Unlike sequels that double down on the original’s tropes, Savage Mode II expands its scope. But the ‘70s throwback suits her “queen of the club” style, with Italo disco, Nile Rodgers-y bass lines and grand Minnie Riperton-styled sweeps all used in the name of a shimmying good time. Although hyper-specific to its creator (see: lyrics about hopping the fence at the Huntington Gardens, eating saltines on the floor, and hating on Eric Clapton), Punisher also doubles as the folk-fueled battle cry of a generation still trying to find meaning in the mess. With Suddenly, the Canadian composer/DJ finally emerged with what may be the warmest, most empathetic electronic album of 2020. –, , takes on ’90s nostalgia, offering hints of Lush, Elliott Smith, Veruca Salt, Sonic Youth and…Pavement. Now a “full-time rapper” (“Glock in My Lap”), 21 balances the felonious with the luxurious. With more space for Frank Delgado’s shadowy synths and Sergio Vega’s melodic bass, the band’s dynamic shifts have never been more satisfying — like on “Pompeji,” where clean guitars and crooning give way to a flood of distortion. Filled with a lifetime’s worth of compassion, Fetch the Bolt Cutters isn’t just the album of 2020 but a future classic, a rare combination of innovation and profound deep feeling. Quite simply one of the best bands in the world right now, who have something to say and the means to say it. Twelve weeks on from one classic Sault album, Untitled (Black Is), came another, winnowing classic Black musical forms into one another: psychedelic soul, Afrobeat, electro-funk, performance poetry, trip-hop, jazz and more. Metro Boomin’s production is grander and more diverse while still retaining his ominous thump. LS Read the full review. The record has made history commercially as the first all-Spanish-language album to reach No. From the singsong chorus of Tomorrow to the twanging riff of John Cooper Clarke, the melodies are insistent and prodding, set to unleash a poorly coordinated army of robot dancers when indie discos reopen. The 10 Best Albums of 2020 Our critic picks the top albums of the year, fantastic music that served as both a comfort and a welcome distraction. Transcendence rarely arrives in the superb songwriting of Punisher, a record spooked by Bridgers’ tremulous vocals and self-produced, celestial indie-rock hum. Apple’s lighthearted yet confrontational songs made a terrible year a little easier to process. –, As a pandemic-riddled summer ushered in an even longer pandemic-riddled autumn, at least we had the bucolic sounds of Fleet Foxes to provide some comfort. He’s an evangelist for marriage, even with its wrinkles; a Zen advocate for finding everyday transcendence in neighbourly interactions and breakfast rituals; resistant to dogma – his horror at the young male protest singer he sees on a late-night talk show is hilarious – and open to connection wherever he might find it. Apple’s lighthearted yet confrontational songs made a terrible year a little easier to process. 21 Savage matches Boomin by subtly experimenting with his own delivery — making his menacing, mid-pitched drawl looser and occasionally more melodic. “I thought the sea would make some pattern known / And swim us safely home,” Hadreas laments on sparse closer Borrowed Light. BBT Read the full review. This is horrorcore hip-hop, but deadly serious rather than cartoonish, an apocalyptic world filled with blood, petrol, drugs and rust where “core snap like yolk, floor crack like joke / More cat eye opens, sky racked like coat”. The anxiety of anticipation for Fiona Apple’s new album was relieved within its first three minutes and 58 seconds. Best albums of 2020: (Credit: Getty Images) Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters. The track that gives the album its name contains the brassy line: “You want what now looks like, let me give you a taste.” It’s true, but it’s also not – Future Nostalgia owes a great debt to the musical past, nostalgic itself for the costume jewelled glitz of disco and the Day-Glo of 80s powerpop and those who have gone before. There is something profoundly restorative about Saint Cloud’s back-to-basics, largely analogue approach; its reliance on subtle, wending melodies and guitar licks that resound with dog-eared familiarity. It’s hard to celebrate much of anything in 2020. His lyrics are surrealism of the kind André Breton originally intended for the movement back in 1924, “an absolute reality, a super-reality”: bizarre imagery that nevertheless feels true to life, and in thrall to it. The 50 Best Albums of 2020: Staff Picks. It is testament to the allure of her sweet club-pop visions that Jessy Lanza’s breakout stemmed from her most insular work yet. More laid back than its predecessor (the more rock-focused, Crutchfield’s best album yet reminds us to accept imperfection and find the joy in our search for whatever comes next. On the fluttering “bloodstream,” Sophie Allison grapples with an inexplicable inability to remain happy. Sincerity and connection, he suggests, are the only tonic: it’s there in the album’s guileless evocations of American soft-rock and emo (at 31, Healy comes from the last generation to experience an unmediated adolescence and with it unselfconscious teenage