Best Albums Of 2020

Adrianne Lenker Songs. Anything might be the most beautiful song of the year

Lomelda Hannah. Lomelda’s album is very good. I love every song.

Waxahatchee Saint Cloud. Saint Cloud is Waxahatchee’s best album yet. It’s more pop than the other three women above. It’s more county. It’s probably lyrically weaker than the others, but it’s more fun than any of them are.

Phoebe Bridgers Punisher. We saw Phoebe Bridgers in 2018 with Connor Oberst. I was not impressed. I have avoided her since then. But Punisher converted me. It is a brilliant album. It’s all about the lyrics. They are so sad and funny and tight. The song writing is top notch too.

Nils Frahm Empty is the quietest album in my entire library. I have played it dozens of times as I wandered alone through the woods. There are sections of the album where you wonder if you accidentally hit pause.

My other favorite song of the year is Jeff Rosenstock’s No Dream. The whole album is totally worth hearing, but No Dream the song screams at 2020 in exactly the way I want to scream at 2020. Read the lyrics while you listen, and listen to the end. I was comforted by the fact that he was even more pissed and anxious than I was this year.

I loved Fleet Foxes Shore for about a month. It wore a little old after a while but it’s still an important part of the year for me. I think it’s their third best album but still a mile behind their best two (Self Titled and Helplessness Blues). That being said, Sunblind might be my favorite song of the whole year. It says to me, look to the past and see the beautiful things others have made. Now look to the future and make something beautiful yourself. That idea, whether or not he even intended it to say any such thing, was the most inspiring idea of the year for me as I watched so many things I care about crumble.

I haven’t really loved a Mountain Goats album since Life In The World To Come in 2009. But Songs for Pierre Chuvin in 2020 is as good as any of his early stuff. It sounds like it was written for Trump and the pandemic (it wasn’t).