Change is happening... We are focused. Sault x”

I feel grateful & lucky to listen to & learn from Sault.

“Thief in the night / Tell the truth / White lives / Spreading lies / You should be ashamed / The bloodshed on your hands / Another man / Take off your badge / We all know it was murder...”

SHAMIR / Shamir

Shamir Bailey waited until album number seven (and his second album of 2020!) to release a self-titled album. Shamir is worth the wait. A glimmering, mesmerizing rock&roll masterpiece, full of experienced songwriting, noisy electric guitars, and shiny pop grooves; these are some of my favorite songs of the year. Las Vegas by way of Philadelphia, Shamir has built a DIY career in the indie scene by releasing seven albums in five years. He has honed his songwriting & sound, pushing himself far from his (admittedly popular & wonderful) dance debut Ratchet in 2015. One of the things I noticed about my list this year (and about my music tastes in general) is my ever growing affinity for strong vocal performances. From Angelica Garcia to Anjimile, Fiona Apple & Joy Oladokun, a bunch of the albums I loved this year stand out for their vocals. Shamir’s strong & versatile voice guides every song on the album and makes for fascinating listening. Lead single and track one “On My Own” came into my life at some mask-wearing, socially distanced outdoor hang this June, and quickly made it on to just about every Summer playlist after. It’s huge & memorable, with stabs of crunchy Pixies electric guitar and proud, loner-anthem lyrics. "Other Side” is the one that should have got massive radio airplay, all rolling drums, country western tinged (is that not a banjo I hear Shamir?) with shimmering Orville-Peck-bedazzled-suit-&-a-retro-microphone production leading a mega singalong chorus! Finally, between interspersed clips of talking that Shamir describes as “Field recordings of me with my friends-just being ridiculous” personal favorite “Diet” rides a choppy, 90′s alt-rock guitar to a blistering chorus that compares vampires sucking blood to getting to know someone! Ha! I can’t wait for Shamir to bring some of these songs through Denver on tour! It’s not too late to hop on the Shamir bandwagon!

“Couldn't take it anymore / Where do I begin? / I'll get around to it after a glass of gin / I prefer to be alone, but you can join if you like / I'll stay strong for you 'cause I don't want to be seen when I cry / Done giving up my light / Just to stay in the dark...”

SOTOMAYOR / Origenes

Sotomayor is a brother/sister duo from Mexico City who blend traditional Latin & Central American cumbia with other world rhythms & styles (electro, afrobeat, dancehall, merengue, peruvian chica!) on their truly magical third full length Origenes. One of my favorite concert series of the last few Summers has been Levitt Pavilion’s free outdoor concerts in Ruby Hill Park here in Denver. They introduced me to Sotomayor back in 2018. Picture enormous rolling grassy hills, kids laughing & playing & singing, tall cans, picnic dinners, & DANCING! Siblings Raul & Paulina Sotomayor worked with 28-time Latin Grammy winner Eduardo Cabra (Calle 13) recording between Mexico and Puerto Rico to release Origenes (translates to “origins”) on New York based independent label Wonderwheel. They have expanded their palette, making dance music to get bodies moving at clubs & dancehalls across the world, and the percussion throughout Origines is relentless, hypnotic, and downright sweaty fun! Paulina’s voice glides effortless over top of it all, sometimes strong & commanding, sometimes slipping sweet & sultry between synths or stabs of latin guitar. As a dance duo with Raul on beats and Paulina on vocals (they perform with a live band) the Sylvan Esso comparisons are unavoidable. I love you Nick & Amelia and I love Free Love, but Sotomayor has got me dancing in the kitchen cooking Hello Fresh more than a few times this year! Origenes is not to be missed!

“No sé por qué, pero me ha pasado / Que nunca lo he olvidado / Que aquellos ratos que rompen los platos / Aquellas historias que guardan las olas / Pequeñas esporas, momentos a solas / Se desempolvan viejas memorias / Nunca es tarde para recordar / Lo que nos une...”

““I don't know why, but it has happened to me / That I have never forgotten / That those moments that break dishes / Those stories that the waves keep / Little spores, moments alone / Old memories are dusted / It is never too late to remember / What unites us...”

