Cabbers Favourite Albums of 2020

[Gregory Torso]

I like his Oort Smog project

Yeah man. This is great.

Looking forward to going through people's recommendations, some cool stuff always comes up in these threads.

So far really digging Mary Lattimore, Chirinuruwowaka, Kate NV and The Soft Pink Truth. That Hania Rani album's pretty sweet too.

[turnstyle]

05. The Microphones - Microphones in 2020
1 x 45 minute track reflecting on history, gently shifting through various flavours of intimate lo-fi and folk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7BkabF31ak

70% of these photos would come back from Snappy Snaps with a quality control sticker attached.

(Lovely stuff though)

[jamiefairlie]

The Green Child - Shimmering Basset

The Green Child were once a long-distance project between Raven Mahon and Mikey Young, split between California and Australia. But this album, the follow up to their 2018 debut, brings them both together just south of Melbourne.

"The joy of this album is the melding of the familiar with the new. The production is lake water clear and allows the glinting frost of synthesisers to be melted by the analogue warmth of bass and electric guitar chords/riffs. And then there is Mahon's voice which brings everything together. It's a voice that shares many elements with some of the great French chanson singers like Françoise Hardy or Jane Birkin with a languorous style of singing, symbiotic with the instruments. "

https://youtu.be/4-1wpCmeP7o


Basic Plumbing - Bad Mood

Bit of a sad tale around this album. Patrick Doyle, the fellow behind basic Plumbing, died in 2018 whist working on the tracks on this album.

https://youtu.be/Z6hBLwY6LKs

[DukeDeMondo]

And a few honourable mentions of shitshows that aren't appearing in my list:

Miley Cyrus - Plastic Hearts. Two good singles and a load of filler. Sad.

This is pretty much the exact opposite of how I feel about that album. Couple fairly uninspiring numbers at the start, but it's riches and wonders for me from there on out. Those first two tracks, though. I mean really. They're not bad, as such, but they're far from great, and opting to open an album that contains the likes of "High" and "Night Crawling" and "Midnight Sky/ Edge Of Midnight" with something as bleh and just, like, naff as "WTF Do I know"... it betrays a genuine perversity of a sort that Bangerz-era Twerk-Twerk Miley-O-Tongue-Twerk could only ever have dreamt of gesturing towards. I don't mind them so much now, those first two tracks, couple dozen listens to the album later. Especially since I started hearing Marilyn Manson all over "WTF..." (the sort of kind of Antichrist Superstarry bassline, the squelchy Mechanical Animals guitars near the end, the rumbling verses and the shouty-shouty sweary-cuss choruses, the defiant posturing, the not-all-that-very-threatening threats and not-all-that-very-impressive boasting...) (mind you I have been listening a lot to early drafts of both Portrait Of An American Family and Antichrist Superstar this past while, so, I dunno), but then "Angels Like You" comes soaring without warning from the shallows of those two articles on the wings of that lovely bit of "In My Life" fluttering and suddenly it all clicks into place and for me the album continues to operate in that mode – soaring – for much of the rest of its duration.

Viewed from a certain angle I guess it could scan as little more than a bunch of hollow pastiches – a riff on Bonnie Tyler here, Olivia Newton-John there, a bit of Fleetwood Mac dusting the skirtings, whole bunch of Billy Idols, including the actual Billy Idol, getting plastered at the top of the stairs –  but I think it has more going on than it has generally been given credit for. Certainly, as someone who has always been fond of a good Break Up Album, I found the emotional complexity and the energy and the ambiguity and the uncertainty and self-exoneration and self-recrimination of this particular Break Up Album really refreshing, and really affecting also. There's a frankness and an honesty and a certain flavour of wee hours introspection in the lyrics that, coupled with the occasional clumsiness and bluntness of their execution and the frequently euphoric thrust of the arrangements round about them, puts me in mind of Sinéad O' Connor, ironically enough, especially in the conflict and the confusion of something like "Golden G-String," in which our Miley stares down the ghosts of Terry Richardsons past in an attempt to figure out just what it was that she was trying to do and for whom she was trying to do it, defending her stance one minute and lamenting it the next, eventually reaching a conclusion that is all the more satisfying for how unsatisfying it is.

