10 Great American Releases from 2020
This isn’t a list of the best American albums of last year (I couldn’t assume to be able to form such a thing) or even my favourite American albums. This is a list of albums that I didn’t see enough on other year-end lists or didn’t see high enough on them, anyway. These are the bands or artists that got bypassed or forgotten but, in my opinion, belong among the Fiona Apples, Moses Sumneys, Yves Tumors, and Taylor Swifts of 2020.
Jeff Parker - Suite for Max Brown
Jazz has had a major comeback in the last few years. In my teens and 20s, no one referred to the genre unless they were talking about legends like Miles Davis or John Coltrane. But with the help of artists like Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus, jazz is back on the radar. So it surprised me to see Jeff Parker’s Suite for Max Brown on so few lists this year.
There’s this quote from Gil Scott-Heron that Jamie xx includes in his remix of Gil’s 2010 album, I’m New Here, where Gil says, “Jazz music is dance music,” and goes on to call Prince one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. In the context, Jamie means to suggest that his take on EDM could be considered a form of jazz. While that’s an interesting idea, I think the quote could also be understood as a call for jazz to return to its original goal of getting people on their feet. This is what Jeff Parker does on Suite for Max Brown. Parker blends typical concepts from his genre with the samples and loops of hip-hop, the rhythms of R&B, and the soundscapes of ambient music. The result is a statement that jazz is alive and well, and no amount of elevator-play will ever kill it. Suite for Max Brown shows the genre breathing.
Gil Scott-Heron & Makaya McCraven - We’re New Again
Speaking of Mr. Scott-Heron, he continues to inspire some great things from beyond the grave, namely Makaya McCraven’s reimagining of I’m New Here, the same final record Jamie xx played around with on 2011’s We’re New Here. While Jamie’s take on these songs was clearly meant to bring awareness of this “godfather of rap” to a new generation, McCraven uses Scott-Heron’s voice and lyrics as a more earnest tribute to the artist. You can picture Gil in the room with McCraven and his fellow players. Trying to do that with We’re New Here creates a pretty odd mental image.
At the same time, McCraven clearly takes notes from and addresses Jamie’s work, not just with the title but also with the interview clips scattered between the tracks. Both artists look to Scott-Heron as an elder to sit at the feet of and learn from. They also both use their musical tools to share their perspectives on the wisdom they’ve gained from him. And while I have always loved Jamie’s interpretation, McCraven’s comes across as deeper and more mature. Makaya can identify with Gil at a cultural level, being American and black, that Jamie (a white brit) cannot. Gil’s lifework was so closely tied to his identity as an African-American that McCraven’s musical palette suits him more genuinely. He does more than get you on your feet. He makes you feel.
Art Feynman - Half Price at 3:30
In her new Netflix mini-series, Pretend It’s a City, Fran Lebowitz bemoans how New York seems to be copying Dubai’s copy of New York, raising these glass toothpicks into the sky rather than sticking to the city’s architectural tradition. She points to buildings like Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building as true New York monuments and turns her nose at the shiny new things popping up throughout Manhattan.
I get what she’s saying, but when it comes to art, the cross-pollination she’s describing is often how some of the best stuff gets made. Case in point: this album.
Art Feynman, the alter-ego of Here We Go Magic’s Luke Temple, mixes so many styles and influences into Half Price that part way through, you begin to worry that it will feel muddled by the record’s end. One moment, he’s playing with Kanye’s 808’s and Heartbreaks toolbox or Drake’s player-feelings, the next, he’s got your mind on fellow indie soundscaper William Tyler or ‘70s-era Pink Floyd. And yet, the whole album is cloaked in a Lynchian velvet curtain that makes it more than the sum of its parts. It’s the kind of album, like OK Computer or Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam, that makes you wonder, how’d they do that? It reinforces your belief in the magic of music. What more could you ask from an artist?
Adrianne Lenker - songs
Adrianne is an exception on this list in that she did make the cut on most “best of” lists this year. I only include her because a) I haven’t found a list where she took the top spot and b) I think she deserves it. Maybe she got nudged out of position because her band, Big Thief, ended up within the top five of so many lists last year and/or other female solo artists also put out stellar releases in 2020 (Fiona Apple, etc.). But for me, Ms. Lenker is the best songwriter I currently know about, and her 2020 releases show her at the top of her game, especially songs.
You are never unsure of how to feel when listening to Adrianne Lenker. She uses every element of a song to communicate emotion - melody, rhythm, tone, lyrics - but she does so in a way that is uniquely her own. I’ve heard her be compared to Radiohead, Joanna Newsom, and Nick Drake, but I don’t think it’s because she actually sounds like any of these people. She just has the same gift they have - the ability to be understood while remaining completely themselves.
Tré Burt - Caught It from the Rye
Jerry Garcia once said, “Style is the stuff you get wrong,” meaning that it’s the idiosyncrasies of an artist, the cracks in their voice or the odd way they hold a chord, that makes them memorable.
Tré Burt clearly understands this.