tastes) and its yearning for true devotion. But Bea Kristi still makes the record feel innately hers, penning deeply personal lyrics about mental health struggles, difficult past relationships and finding love with her longtime boyfriend. “Levitating” is a bubblegum-sweet joyride; “Physical” resurrects Olivia Newton-John’s ‘80s jazzercise; and “Don’t Start Now” is retro-pop at its finest. Kate Solomon Read more. Nothing Revealed/Everything Denied sighs at life spent on the defensive; I Think There’s Something You Should Know sets Healy’s self-alienation to fractured two-step. The peak is the ecstatic chaos of Flux Capacitor and its use of Rihanna at full tilt. A sense of emotional overload permeated Caribou’s 10th album, a response to several years of death and divorce in Dan Snaith’s family. The recent craze for bedroom pop had a further boost this year as so many of us were increasingly confined to our bedrooms, although there’s a sneaking suspicion this term can undersell the ambition of these (often female) artists. –, The gushing minimalism of Steve Reich, the dreamy jazz-fusion of ’70s ECM artists, the ambient-adjacent pulse of the Field’s, — these seem like possible ingredients melted down and absorbed into the masterful new work from the Soft Pink Truth, a.k.a. The tenderness of Jam and Lewis, west coast hip-hop at its sugariest and the innocence of Japanese city pop are fractured by shivering dubstep and even the exuberant chatter of UK garage. But on her third LP, , Price veers closer to classic rock and away from the honky-tonk that once echoed through the Nashville songwriter’s music. Guest vocals can be either gnomic (“destiny is stuck in heaven blowing nitro”, Zsela intones) or collapsing (Sampha’s corrupted cries), though Loveless’s chorus of “don’t you want to know me better?” makes for his best earworm since 2010’s Maze. “Ooh La La” and its accompanying video showcased Killer Mike and El-P’s fun side, whereas “JU$T” battled injustice. Snaith’s plaintive voice, reminiscent of Arthur Russell, contrasted soulful samples to particular effect on Home, as if contrasting reality and desire. also doubles as the folk-fueled battle cry of a generation still trying to find meaning in the mess. . 2 on the, 200, but it’s also a creative leap for reggaetón itself. By. Lyrically, it’s steeped in imagery drawn from the present moment. Guest stars from across the Black Atlantic – Skepta and Ella Mai from the UK, HER from the US, Damian Marley and Projexx from Jamaica – create the sense of a diasporic dialogue, where reggae, dancehall, rap and Afro-swing seamlessly and sensually intertwine. Her gloriously disorienting third LP takes this dichotomy to an extreme, breezing through disparate sounds with the ease of scrolling a news feed. Price is at her most stunning on the gospel-tinged confessional “Prisoner of the Highway,” in which she reflects on the cost of being an artist on the road while in love and starting a family. Recorded over a five-year spell in her California home, Fetch the Bolt Cutters encompasses every euphoric rush and hopeless roar as Fiona Apple telescopes between historic incidents that once diminished her to find their common thread. The album emerged out of Daniel’s anger with the Trump presidency and his desire to avoid creating “‘angry white guy’ music in a purely reactive mode.” What he created instead is a luxuriant deep house odyssey, percolating and humming with drones, bells, murmuring voices, twinkling piano and even some live saxophone. Rapper Daveed Diggs is best known for playing Jefferson and Lafayette in Hamilton, surveying the violent chaos at the outset of the US – here, he seems to survey the same thing at its end. Music reviews, ratings, news and more. Nigerian pop continued to establish itself more firmly on the international stage in 2020 with successful albums by Burna Boy, Davido, Tiwa Savage, Tems and more. along the way), but he never strays too far from the soulful, house-inspired pop songcraft he’s mastered on these past two albums. “And it’s good to just get people to dance and have fun.” – Bianca Gracie. (Find our 100 Best Songs of 2020 list here.) The Flaming Lips love grand concepts. It’s tough to consider how much further he might have wandered next. – Max Bell, “Don’t do to me what you did to America,” Sufjan Stevens croons on the 12-minute epic “America.” And the broader mood of his eighth solo LP, The Ascension, is just as overcast — full of poetic despair set against the experimental, electronic beats and wispy melodies that have defined much of Stevens’ music. – Andy O’Connor, 28. The beautiful album brought endless moments of quiet bliss during this relentlessly chaotic year. El-P fills his lyrics with funny Burroughsian grot and non sequiturs that somehow make perfect sense, while Killer Mike dispenses scorn like ticker tape on some of his most proficient bars yet. But Bea Kristi still makes the record feel innately, , penning deeply personal lyrics about mental health struggles, difficult past relationships and finding love with her longtime boyfriend. When the world needed something, anything, Run the Jewels came through with their blazing fourth album. “Maybe music is kind of what we need,” Lipa said on Miley Cyrus’ Bright Minded