I think it's her best album, but then I also really love both Younger Now and Dead Petz, and those records are hardly universally acclaimed, so who knows?

I've listened to a lot less new stuff this year than I have done other years, I think. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just that a lot of the new stuff hasn't really stuck with me, because very little sticks with me these days. I do know that I have been listening to a lot of bootlegs for whatever reason, some of which I hadn't heard before, some of which I had heard many times. The Marilyn Manson ones I named above, and also certain of the absolutely fucking stunning albums that Kanye West decided to shelve at the last minute (although sadly not the one that he shelved a couple months back). Wandering a sort of alternate Kanyeverse in which Life Of Pablo was never released, but So Help Me Godwas; where Jesus Is King never saw the light of day, but Yandhi did.

Beyond that, the best thing that happened to my ears this year happened in the deep of a sleepless summer morning when, for reasons I wouldn't really be fit to name, I decided to put on Live At The Point by Christy Moore. I have tried countless times since first hearing tell of him in my early teens to develop a taste for Christy Moore's music, if only because he kept appearing on the telly alongside artists that I idolised, but beyond the utterly gorgeous version of "Spancil Hill" that he performed with Shane MacGowan on the telly (a million times I've watched that performance and still I'm forever anticipating "...as fair as Annie Lennox...") and the version of "Go, Move, Shift" that he performed with Sinéad O'Connor on the telly, I just couldn't get him. He occupied a space between my ears somewhere near to where Neil Young sits when he visits my head. Someone whose music I should have fallen in love with long ago, but that I long ago realised was doing fuck all for me. But, something happened in the middle of Live At The Point that morning, something crunched into being between the first few notes of "Natives" and the last few notes of "Missing You" (the second mention of that track on these boards the past couple weeks, whatever's the meaning) that hadn't crunched into anything any of the other times I heard that album and all of a sudden I could see the man stood there resplendent and I could hear him and what I heard was bewitching and as fair as Annie Lennox. Tramping about his discography in the hours and times since then has made for as exhilarating a tramp about anything as any tramping I've ever done.

Maybe it'll be Neil Young's turn in 2021. Who knows. I do like Trans, and I do think the version of "Journey Through The Past" on the Live At Massey Hall album is fucking beautiful. Maybe that's as much Neil Young as I have room for.

Anyway, of the albums released in 2020, the ones that I've loved have, again, tended to be the work of people I already adored. Rough And Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan, although it took a while for that one to start speaking to me proper. Folklore by Taylor Swift also took a while to sink in, although in that case I could tell that it was brilliant from the off, I just couldn't really feel it. Then one day I started listening from about the halfway point and by the time "betty" was twirling forth from under "epiphany" I was enraptured beyond sense or coherence. It's probably my favourite 2020 album.

I also loved Down In The Weeds Where The World Once Was, the first Bright Eyes album since 2011. They're my second favourite band, it would have been an awful thing to be disappointed by a new record after all this time spent waiting for one, but it was a disappointment in no way whatsoever. It never ceases to startle and unsettle me (and maybe arouse me some, maybe, does it?), the extent to which each new batch of Conor Oberst songs resonates so profoundly with whatever happens to be going on in my life at that time, and that was the case with this Weeds more than maybe any other album he's ever been involved with. When he was singing "I'll never know if I'm delusional, I just believe that I am not" on Upside Down Mountain he was a bit ahead of me, but I caught up eventually, God knows, and there were times on this new one when I felt he must be taking notes from behind the sofa. Now he's no longer delusional, now he's singing "the Seroquel's working," and most of the time it's working for me too, or was until relatively recently, and next he's singing about visiting the Vatican with his wife and it's the exact same Vatican that I visited with mine not long ago, watching the exact same pontiff waving the exact same wave from the exact same window. He's singing about the same illness that has haunted our home since February. Conor, not the pope. He's talking about the same grief that has been felt in our home since shortly before. Every fucking song has something that chimes uncannily with something going on here and now, usually something that I wish to Christ was not going on but is.

