I’ve been kicking around the idea of making this list since the release of Deerhunter’s last album, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared. After being whelmed by their 2015 record Fading Frontier, Disappeared really got me back into the band in a big way. I saw them technically twice on that tour and had a huge resurgence back into my listening repertoire while crafting my Best of the Decade list (mostly Halcyon Digest, but that had a lot of carry-over into their other records). According to my last.fm account I’ve accumulated near 1,500 plays for the group since 2013, with every almost year since then tallying at least 100 plays. I love this dang band! So I thought I’d organize my favorite songs and potentially score them either some new fans who hadn’t dug into their discography yet, or some new streams from fellow fans. Win-Win! Except if people start to attack me over my stupid opinions. Then it’s a bad time. But I want it to be a good time.
I recently got into Ghanian group Marijata and their debut record This Is Marijata, released in 1976. If you’re looking for some more raw funk records right now, ripe with hot keys, blown out horns, honed-in bass, and some pained vocals, look no further. This record is a masterclass in the form and has some unreal grooves and emotion on it. An essential add to any funk or African music collection.
Just saw that the underrated and overlooked songwriter and musician Emitt Rhodes passed away today. I’m not terribly familiar with his music outside of the semi-recent record released via Secretly Canadian, and also included this track on one of my playlists “Rose Garden, 2AM”. Great tune, please listen!
Hopefully going to start posting some rare groove / new age / whatever fun music I’ve collected over the years again. I had a run going in May but everything got screwed up near the end there. I’m not sure how I came across this record, probably thought the cover was amazing (it is) and ended up loving it. Tony Vieijra’s Work And Leisure (1982) is a great instrumental folk / synth exploration / Rhodes worship record. Perfectly emblematic of the sound of the time. I highly recommend finding the entire LP and listening, cause it’s worth it, especially during the sweltering heat of the summer. Just sweat through it, baby.
The year is only halfway over even though it’s felt like it’s been ending for at least the whole thing. I don’t need to be the one to tell you that 2020 has been the most intense, turbulent and upsetting year of most of our lives. If it hasn’t been that for you… I’m suspicious. I do send my condolences to you if you did lose anyone in your life to COVID or hell, police brutality this year. In any case, the music kept coming – some really good stuff at that. Thinking back to this time last year, I didn’t have a clear frontrunner for top favorite, or even a super-steady Top 10. This year I feel like I’ve got a really solid core Top 10, plus some other spirited top favorites. I feel like I’ve had to latch onto records and use them as security blankets. Makes sense.
In a sea of impenetrable darkness, eternal deceit coming from places of power and idiocy from places close to us; the steady flow of creativity, inspiration and generosity of musicians and artists has been a beacon. Below you’ll find my Top 25 favorite records of the year so far (listed in order! wow!), Top Five favorite EPs from 2020, 40 favorite songs (in alphabetical order), and a list of every 2020 record I’ve listened to this year. Thank you to all the artists mentioned below. I’ve linked all the album art to the artists’ Bandcamp pages, or places you could potentially buy their music. I hope you enjoy + find something that can bring you comfort.
25 GR8 ALBUMS OF 2020 SO FAR:
1. CINDY LEE – What’s Tonight To Eternity (W.25th St/Superior Viaduct)
Mimicking the pirouettes and plies from an old black and white VHS recording of ballet in a decrepit, empty apartment building.
~~ There is no other album from 2020 that transports me to a world like this one does. Cindy Lee is the project of Pat Flegel, known in the 10s as the singer for the band Women, and over half a decade deep into releasing music as their drag persona Cindy Lee, an act that acts as a marriage between retro pop of the 50s and 60s with harsh noise and murder movie marathon synth worship. The pairing hasn’t sounded better than on What’s Tonight To Eternity, which is harrowing and comforting in the same breath.
Songs like “Speaking From Above” and “I Want You To Suffer” bring the most brutal noise found on the record, but also some of the most gorgeous, touching melodies and vocal performances. The title track and “Lucifer Stand” layer on ghoulish synth stabs and build a narrative almost solely through instrumentals. Then “The Limit” and “Heavy Metal” are just blissful, blown out ballads. This record stretches across a spectrum, but always feels like you’re consistently in one totally unique, Silent Hill-esque world. It reminds me a lot of The Caretaker at points, using a familiar, recognizable blueprint of retro pop melodies and rhythms but obscures them with blankets of feedback and clatter, replicating that of a clouded memory failing to recall past glories. It’s not an easy listen, but I cannot recommend visiting this world for yourself enough.