As soon as you hear his voice, a number of names come to mind - Bob Dylan, Kristian Matsson (The Tallest Man On Earth), and Hamilton Leithauser just to name a few. But Tré has found a way to make the raspy morning-after-voice thing sound new again.
For one, he leans into the busted-speaker quality of his voice in a way that’s more reminiscent of punk and grunge than it is of folk music. He also has a way of putting things that is purely his own. His words tell stories and paint pictures that dance far enough away from any lessons while still getting to a point. Check out the way he references light and shadow in “Franklin’s Tunnel” for a good example of what I’m talking about.
Every generation needs at least one artist like Tré Burt - someone who knows how to balance tradition with their own personality and soul. I don’t know if Mr. Burt is alone in this category right now, but he’s definitely in it.
Julianna Barwick - Healing is a Miracle
Barwick was one of the first ambient artists I noticed benefitting from an association with alternative music (since Brian Eno, anyway). Before I heard her music, “ambient” was synonymous with “New Age” in my mind, a relationship I did not fully appreciate at the time (full circle: I do now!). I heard a track from her 2011 release, The Magic Place, before seeing her open for Titus Andronicus and Okkervil River (of all the lineups in the world…).
Since then, she’s only improved her sense of melody and form while using the same toolbox she started with. While most of her early '10s peers moved on from the reverb-drenched aesthetic, Barwick has stayed true to the course. Instead of following the trend train, she’s honed her composition skills, adding a depth to her music that any other musician would be jealous of. Healing is a Miracle is Barwick at her best.
Sylvan Esso - Free Love
On Free Love, Sylvan Esso gave us the kind of music we needed this past year: a fun reprieve from the chaos while still acknowledging the scariness of the moment. Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn have built a career by making the kind of intimate, headphone-happy electronic music that made acts like Braids and Purity Ring so exciting to hear in the early ‘10s, but they’ve added a Feist-like friendliness that makes their music infectious. They make you want to be their pals (who doesn’t want to be taken “rooftop dancing”?) The fact that they’ve been so consistent is the only reason I can find for why they were largely left off of year-end lists in 2020.
Thundercat - It Is What It Is
On the flip side, Thundercat’s It Is What It Is is an odd fit for 2020. There’s a lot of references to partying and international travel that might make our quarantined brains uncomfortable. But Thundercat always finds a way to highlight the irony of life or to put something in a way that’s both funny and sad, and, in a weird way, these skills helped us cope with our non-existent social lives.
Take “Funny Thing” for example. What starts off as a call to let loose ends up in some pretty dark territory - a confession that he’s drinking and partying to avoid dealing with his PTSD. Not common territory for a club-ready banger.
It Is What It Is was not made for the 2020 we know today. It came out in April, just after the first worldwide shutdown. But looking at it from this side of COVID doesn’t make the album irrelevant. If anything, it puts the year in perspective. Our lives were pretty fucked up before the virus even got here. Maybe we should use all this downtime to get our collective shit together.
Angel Olsen - Whole New Mess
For some, what Angel Olsen does on Whole New Mess might seem easy: taking the songs from 2019’s cinematic All Mirrors, renaming them, and stripping them down to their bare essentials. But Olsen’s second go-around brings a new light to each track. Where All Mirrors takes a wide-angle approach, Whole New Mess zooms in on the woman and her guitar, emphasizing the intimacy of her lyrics.
Feelings can drown you, but they can also dry you out. These two records work together to communicate both sides of that paradox. Her two versions of “Lark” (or “Lark Song”) illustrate this perfectly. Using the same words and melody, Olsen turns emotions into tidal waves with 2019’s take, and leaves you alone in the Mojave desert with 2020’s.
It can be lonely, realizing the difference between what others see and what’s actually going on in your head, but art helps us bridge that gap. By expressing loneliness, it helps us feel less alone. Whole New Mess succeeds in building that bridge.
Bonny Light Horseman - Bonny Light Horseman
If you spend a lot of time trying to keep up with modern music, it’s easy to lose sight of what makes the medium beautiful and important. This collaborative project reminds us of one aspect of the art form we easily forget in the 21st Century—its ability to bind people together.
Anais Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman have all found success on their own, writing musicals (Mitchell’s musical Hadestown won eight Tonies), fronting successful folk-rock bands (Johnson leads the group Fruit Bats), and working with heavy-hitters like The National and The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn (Kaufman). Bonny Light Horseman is not a super-group, though. Super-groups almost always end up being a set of individual podiums meant to show off each member’s fancy skills. Bonny Light Horseman is a unit with a singular mission: to bring traditional folk songs into the present.
These songs are commonly sung live, in groups of friends around dinner tables or campfires. Bringing them into the studio can be an awkward affair. But rather than polishing out the magic, these three find a way to hold on to some of the attic dust that makes these songs so special. Their vocal arrangements and engineering choices work together for each song’s benefit. Every bell and whistle serves the whole. What could have resulted in a boring listening experience instead ends up having a heavy emotional impact. You want to hug your friends after hearing it.