Sonically it feels like it's rippling about the water that has pooled between Cassadaga, which I love, and The People's Key, which I admire but love only in fits and starts, over these past nine years or however long. "To Death's Heart (In Three Parts)" is one of the best things they've ever recorded, and there are plenty other tracks as good or near enough. Also, the album as a whole is possessed of a warmth that hasn't always been present in the songs Conor Oberst has been writing the past few years. In that respect it's closer to the wonderful Better Oblivion Community Centre album that he and Phoebe Bridgers put out in 2019 than it is to, say, "No One Changes," the wonderful but also fucking witheringly bitter single he released under his own name the year before.

Of stuff I knew nothing about beforehand, produced by people I'd never heard tell of, the album that I enjoyed above all others and that I listened to most often was Live Forever by Bartees Strange, a record that manages to feel like McCartney II whilst sounding like Kanye, Prince, Springsteen, The Smiths, and, like, fucking Fall Out Boy or whoever all at once. I said as much to a friend, and he said "fuck up" but then I played "Boomer" for him and he had to admit that it was right enough, what I was saying.

It's a better McCartney III than McCartney III. Although I really, really like the McCartney III that McCartney III actually is.

Incidentally, another friend, my best, she said that whilst it was undoubtedly great, the "Boomer" and what have you, she wasn't quite convinced of our man's sincerity, this man Bartees Strange, and couldn't quite shake the feeling that what he was doing was all a big hoot underneath it all, an old gas, something akin to what our own deliriously talented Angrew might produce, let's say, if tasked with infecting the first Killers album with the full of a hydra's hoop in Clowne. There was an itch in me that was scratched when she said that, for I too had been thinking those thoughts, but I didn't know I was thinking them until she thought them first.

I dunno what else I liked. I do know. I liked the Arca album, the KiCK i one. I liked Greenhouse by Caitlin Pasko. I was flattened half daft for the whole of New Vanitas by William Tyler, an album that hangs in space like a lost limb, that seems to be shaking still from tremors shook the Earth over a quarter century ago. Haunted by ghosts Stone Taped into the pages of an old issue of No Depression someone ripped the cover off of by accident.

There's a whole bunch of other stuff I probably will like but I haven't got round to yet. The Phoebe Bridgers album. The Fiona Apple. The Charlie XCX. Microphones In 2020. That'll likely end up obscuring a lot of the 2020 in retrospect, the Microphones in 2020. I'd click the link posted earlier in the thread, but I can't, for I can remember exactly how devastating they were, the Mount Eerie albums about his wife, and as much as I gloried in the battering they gave me at the time, and though I know that this Microphones album is something else and that it won't necessarily feel compelled to unfold over the same sorts of notes, the thought that it might has been enough to scare me off for the foreseeable, for this year has been ordeal enough.

Anyway. Christ. I only meant to say that I liked the Miley Cyrus album. And that I'm looking forward to making my way through all the other albums that have been named in the lists up above. The Napalm Death one especially. Especially looking forward to that. I honestly don't think I've heard anything Napalm Death have recorded since Utopia Banished. That can't be true but it feels like it is true. Utopia Banished. £2.50 in the sale, if I remember right. I didn't like it at the time but I was only wee. I like it now. 

[purlieu]

Viewed from a certain angle I guess it could scan as little more than a bunch of hollow pastiches

I hadn't even considered it like that - just, on a musical level, almost every song failed to grip me at all, in terms of melody or energy. Flat, lifeless and utterly forgettable. I've only listened three times but the last of those was a drag, one of those real "I can't wait for this to end" listens.

[jamiefairlie]

Matt Berry - Phantom Birds

Berry (born 2 May 1974) is an English actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, and musician.

"A succinct, focused return, 'Phantom Birds' makes a neat soundtrack to the final days of the English summer."

https://youtu.be/RwBRK3iVJ1A

bdrmm - Bedroom

From Hull, this is taken from their debut album.

"Last year's If Not, When? EP highlighted the quintet as one of the most exciting new guitar bands in the UK, and Bedroom, their long-awaited debut LP, fully realizes their promise while hinting at even greater things to come."

https://youtu.be/4ftp4UDfkEk

[jamiefairlie]

Garcia Peoples - Nightcap at Wit's End

Garcia Peoples formed in Rutherford, New Jersey, and originally consisted of guitarist/vocalists Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki, drummer Cesar Arakaki, and bassist Derek Spaldo.