Instagram Live series back in March. And Crutchfield’s acceptance of the inevitable seems spookily prescient given that she made the album last year. As the pandemic turned the world upside down nine months ago, many musicians and their livelihoods were heavily impacted. Sault’s new album is weapons-grade R&B: rugged, soulful and unapologetically Black. The singer lands more sure-footed than ever with her fifth solo album, A jangly and pensive journey down old southern roads, it finds the recently-sober Crutchfield considering past mistakes and paths toward healing. Ware’s fourth album was highly flammable. The Best Albums of 2020 This year was highlighted by projects from artists like the Weeknd, 21 Savage, and Megan Thee Stallion. The album opens with the atmospheric “Jealousy,” introducing the emotional world these songs inhabit. Heavy Light surveys life and finds a rigged game at every step, from birth to work and ultimately death at the hands of environmental apocalypse. There’s an excellent photo wherein a man is … Bunny has surely lived up to the album title, particularly since he’s already released two more albums since, . She breaks free of constrictions, skewers and then undresses the affectations used by the powerful to conceal their abuses, and interrogates her own part in these structures. –, Bartees Strange finally broke through, earning universal acclaim in a terrible year where artists struggled more than ever. “Maybe music is kind of what we need,”, And it’s good to just get people to dance and have fun.” –, Brooklyn firefighter/rapper Ka dispenses grizzled advice like a clever, who never needs to raise his voice to earn attention. A list of Pitchfork's best music of 2020. Following 2015’s Currents, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker became an in-demand artist throughout the industry — countless festival gigs, teaming with Lady Gaga and Travis Scott, lending Rihanna an album cut. On their third album for 4AD, the brothers drop their concept album ambitions to earnestly ponder human relationships on songs like “Why Do Lovers Own Each Other?” and “No One Holds You (Closer Than The One You Haven’t Met).” There’s always a playful spirit to the performances, particularly when Michael’s voice suddenly flips from Iggy Pop swagger to a Bob Dylan wheeze in the middle of a verse. / Break yourself? She had spent a few years off the pulse with try-hard Kiss Me Once (2014) and Nashville-inspired, retirement-tempting Golden (2018). Most of the lyrics are unintelligible, except for when Domenic Palermo defeatedly sings, “Isn’t it strange / Watching people / Try and outrun rain?” – D.C. 25. Now a “full-time rapper” (“Glock in My Lap”), 21 balances the felonious with the luxurious. On Bill Callahan’s 2013 album Dream River, he compared finding love to mastering flight, registering his surprise at the ease of it all. 2 peak on the Top Latin Albums chart. December 22, 2020. Ware might be telling us to save a kiss — but in return, she managed to save the whole summer. There’s been a loose school of electronic producers to emerge in recent years including Objekt, Laurel Halo, Call Super and Minor Science, who, informed by jazz, dub, techno, jungle and ambient, create a kind of maximal minimalism: richly detailed productions that nevertheless drape elegantly. Many songs were played at the protests, but none summed up that time (and 2020 as a whole) quite like RTJ4. If that means facing the apocalypse, as Bridgers does over the cacophonous apex of closing track “I Know the End,” rest assured that there’s no artist better suited to burn it down and start again. Calling to mind the insularity of John Carroll Kirby’s work with Solange and Eddie Chacon, Forever, Ya Girl spirals around murky thickets of R&B, harmonised incantations and stilted beats that mustered a sense of off-kilter propulsion. After securing his place in reggaetón, Bad Bunny shifted the goalpost to a more global outlook with his second solo album, YHLQMDLG (which stands for “Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana” and translates as “I Do Whatever I Want”). The 10 best folk albums of 2020. LS Read more. With that resolve came an expansion of Owens’ sound: encouraged by Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, she sang more and counterbalanced her emotionally astute songwriting with increasingly daring production – on Melt!, puckered rapids of minimal techno traced the cracking of an ice cap. A A We made it. In late May, the U.S. faced a social and cultural reckoning that had been building for years. BBT Read the full review. Published: December 9, 2020. There’s not much between the 1975’s Matty Healy and the creations of Naoise Dolan and Sally Rooney: across the band’s fourth album, Healy is acutely aware of his flaws, satirising and shrugging at his ego, his horniness, his political flakiness – and, yes, his overwhelming self-awareness. Robin Pecknold surprise-released the sweeping Shore as the seasons turned, with his music at its most assured and his lyrics touching a newfound optimism. Alchemist supplies sparse, loop-driven suites that are alternately grimy and regal, the ominous score to the dope deals or the relaxed, elegant soundtrack to the champagne-stocked yacht cruises