SPILLAGE VILLAGE / Spilligion

The story of Spillage Village recording Spilligion (the Atlanta supergroup’s fourth full length album) is the stuff that will always make me remember the state of music in 2020. Spillage Village is an Atlanta collective comprised of the EARTHGANG duo (you may remember them from my 2019 Favorites list!) and a bunch of other collaborators (more on them later). Rapper & singer J.I.D. had rented a house in West Atlanta to work on his own third solo album, but when the pandemic hit, he invited the other members of Spillage Village to shelter-in-place and they all hit record. The result is a journal-entry-like album of the 2020 Covid pandemic, songs both uplifting & depressing, a group of musicians analyzing & expressing their feelings the best way they know how, through music. During their recording quarantine, they bonded over yoga, smoking weed, board games (monopoly & trouble), campfire s’mores, and talking current events & politics. Through it all, the music they were making was hopeful, forward looking, and religious. EARTHGANG’s Doctor Dot & Johnny Venus drive the rapping with J.I.D., but Mereba is their not-so-secret weapon. Her singing & rapping on the Sunday afternoon soul of “PsalmSing” and Coldplay-off-key piano of “Hapi” is inspiring & memorable. Brothers Benji & Cristo add production & basslines, Chance The Rapper makes a guest appearance, and closer “Jupiter” sounds like a darker, woodsier Avicii & Aloe Blacc track, backed by campfire acoustic guitars & banjos. Personal favorite, the apocalyptic “End of Daze” rides strong verses from almost everyone, references Pascal Siakim, Ronald Reagan, Nipsey Hussle, Sun Tzu, Damn Daniel, MF Doom (RIP), Future, Jesus, & Satan! Spilligion is the result of friends & collaborators, taking on 2020, stuck inside, making music & memories, marking a year unlike anything any of us have seen so far. When I look back, Spillage Village will be one of the bands that helped me mark my weird time & space this year.

“When I make it to the heavens, what's the code? Do I call a phone? / Security at the gate, no plus one, come all alone? / All along the race of life, I took a jog alone / Along the coast, I'm tryna cope, I raise a toast / & we consulted with the Most High / She told me watch my back, front, both sides / Hit a few baddies you never smashed 'fore y'all both die / Let the smoke rise, take the bodies to the crypts / & when the poor people run out of food, they can eat the rich...”

TAYLOR SWIFT / Evermore

One of the main themes I found while making my 2020 Favorites list is comfort. This year, I turned to familiar music for comfort, and I have been a Taylor Swift fan since 2010. I love Evermore (I also loved Folklore) and I love how it makes me feel young and makes me think of memories from my 20′s. Growing up listening to country radio, I got “Teardrops on My Guitar” & “Tim McGraw” as I headed off to college. Then, I jumped then fell for Fearless while laying hardwood floors in Aspen, Colorado in the Fall of 2010. My best friend (Hey Stephen!) introduced me to Taylor as a gifted songwriter who has grown & matured over the years, but still every bit as intelligent and full of wonder & fairytale feelings on Evermore. That was right before Speak Now came out and I was in the midst of a break up from a High School & College first love. Speak Now feels like a lifetime ago, as does Red, but those albums saw Taylor changing her sound, honing her songwriting, and building her arena-worthy legacy catalog. Then there was some long, late night road trip drives with nothing but 1989, and discussing the merits of pop vs. country. I fell out of touch for a bit with Reputation & Lover, but again, Taylor was building her legacy. When she finally reemerged with a political stance, and an inclusive, progressive vision, I was back in! Turns out just in time, because 2020 brought the huge surprise of Taylor collaborating with some of my favorite musicians (specifically Aaron Dessner of The National) on not one, but two new Taylor masterpieces.