This is their fifth album (after two in 2019).

https://youtu.be/NaVfmwcupbc

Modern Studies - The Weight of the Sun

A chamber pop band based between Scotland and Lancashire, this is their third album.

"On The Weight Of The Sun, Modern Studies have managed to paint a summer morning haze in vivid colours. The flutes and trumpets that flit in and out of the record add flourishes of light. In today's, at times, suffocating air, the album is a breath of fresh air. Drink it in."

https://youtu.be/vhPf5PmeI2M

[willbo]

I'm loving Taylor Swifts Evermore...the songs are really getting to me...gonna be a big fave album for me...

[Malcy]

Quite a few good releases this year I thought. Don't know if I have a particular favourite but I enjoyed

Bilal & HighBreedMusic - Voyage 19

An EP recorded and streamed in real time over 50+ hours. Loads of people contributed to this one as well. Erykah Badu, Robert Glasper, Keyon Harold, Madison McFerrin, Cory Henry and loads loads more all got involved in it.

https://bilalxhighbreedmusic.bandcamp.com/

Slingbaum - Slingbaum One Ep

Experimental piece that featured Damon Albarn, Bilal, Erykah Badu, D'angelo. It sort of came and went pretty quickly. 6 Music played a couple of the tracks but I didn't see much buzz around it after it came out and there was loads before it.

Serial Killers(Xzibit, B-Real & Demrick) - S.O.S.

Had really been looking forward to this one as their last release was great but too short. A lot of it dealt with the virus and black lives stuff going on but the beats were outstanding especially on Powderkeg. Only low point of the album was Busta Rhymes and his mock Jamaican accent rapping shite.

Powder Keg - https://youtube.com/watch?v=5DtwcqsJqTM


Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammed- Jazz Is Dead 1-5

Played these loads through the year. 5 released so far. Each one is with a different guest like Roy Ayers, Doug Carn, Marcos Valle. Each with its own sound.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsAk6h4n-dS2ZGD2zmjI432fbSwt10aQ6

Dinner Party, Eminem, Salaam Remi, Dizzee Rascal, Nas, Elvis Costello, Terrace Martin's various projects and Public Enemy's new album all got a lot of play from me this year.

[jamiefairlie]

Cold Beat - Mother

From San Francisco, this is their fifth album.

"Blending elements of cold wave, electronic, post-punk and shoegaze, this record is heavy on atmosphere, and extremely pleasant on the ears. Each track blends into one another with layers of electronic beats, twinkly guitars, and other ambient noise to create a universe that sucks the listener in. "

https://youtu.be/-XFbjA-iv18

Bibio - Ribbons

A resident of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, England, Wilkinson developed a passion for experimental music during his time at Middlesex University in London, where he studied "sonic arts". He developed his own style of music, drawing from contemporary experimental electronica bands such as Boards of Canada, and incorporating field recordings and found sounds.

"the new album is a light, often carefree listen, but Ribbons still carves out a new corner of Bibio's catalog. Interweaving acoustic nylon- and steel-string guitars, mandolin, violin, harp, and banjo with electric piano, sitar, Mellotron, and clavinet, it is the folkiest album he has recorded yet, largely shifting the balance from contemporary collage techniques to old-timey jigs and reels."

https://youtu.be/WKViApU1m0g

[jamiefairlie]

Wire - Mind Hive & 10:20

Two albums this year from Wire, Mind Hive, their 17th album proper, and 10:20, a collection from sessions in 2010 and 2020.

Mind Hive review:

"The band have added taut melodies, lush electronics and lyrics of prickling anxiety to the distorted guitar chaos. One of its signature sounds is a kind of tightly controlled chaos – corrosively distorted guitars and feedback hemmed in by tense rhythms and some of the most straightforwardly beautiful tunes Wire have ever come up with. The other is more lushly electronic, vaguely recalling the moments on Brian Eno's Before and After Science when he pressed his ambient experiments into the service of gorgeous, hazy ballads."

https://youtu.be/72vTexeH6ew

https://youtu.be/jTyUTBdNLfs


Faten Kanaan - A Mythology of Circles


Brooklyn-based composer, this is her fourth album.