those transactions afforded. This year was an exercise in being dressed up with nowhere to go, but Jessie Ware edged us toward the dance floor anyway with her mirrorball-blessed fourth album, started her career in dance music, Ware swapping power ballads for beats isn’t a totally unexpected side-step. Ware might be telling us to save a kiss — but in return, she managed to save the whole summer. In the former camp was Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, flying essentially solo on the group’s fourth album. “’Cause you are a question that I thought I could solve,” she sings. Here are the 50 best albums of a year unlike any we can remember. But his bandmates’ dynamism and energy, and his own quiet resilience, bears them all aloft. Tara Joshi Read more. Meg Remy is pictured with a little kid on the cover – a symbol of hope, you might think, but then biological and natural maternal relationships turn out to be corrupted, too. Gibbs floats over every Alchemist beat, his versatility unrivaled as he jumps from double to triple time flows, from brute force to melodic finesse. Claire Boucher – AKA Grimes – intended Miss Anthropocene as a concept album about a personified, demonic climate crisis. His tales of drugs and women are delivered in a hungry flow that is deceptively brilliant: conversational even when at a high technical difficulty. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 19. Darren Cunningham cements his place as one of the great poets of club culture, spanning glacial ambient, UK garage, Larry Heard-ish deep house, bumping techno and high-speed rave, all rendered in monochrome, dirtied watercolours. It should be underlined that the sororal US trio’s first two albums, Days Are Gone (2013) and Something to Tell You (2017) are very good: slick without smoothing too much over. The suburban iconography in her songs takes on a supernatural aura – going to the store “for nothing” while high on speed; being wasted on someone’s front lawn – and her keen sense of irony is undercut by the yearning to believe in something. – R.R. Aside from the wrecking ballad Lose You to Love Me, it’s confidently unruffled, taking the Talking Heads-aided oddness of her 2017 single Bad Liar as her template. Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately. The album’s fiery message, bombastic beats and sharp humor offered both a musical reprieve and the soundtrack for a moment that needed one. When she sings, the effect is of catching someone unwittingly mumbling along to Janet Jackson through their headphones; her quicksilver vocal intimacy allows for flirtation and hurt to flicker through like electrical surges. The 50 best albums of 2020: the full list Fiona Apple Composite: Gary Miller Our countdown is complete, topped by a mercurial work of sprawling … But the response to Live Forever was well-earned, following years of grinding and sonic experimentation. Best of 2020: Music Critic Top Ten Lists Published: November 30, 2020. Producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes use “electronic voice phenomenon” ghost recordings, corroded signals and electroshock bursts of bass and noise to keep you constantly choosing fight or flight. She sang with an intimacy that conveyed the real-time growth of thoughts from instinct to decision, her hurt at the hands of bad men and racists calcifying into defiance. On, , his storytelling remains gruff and rich with detail, his matter-of-fact lyricism full of unflinching wisdom (“Never marinate on beef you don’t plan on finishing,” he growls on “Patron Saints”) and his grainy production more complex than ever. to carnal vintage funk (Super Stars), Ariel Pinkish psych pop (Strawberry Privilege), and a really blockbuster lead single in Gospel for a New Century. But one encouraging sign from the music industry has been the number of artists innovating on the fly — figuring out ways to sustain their careers through the madness. / Mistake yourself for the things that they say?” he asks frantically on “Waking.” Without any easy answers, we’re left with the frenetic thrill of feeling it all. The music sounds like escapism; KeiyaA’s lyrical philosophy lays out a path by which one might truly escape. But the response to. The mood is more downbeat than their debut and their growing pains are clear: frontman Grian Chatten furrows his brow, his heart and mind shifting as he ages, picking up wisdom and trying on identities. BBT Read the full review. Dylan turns 80 next year, but he’s still raising the bar for American song. Friday, November 27, 2020 The ultimate guide to the year's best new jazz albums as voted for by Jazzwise's peerless panel of reviewers – including the complete original Jazzwise reviews. That balance of beauty and bleakness also anchors another centerpiece, the crunchy “Death Star” where Stevens unnervingly chants “Death star into space / What you call the human race / Expedite the judgment day.” Earlier in 2020, Stevens also collaborated with his stepfather Lowell Brams for the New Age album, f the Oscar nominee has demonstrated anything in the last 20 years, it’s range. – Stephanie Mendez. Both sides combined gorgeously on Re-Wild, where frost seemed to sprawl forth from Owens’ voice as she recognised “the power in me”.