OK, that’s a lot of backstory, let’s talk about some of the high points on Evermore. New personal favorite “’tis the damn season” tells a familiar back-home-for-christmas story just in time for the holidays over Dessner’s brooding guitar and (surprise!) Josh Kaufman on lap steel (Hi Josh!) (see Josh Ritter & Bonny Light Horseman!) “happiness” is a gorgeous piano ballad (finished only a week before Evermore’s release!) with the life-long-lesson of finding the good in a heart-wrenching break-up. The second half of Evermore is stellar & deep with The National getting involved even more. Frontman Matt Berninger (or as a friend called him “Bon Iver’s Deeper Daddy”) lends a certain methodic languidness to “Coney Island” and Bryan Devendorf adds those signature, pounding National drums to the unbelievable catchy-singable “Long Story Short.” Predictably, The White Man, Bon Iver shows up in his traditional spot at the end, with his vocoder machine the Messina popping up in “Closure” and lending trademark pain to closer “Evermore.” As we wind out of these fairytale woods, I am drawn back to Taylor’s words upon Evermore’s even-more-surprising-than-Folklore’s release. “It feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn & go back or to travel further into the forest of this music... I have no idea what will come next. I have no idea about a lot of things these days and so I’ve clung to the one thing that keeps me connected to you all. That things always has & always will be music.” Thanks for the music Taylor, glad you traveled further into the forest. Evermore.

“Don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be handled / I’m fine with my spite & my tears & my beers & my candles...”

THE 1975 / Notes On A Conditional Form

The 1975 has always been a mood band for me. I’m tempted to say “vibe” band, but I guess that’s even more scene-y, hipster-y, or whatever. In the same way that I’ve defended Taylor Swift’s songwriting in the early 2010′s & Third Eye Blind’s deep cuts in the late 90′s/early 2000′s, I have proclaimed The 1975 as our greatest pop-rock band. I have said that they are one of the best sounding live bands I’ve ever seen. To this day, I can’t listen to “Me” (Matty Healy’s addiction-facing, heart breaking slow burner that closed their Music For Cars EP way back in September 2013) without tearing up. I think of driving through Idaho in the dark with my little brother, lights blurring out the Subaru windows, him moving to Portland in the Fall of 2015, me cut loose & drifting, trying to find a meaning for my next chapter. Skip forward a few years and the opening chords of “A Change Of Heart” transport me immediately to a bridge in Portland. It’s raining again and the city lights are blurred out the same Subaru windows. I will always associate The 1975 (I’ve taken to calling them simply “The 75!”) with my little brother (they’re his all-time favorite band) and the power of shared music experience. I have so many memories tied with their music, late night drives, dance parties, coffee conversations, and when I make these favorite lists, those are the things I want to mark.

I could say a lot about Notes On A Conditional Form. It’s The 75′s fourth full-length album and it’s hella rambling. They threw everything on this one. The sequencing might be off, it goes from an emotional, Greta Thunberg-narrated opener about Climate Change, to the ferocious, post-punk of “People” to a sweeping instrumental track, to a down tempo dance-y favorite “Frail State of Mind” to another instrumental, to another low-key favorite “The Birthday Party” to another dance-y catchy fav “Yeah I Know.” Now we’re seven songs in, no “Sex” or “Chocolate” apparent singles and we’re not even A THIRD of the way through the record! I love the messiness and massive-ness of Notes, I love the Phoebe Bridgers feature (can you believe she was going to OPEN for them at Red Rocks?!), and I love the unedited-ness of it all. There are points in the last third of the album; that drop three minutes into “Having No Head,” those Grimes-y beats & vocals on “What Should I Say,” or the heavily effected vocal Matty sings with his Dad on the penultimate, Burt Bacharach-y “Don’t Worry,” There is so much to dig into here, drums both real & electronic, rock, pop, world music, jazz, dance, and through it all, Matty Healy (tongue firmly planted in cheek) cheekily poking fun at celebrity & fame. For all of the not-so-great memories I have from COVID, all of the quarantine, stay-at-home, shelter-in-place times; I have many fond memories of dancing in the kitchen, drinking fancy cocktails, cooking Hello Fresh, and absolutely blasting Notes On A Conditional Form. In fact, I listed to this one on the google home speaker so much, that it showed up on Lila’s end of the year top 5 albums! This one’s for you Will, first time The 75′s made it on my end of the year favorites list! I can’t listen to them without thinking of you and I love it. Long live music and the connections it builds. See y’all next year!

“People like people / They want alive people / Young surprise people / Stop fucking with the kids...”

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