"Lets playfulness weave through her cinematic forms, as orchestral tapestries, chamber folk and electronics commune."

https://youtu.be/DeszPj_X-io

[sevendaughters]

I liked that Faten Kanaan record. Like Enya on an exchange with the ancient Greeks.

[lankyguy95]

Deciding whether an album is my 13th or 14th favourite is an arbitrary and boring waste of time so I haven't really put these in any kind of order, not intentionally anyway, aside from tentatively putting Couch Slut top.

Couch Slut - Take A Chance On Rock 'n' Roll

With a name like Couch Slut, you can't really expect an oblique album. But I didn't expect such a bleak album. Noisey, angry, jarring, visceral, vile, painful; frankly, at times, antagonistic. Megan's lyrics are staggeringly raw and unfiltered, and her delivery is a perfect match. A heavy noise-rock album without an inch of fat on it; it also understands how to incorporate different colours and ideas to make the attack even more devastating. The trumpet solo on I'm 14 is my favourite musical moment of 2020. And the whole album may be my favourite of 2020. The album title feels like a(n intentionally) perverse joke.

Bohren And Der Club Of Gore - Patchouli Blue

Ultra-slow, dark, brooding jazz. It's what Bohren do. The most beautiful, contemplative pieces for a feebly glimmering night. Gorgeous as usual.

Deftones - Ohms

One of the reasons, great songs aside, that I think this is better than the many Deftones-inspired records that have come out in 2020 (and a few of those are genuinely good) is that they're just so much better at bringing each member's personality out in the music. The Stef/Chino dynamic aside, this is the most synth-heavy record they've ever done (Pompeji for example), the bass lines hold everything firm whilst also being melodic - the bass on Ceremony almost feels like it's singing at times - and Abe Cunningham brings that hip-hop bounce and groove that elevates everything that bit further; another reason why they're better than all the bands that rip them off. See a track like Radiant City, with the way the tempo pushes forward slightly in the chorus, then pulls back in the verses to give it more weight. The production is colossal but really emphasises the raw, live element - no click track, slightly rawer vocal production at times, more focus on the low end. And while they're not reinventing themselves, it's still artistically so strong - the lyrics, even the song titles (e.g. calling such a romantic, almost worshipful, song 'The Spell Of Mathematics'), and bringing out a thrash riff as a texture in a gliding, new-wave inspired song (Urantia). Some of my favourite choruses of the year too - Ceremony is so good it basically has two different ones.

Nils Frahm - Empty

I think it's my most played album of the year. It's what Nils Frahm does; piano recordings that are so intimately produced, you feel like you're in the room while he's playing them. So much space. As silly as this always sounds - every note feels like it belongs. This is the album I put on at night.

Code Orange - Underneath

It's not a perfect album but it thrills me in a way that almost makes me feel that way. Not a bad song on here. Claustrophobic production aside, I'd be nitpicking to find too many faults. What's really great about Underneath is it still sounds like a band playing live - just put through a blender afterwards. I imagine there'll be a lot of 'nods' to this record from other bands in the coming years but I doubt whether any of them will be able to combine these glitchy and electronic elements as well, as rhythmically, and in such a viscerally exciting way as Code Orange do. Fantastic record.

Roly Porter - Kistvaen

The heaviest ambient record of the year and probably just the heaviest record of the year in general. A conceptual, though wordless, album about death, burial and ancient rituals surrounding those things (yeah...I know). Made up of a mixture of field recordings, acoustic and digitally created sounds, put together to form an incredibly immersive, dark and evocative album. People talk about how the sign of a great album is being able to spot new things months and years down the line; listen to this through headphones and I don't think you'll ever stop hearing new things. The most visceral, sensory album I've heard in a long time.

DUMA - DUMA

Hard to categorise this record. A fantastic primal, metallic, industrial, grind, noise album. Amazing production, a genuine sense of both horror and hollowness, with hauntingly filtered vocals that weave in and out. Pleasantly surprised to see it in quite a few critics end of year lists.

Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters

I don't think any album this year nails its vision better than this one. It's not the easiest listen; in terms of the big, well-reviewed critical darlings of the year, it lacks the sonic warmth of Phoebe Bridgers, or the more obvious, in-your-face hooks of HAIM or Rina Sawayama. But it's so raw, so detailed and off-kilter at times lyrically, it builds upon rhythms in such an interesting 'DIY' way, and the hooks sink into you in a way that I can't remember another album doing - Robert Christgau, a critic I don't like generally, summed that aspect up really well in my opinion... "the music grows on you before you realize it because it's not hooky in a hummy kind of way. Instead it's beaty, clattering like nothing I can recall and hence hard to recall itself—you have to refer back to the record."

Hum - Inlet

The heaviest album they've ever made yet maybe the warmest too. Some of my favourite guitar tones ever. A colossal, beautiful sound; so huge yet so hollow. Matt's 'lifeless' vocals somehow suit Hum and I like that they're often pushed up a bit more on Inlet than on previous records. Desert Rambler is one of my favourite songs of the year, and The Summoning has my favourite riff of the year (the one that appears at 2:07 and again at 4:18)

clipping. - Visions Of Bodies Being Burned

I'm finding myself more drawn to dark, cinematic, spacious records recently and this album is one of the year's best. It took me a few listens - it didn't click as immediately as TEAATB - but I really like it now. A great companion piece to that record. The production is still clear and sharp, the industrial soundscapes still really evocative and chilling, and Daveed's clarity and flow is still ridiculous. Given how haunting the little motifs are, I often find them oddly beautiful. Great band.

Nation Of Language - Introduction, Presence

Spacey synthpop, with nice, clean drum production, great melodies through forlorn vocals. Hooks and melancholy - what more can you want? It is derivative but they get enough of their own personality in there and the songs are killer. Indignities is just fantastic - the dark guitar tones, playing off with the synth lines... yes please.

Tony Allen - Rejoice

A great, spacious jazz record, minimalist, with catchy hooks but done with such groove, subtlety and restraint. Each member is given their own space in the songs and in the mix. The drum production in particular is a work of art; everything sounds so clear and crisp, each drum perfectly given its own space and flipped from their usual position - snare in the right channel, with each tom moving across from right to left, rather than left to right. The whole thing feels effortless. Lovely album to have on in the background or through headphones. RIP Tony Allen and Hugh Makasela.

Adeline Hotel - Solid Love

Such a beautiful, tender album. My problem with this emotive indie-folk style is I often find it becomes a bit montonous, a bit too sentimental, and doesn't develop enough to retain my interest. This has so many little ideas, different 'colours'; subtle drumming, soft glimmering guitar riffs, piano flourishes, joined by other instruments sometimes for brief moments; none of these elements ever outstay their welcome and they always add something. Dan Knishkowy, the singer/songwriter, described it as "five people with loud playing personalities, playing as quietly as possible", and that really comes across. Rythmically, it also feels great - nuanced, interesting, with a lovely, subtle swing at times too. Really like this record.

Nicolas Jaar - Cenizas

The album cover really summarises this album perfectly for me; introspective, minimalist, lots of space. I've read it described as an 'abyss' and I like that; in a way, it often seems like it isn't going anywhere but it forces you to settle in and let it take over. Gocce, for example, could be genuinely annoying but for some reason the quick, chaotic bursts on the piano and the other instruments feel just right.

Caspian - On Circles

Huge, beautiful, heavy, melodic. One of the best rock albums of the year. The vocals that enter on Nostalgist kill the vibe for me a bit but other than that, this is really good. Wildblood is still my highlight; that song is monumental.

Dave Grubbs & Taku Unami - Comet Meta

Lots of space. Similar to Nils Frahm in that it feels like every note has a purpose. Emotive guitar interplay and harmonising on some songs; others are haunting, slow piano pieces. None of the 'artificial' dynamics of normal post-rock albums. Beautiful, melancholy record.