2. TOPS – I Feel Alive (Musique TOPS)
Rollerblading through a hometown mall with your friends and encountering glamorous drama between rival schools in your town.
~~ I have been a die-hard TOPS fan since their debut in 2012. I’ve seen them live five times and even booked them a show at my university. I want you to know how happy I am that I love this album so much. I liked Sugar At the Gate quite a bit, Picture You Staring basically soundtracked my final year of college, and their debut Tender Opposites has some all-time best songs in their discography, but no full album has hit me like I Feel Alive has. The upbeat songs are punchier, the slower ballads have the satisfying hooks that keep me engaged and the full band performances are on point. Jane Penny is sounding the best ever, her voice full of steady emotion matching the beefed up instrumentals.
The ONLY bad thing about this record… is that I can’t hear these songs live until who knows when!! TOPS are one of the best live bands since their setlists are just full of their satisfying pop tunes and ballads. I can already see so many of the album cuts here fitting right in with classics. Let’s please have a moment of silence for the world not being able to see the smiles of the bandmates after they play the last dog bark sound effect on “Drowning In Paradise” live until who knows when.
3. CHARLI XCX – how i’m feeling now (Atlantic / Asylum)
Vision blurring after endlessly scrolling through your phone until 5am every night.
~~ Charli XCX set the bar high in 2020 (in May no less) by releasing an entire record of new material she wrote, recorded and produced (with some outside help) solely during quarantine, most of which all relates to emotions and feelings stemming from being cooped up due to a worldwide pandemic. How does one synthesize this stressful time into entertaining pop songs? By harnessing and pressing that anxious energy that would normally be spent performing for thousands of fans or dancing with friends in clubs into equally anxious and violent bangers (see, “pink diamond”, “anthems”, “visions”). Charli also confronts the self doubt, the wicked voices in her head about her relationship and the goodness of spending time with her partner on other tracks. The whole thing isn’t SUPER watertight, but the highs have warranted an insane amount of replays with me. As someone who went to damn near 200 concerts last year “anthems” is truly the song that speaks to me the most. We all just wanna see our friends.
4. SAULT – UNTITLED (Black Is) (Forever Living Originals)
An unending, unyielding, unbreakable, unstoppable, inspirational, beautiful, foundational force that pushes gloriously forward against madness and injustice.
~~ “The Revolution Has Come”. Almost uncannily timed for this particular moment in time, but at the same time, this unrest, injustice and widespread cruelty has been rampant and a major theme in this country and the world for centuries. It just feels especially relevant right now, but it could have come out summer 2014, in November of 2016… pick any time in the last half decade and it’ll be relevant. SAULT are a semi-shadowy collective from the UK making inflammatory soul and R&B with a smooth kick, easy to listen to alongside the potent messages. SAULT put out two of the best albums of 2019 and few people (except the cool ones) picked up on it. Hopefully this record gets them a higher profile, because they deserve it. This music isn’t about raising their profile, but it’d be nice. UNTITLED is a beautiful, touching, powerful record that uses tenderness as a weapon.
5. YVES TUMOR – Heaven To A Tortured Mind (Warp)
Alien glam rock entity from the same universe as Interstella 5555 reckons with their former self as their memories are returned to them.
~~ Once I stopped caring that Yves Tumor stopped being as wildly experimental and obtuse like they were on previous records and recognize that they instead made a wildly catchy and adventurous… almost glam rock record, I was happy. Yves Tumor nails the aesthetics of their recent press photo style with the music on this record, melting and rapidly kaleidoscoping in and out of focus, bathed in bright colors and face paint, adorned in big glasses, cowboy hats and glamorous hair. There are a few inconsistent moments on the album as a whole, but for the amount of ridiculous highs this album has the lows are barely a footnote. Also shout out to all the guest singers on this one, they really bring a whole new flavor to break up the album quite a bit in terms of timbre.