Urlaub In Polen - All

I guess this is the more experimental side of krautrock? The rhythm section is often really locked in but there's lots of ambient, spacey guitars and synths, which means it feels big but never floats away or loses momentum. The various different filtered vocals genuinely feel like an additional instrument. And a song like The Witcher feels heavier than most metal bands nowadays.

Touche Amore - Lament

Raw, heartfelt and never comes across as mawkish. Ross Robinson's production is EXACTLY what I wanted it to be on this record too. He always seeks to capture performance and I think here he nails the balance between the rawness and the nuanced melody and atmosphere.

Bob Mould - American Crisis

I love it when angry albums are also fun as hell. It's a very starkly political album and, truth be told, it's not that aspect that I personally care for that much - it's more the emotion behind it, the energy, the hooks. It just goes the fuck off. A great guitar-heavy pop rock/punk album. Picking a favourite song is really difficult but Forecast Of Rain is fantastic.

Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA

I'm not a fan of the 'genre-smashing' bands of recent years, like Sleep Token and Poppy. They generally leave me cold to be honest. I think Rina Sawayama does it in a much more cohesive and natural way. More personality, huge undeniable pop hooks, better songs in general...and that laugh on 'STFU' that transitions smoothly into a sung note is so badass. Not one-paced - see, for example, the tempo change-ups in the run from 'Akasaka Sad', into 'Paradisin'', into 'Love Me 4 Me'. Deserving of its praise.

[jamiefairlie]

Soccer Mommy - Color Theory

Sophia Regina Allison, better known by her stage name Soccer Mommy, is a Swiss-born American singer-songwriter and musician from Nashville, Tennessee. This is her second album

"The second album from singer-songwriter Sophie Allison is piercing and unpredictable. In contrast to its bigger and brighter sound, the mood is grimmer, the emotional truths darker. When Sophie Allison sings, she sounds wide-open and guarded, casual and intense, intimate and coolly removed."

https://youtu.be/zmSLmpzE6dk

Saint Saviour - Tomorrow Again

Becky Jones, better known as Saint Saviour, is an English musician from Stockton-On-Tees. This is her third album under this name and her first in six years.

"All these elements combine to make an enchanting and captivating album that will surround its listener with warmth and empathy. Jones sings from personal experience, detailing changing moods and life events but ensuring they have a deep-rooted positivity that always comes through to the front. "

https://youtu.be/zehrR-LWPnU

[holyzombiejesus]

I forgot about this one, really lovely. Definitely in my top 10.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HW-_phebSw

[Junket Pumper]

I notice nobody has mentioned Vivid by Momus. His new album about the covids. Very good I thought, especially Ten Foot Hut

[sutin]

I know there's quite a few Mr. Bungle fans on here, but I take it i'm the only one who enjoyed the Easter Bunny re-record?

[jamiefairlie]

Stick In The Wheel · Hold Fast

Stick in the Wheel are an English band based in East London. They consist of vocalist Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter, their producer, arranger and Dobro player.

'It hasn't taken Stick In The Wheel long to progress from puckish upstarts to critical darlings. In the five years since their debut, From Here (2015), they have established themselves as one of the most admired and daring groups working under the folk banner. Their acceptance of diverse musical forms reflects their radical desire to change things for the better, and on Hold Fast they have begun in a small way to make that change possible. It is an urgent and quite brilliant album."

https://youtu.be/djx4mrF1fWY

Alice Boman - Dream On

Alice Boman (born December 2, 1987 in Malmö, Sweden) is a Swedish singer-songwriter. She's been releasing singles since 2013 but this is her debut album.

"Everything is intimate here, her hushed vocal styling sounding as close as a whisper to the ear, the lazy warmth of the instrumentation all culminates in a sound as cozy as a night in in front of an open fire, expertly masking the natural intensity of inherently sad break-up songs."

https://youtu.be/9u2_GxgH_98

[jamiefairlie]

Loma - Don't Shy Away

Loma are a trio made up of Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg and Cross Record's Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski. this is their second album.