In June’s edition of Recommended Albums, we’re featuring a multiple releases that were incredibly well-timed for this moment. SAULT, Space Afrika and Armand Hammer all confront and synthesize the waves of unrest and pain the country, specifically Black folk, are and have been feeling for hundreds of years. Westerman and Bibio provide a balm of sorts to heal a weary heart, and everything else offers great entertainment. It was hard to pick just 10 records this month. Extra shout out to projects from Gum Country, Skee Mask and Quin Kirchner.
Also wanted to shout out the image I made for this month, the last picture I took out of my Brooklyn apartment window before I moved. I wrote the majority of these Recommended Albums posts from this room and have absolutely featured the view out of it in header images before. One last psychedelic hoorah for Himrod Street. Thanks for reading.
Armand Hammer – Shrines [Backwoodz Studios] Digital distortion-covered footage of a forced smile, broadcasted on a LCD TV hanging loosely over a borough street.
Bibio – Sleep On The Wing [Warp] Finding super 8 film footage of your older relatives as their younger selves at outdoor summer parties and gatherings, basking in the innocence of the time.
Hum – Inlet [Earth Analog] A massive temple rising out of the sand on a distant planet not dissimilar to our own.
Jessie Ware – What’s Your Pleasure? [PMR / Virgin EMI] A roller rink disco fantasy of your dreams, sweat cooled by a swiveling fan each circuit.
Jockstrap – Wicked City [Warp] Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz attempts to return home but accidentally warps herself to a post-apocalyptic future and is celebrated by a cult of Wizard of Oz film fanatics.
Kate NV – Room For The Moon [RVNG Intl.] Innocuously tuning into a late night public access one-person theatre production complete with puppets, costume changes, magic tricks, a planetarium backdrop, velvet curtains and in-camera editing.
Pottery – Welcome To Bobby’s Motel [Partisan] Couch surfing on a wave of trash on the hottest night of the year down a busy city avenue.
SAULT – UNTITLED (Black Is) [Forever Living Originals] An unending, unyielding, unbreakable, unstoppable, inspirational, beautiful, foundational force that pushes gloriously forward against madness and injustice.
Space Afrika – hybtwibt? [Self-Released] Synthesizing repressed and difficult memories with everyday ambient noise into a dreamlike tapestry, warping and distorting around you depending on your mood.
Westerman – Your Hero Is Not Dead [Partisan] Swimming down a river at sunrise scented with pleasing, balmy fragrances.
GR8 SONGS OF JUNE 2020:
Arca – “Watch (feat. Shygirl)”
Armand Hammer – “Frida (feat. Quelle Chris & FIELDED)”
I’ve been following Bibio for nearly 10 years now and it brings me such joy that his music is not only constantly evolving and taking new forms, but retaining me as a steady fan throughout. From his groovy psychedelic funk, to Boards of Canada worship, to steady piano-based ambient, to lush folk, Bibio has maintained a signature voice. This new LP/EP of his Sleep On The Wing arrives quickly after his last record Ribbons, which hinted at the material we’d find here, which is pretty straight-up instrumental folk with an emphasis on violin melodies and dense, finger-picked guitar. It somehow sounds like the human voice has merged with nature’s, or calling forward to a time in nature where humanity is merely an echo in nature’s existence. Pieces of media that come to mind while listening: Pikmin games, the manga Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, the animated mini-series Over The Garden Wall, and certain parts of the video game Oxenfree.
“Oakmoss” is another favorite off this record (and the only other song on the record with vocals), but the title track / first single is just a majestic tune. It reminds me of fiddle music that I played as a youth, with the mandolin and violin double-teaming a melody that mirrors that of a rising and descending bird, along with the guitar and cello providing a solid backdrop. A classic Bibio flute-tone keyboard comes in as well. It’s gorgeous, aerial, summery music, somehow striking nostalgic flavors of the past while keeping itself current. The whole project is quick and very much worth your time.
Not much to say here folks. Continue seeking out and listening to black and other POC artists, even when they’re not delivered to you from your favorite sources. I’m definitely going to be out on the hunt. In the meantime, please keep reading about how you can impact your community, root out racists in your life (and in your mind), read about how fucked our entire economic framework is, mass incarceration, the whole nine. I recommend it.
Read more to find my 10 favorite records from May 2020, including pop royalty, some fantastic hip hop, Middle Eastern disco jams, bleary funk and more.