"It's at once both beautiful and strangely gloomy, with the whole album building up an atmosphere of magical, almost surreal beauty. Cross' voice manages to be sweet but distant, haunting but emotionally evocative – very much in the mould of a Beth Gibbons or a Trish Keenan."

https://youtu.be/ysGQVNrxxW8

[lankyguy95]

I know there's quite a few Mr. Bungle fans on here, but I take it i'm the only one who enjoyed the Easter Bunny re-record?

Yeah it didn't go down well with people in here. I only heard a couple of songs but I found them pretty dull.

[sardines]

Everything on International Anthem.
I'd pick out 'Chicago Waves' by Carlos Gabriel Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson as one which went under the radar. Should certainly appeal to people who liked the Alabaster DePlume record.

I noticed my overall list is top heavy with a genre I'm snappily calling 'women performing long form drone/extended compositions with occasional incantations and folk elements'. Instead of repeating releases mentioned elsewhere, I'll highlight these -
Laura Cannell - The Earth With Her Crowns
Alison Cotton - Only Darkness Now
Amelia Courthouse - Ruby Glass
Antonina Nowacka - Lamunan
Cucina Povera - Tynni
Ekin Fil & Aidan Baker - The Dark Well
Lea Bertucci - Acoustic Shadows
Sarah Davachi - Cantus, Descant
Golem Mecanique - Nona, Decima et Morta

Finally, I've bought a stupid amount of cassettes this year partly due to Jennifer Lucy Allen's excellent Rum Music column for The Quietus. Partly down to Boomkat's Documenting Sound series which barely hit a duff note. Heather Leigh's 'Glory Days' is perhaps the pick of the bunch.

[Dirty Boy]

Thanks to whoever recommended Big Blood.

[Viero_Berlotti]

A belated addition to my list:

Maât - Solar Mantra

A refined and compelling fusion of pop, Afrobeat, jazz, dub and house from Paris.

[willbo]

Loma - Don't Shy Away

Loma are a trio made up of Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg and Cross Record's Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski. this is their second album.

"It's at once both beautiful and strangely gloomy, with the whole album building up an atmosphere of magical, almost surreal beauty. Cross' voice manages to be sweet but distant, haunting but emotionally evocative – very much in the mould of a Beth Gibbons or a Trish Keenan."

https://youtu.be/ysGQVNrxxW8

I googled Loma after hearing them on bbc 6

[El Unicornio, mang]

The Fleet Foxes one

[Sebastian Cobb]

Moses Boyd - Dark Matter
Prophet - Don't Forget It
Gil Scott Heron - We're New Again (Makaya McHeaven re imagining)
Rina Sawayama - Sawyama
L-Space - Feed the Engines
Moodymann - Taken Away
Billy Nomates
Carla J Easton - Weirdo
Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song
Sault - Black Is
Sault - Rise
El Hardwick - 8
Sofie - Cult Survivor
Monophonics - It's Only Us
Haggis Horns - Stand Up for Love
Asian Dub Foundation - Access Denied

Also bought Molchat Doma's Monument but am still waiting for it to turn up and haven't listened to the digital bandcamp copy.

[StewartLeehaslethimselfgo]

Atmosphere - Whenever
RTJ4
Declan Mckenna - Zeros
Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

Not many good albums off the top of my head last year but understandable

[rue the polywhirl]

Anyone else a fan of Suddenly by Caribou? A firm favourite of mine throughout all of last year. Can't think of anything else too exceptional. Most of my favourite artists tended to pump out stuff that was only 6/10. We Will Always Love You - Avalanches and Paul McCartney - III probably sneak into my top 3 right near the tail end by default.

[shh]

Pure Reason Revolution (Eupnea) back after a decade for some electro-prog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIfrCbRkBww

Anna von Hausswolff (All Thoughts Fly) without her voice or any discernible song like structure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4POF9AQKQk

New Jaga Jazzist (Pyramid) bit more synthy & stretched out than usual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vniPSYDmFQ

Jon Hassel (Seeing Through Sound). No idea what sub-genre of jazz you call this but similar to his last one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V56TYz3gBBc

King Gizzard (KG). Kind of a sequel to their Banana album I suppose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX2ak8avLfM

[phantom_power]

Sault called their albums untitled and then bottled it and actually gave them titles so they can fuck off