It’s tough to post about anything besides protests, defunding the police, psychotic police brutality, Black Lives Matter, radical injustices and the like – and you should KEEP posting about all of that until things become fixed. That might take a while – who cares! We care!
However, I’ve still been digging into plenty of music, including the new album from TootArd, a Golan Heights-born, Israel & Switzerland-based duo making synth powered dance music reminiscent of Middle Eastern disco & reggae club music from the 1980s. The new record Migrant Birds is out now via Glitterbeat, and I cannot recommend it enough. I’ve been digging into a lot of my backlog during this time, which is mostly records I’ve found in “rare groove” forums and the like, and this feels like a modern “rare world groove” record. Something that you’d find on YouTube with like under 5,000 views or in a bin you’ve never looked through at your favorite record store. That’s obviously my western bias thinking this is some sort of rare, exotic thing, but I can absolutely confirm you should listen regardless.
The melodies are fantastic, the instrumentation is top notch, and the whole thing is just fabulous. I gotta check out their debut record, but I just can’t stop listening to Migrant Birds right now. If you’re looking for some non-western dance music that might breathe some new life into your stress-fatigued corpse.
I’m continuing to plow through my backlog of releases I’ve collected in my library and boy howdy I’ve struck another gem. Ann Steel is the project of Ann Steel and Italian composer Robert Cacciapaglia, an early electronic pop project that completely blew my brains after multiple listens last night. It’s incredibly “brainy”, with Ann Steel singing clean and pristine lyrics about science, technology and hanging out with geniuses in lavish landmarks. All this happening with quaint, chunky electronics bent and structured to sound like pop music. My first thought was obviously Kraftwerk and all of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s production on fellow Japanese pop stars in the early 80s.
I chose “My Time” to feature because it is just SO catchy and has an amazing chorus melody. Again, it reminds me of Miharu Koshi’s Parallelisme 1984 album, which was produced by YMO’s Haruomi Hosono. There’s also a video of her performing the song on some kind of old Italian soul train (why don’t we have shows like this anymore, quarantine aside?). It’s got a great groove, and Steel really sings like an android (and dresses in a uniform like some kind of engineer). It’s so sick. I love this so much.
A stream of consciousness music blog, active since 2010. Established in Ann Arbor, MI, currently in NYC.
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Upcoming Releases:
January 9: Dry Cleaning – Secret Love SAULT – Chapter 1 Winged Wheel – Desert So Green
January 16: A$AP Rocky – Don’t Be Dumb Jana Horn – Jana Horn Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Tragic Magic SASSY 009 – Dreamer+
February 6: Beverly Glenn-Copeland – Laughter in Summer Daphni – Butterfly Fabiano do Nascimento – Aquáticos Joshua Chuquimia-Crampton – Anata Mandy, Indiana – URGH Puma Blue – Croak Dream Ratboys – Singin’ To An Empty Chair
February 13: Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights Colin Stetson – Nethering Danny L Harle – Cerulean KMRU – Kin The Olympians – In Search of A Revival
February 20: Altin Gün – Garip Apparat – A Hum of Maybe
February 27: Buck Meek – The Mirror Fabiano do Nascimento – Vila GENA – The Pleasure Is Yours Gorillaz – The Mountain Gus Englehorn – The Broken Balladeer Heavenly – Highway to Heavenly LB aka LABAT – Feel So Good Around U Maria BC – Marathon Mitski – Nothings About to Happen to Me Nothing – a short history of decay Shane Parish – Autechre Guitar
March 6: Hater – Mosquito Natalie Jane Hill – Hopeful Woman Scout Gillett – Tough Touch Shabaka – Of The Earth waterbaby – Memory Be a Blade
March 13: Alexis Taylor – Paris In The Spring Colleen – Libres antes del final Crack Cloud – Peace and Purpose Cut Worms – Transmitter Kim Gordon – PLAY ME The Notwist – News From Planet Zombie Ora Cogan – Hard Hearted Woman
March 27: Fcukers – Ö Holy Fuck – Event Beat José González – Against the Dying of the Light Robyn – Sexistential
April 3: Arlo Parks – Ambiguous Desire Makthaverskan – Glass and Bones Sunn O))) – sunn O)))
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