I’ve got a ton of music I want to write about, but first I want to lay down what I’m aiming for in a year-end list. Couple of things:

–Bandcamp beat me to the punch, but we’ve got the same idea: no rankings. The whole idea behind the color rating system was to mitigate subjectivity as much as reasonable, and a year-end list with a certifiable numeric ranking scale defeats that point entirely. Instead, I’ll just be listening each record alphabetically by artist and stressing, in short, why they made the list.

-Speaking on the topic of subjectivity, this year I’ve really called into question my own opinions of objectivity in music journalism, a topic I’m really excited to write about in the coming months. To that end, I’m putting together two separate lists:

1. One that lists my absolute favorites of the year (TDP’s Favorites Of)
2. One that illuminates some arbitrarily great records (TDP’s Best Of)

The list you’re reading right now contains the records I consider to be the best releases of the year: records that, when I look back, I’ll remember as representing the year of 2020.

Hope you enjoy! I’ll provide Bandcamp links whenever possible, so if you like the music, make sure to support these artists!

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Adrianne Lenker – songs/instrumentals

Adrianne Lenker’s pair of musings on time’s omnivorousness still stands as her most complete solo work. songs’ impeachable gracefulness matched the towering bar that abysskiss already set, and will likely outlast the ambient meditativeness of instrumentals. But the latter was still worth the journey, perhaps even more so for its sublime dive into impressionistic guitar lines and verdant atmosphere. With these records, a newly iconic folk artist suddenly became that much more of an icon.

Babe, Terror – Horizogon

Horizogon’s timing was only fortuitous in how fitting its miasmatic atmosphere and ghostly instrumentation eerily echoed the circumstances of an airborne pandemic. Otherwise, Babe, Terror’s newest record feels tied to the graveyard, its deathly pallor and hymnal vocals both mildly unsettling and thoroughly intoxicating. It may have reached few ears this year, but don’t let this remarkable record pass you by.

Backxwash – God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It

Only a handful of artists rule any given year; in 2020 that rare honor undeniably goes to Backxwash. The Montreal experimental artist had an absolutely titanic 2020, releasing the best record of her career and seeing her star rise so far that she was awarded the Polaris Music Prize (a first for a free download). It’s easy to hear why the moment you press play on God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out Of It, a blistering monster of an album that fuses hardcore hip-hop with classic punk and metal samples, all delivered with the force of emo. Backxwash crams so many highlights into its 20 minutes: both Black Dresses features, the kiss-off of “Black Magic,” the mood-setting Ozzy Osbourne sample on the title track (and the Patti Smith sample following after), and all that building momentum in the back half. A defining record of the year.

Black Ends – Stay Evil

Nicolle Swims’ madcap grunge feels in conversation with Seattle’s finest, and it hit all the right places in Black Ends latest EP. That deep-fried opening, and the subtle surrealism of “Monday Mourning,” were both tightly-wound opuses worthy of any Sub Pop centennial, while the depressive “I Live In the Sea” blossomed into drum riffs that enacted a fitting chaos on Swims’ strums. Whether or not they stick with guitar, their knack for song craft couldn’t be denied on this enduring EP.

The Garages – Live @ HECKDANG

There’s something about The Garages I can’t quite put my finger on. They write roughshod punk songs that amount to dramatic retellings of fictional characters playing a fictional sport, yet they radiate a communal energy, an exuberance for the mere opportunity to play music together. It’s hard not to root for them; the band feels as much part of an underdog story as the payers they iconize.

With members spread over the globe, The Garages thrive online, thus one of the only acts to have benefitted from a fallow year of live music. For all the live music I’ve heard (in a year with an expected dearth of it), LIVE @ HECKDANG won on pure spirit, with just four tracks that each knocked it out of the park. Think DIY in its most distilled form: it’s refused to leave my head since it arrived.

Jeff Parker – Suite for Max Brown

Jeff Parker’s career has bridged whole decades, from his role in Tortoise to his post-band forays into jazz. Yet Suite for Max Brown, which arrived in January (and thus well before 2020 actually started) stood out as a career highlight, both for its imaginative arrangements and structural brilliance. It’s a top-to-bottom excellent record that weaves between instrumental mantras and pop-adjacent bops. As far as avant-garde jazz goes, it’s a super easy listen. As a tribute to family, it radiates warmth.

Jeff Rosenstock – NO DREAM

Jeff Rosenstock is today’s quintessential punk because he represents who we are: always anxious, always wondering when it’ll get better, always willing to go to the bat and get loud in ways we can’t. NO DREAM, which came out of nowhere in late May, channeled that anxiety in some of the most forceful songs of his career. Its back half escaped from it slightly by catering to the tour band experience, and the topics he covered felt moved to the back burner in the face of a whole new set of problems, but the sentiment was undoubtedly the same. It’s a cruel joke that the year we could have used a Jeff Rosenstock show made a Jeff Rosenstock show impossible, but that will make next year’s inevitable live shows all the more powerful.

Jyoti – Mama, You Can Bet!

Georgia Anne Muldrow’s third record with Jyoti collected on almost two decades worth of honing her craft, making it one of her finest accomplishments and the best Jyoti record so far. It’s an eclectic collection of jazz that plays around with histories both personal and global, produced warmly and anchored by Muldrow’s powerful voice. Hard to find better jazz released this year than right here.

The Microphones – Microphones in 2020

I’m not hugely familiar with Phil Elverum; I know Mount Eerie better than his work with The Microphones, when he was in his 20s. Your given familiarity with his decades-spanning career couldn’t help but color your reaction to Microphones in 2020, a 45-minute track that encapsulated everything from the processing of memory to the beauty of personal growth. On that level, I could appreciate it fully. It also deftly demonstrated how good Elverum had gotten at storytelling; not many others could string three chords over an hour and keep you completely enraptured. For its boldness, it’s still a year-end highlight.

Moor Mother – Circuit City

Even by Camae Ayewa’s typically-high standards, Circuit City was extraordinary. Moor Mother records normally sprawl organically over disparate concepts, but Circuit City positioned Ayewa in the eye of a free jazz storm that would feel apocalyptic if it weren’t so horrifyingly prescient. It’s incredibly focused, forcing you to hang on to her every word or risk being lost to the whirlwind. Fortunately her poetry never felt more powerful, as it tugged on years and years of earned grievances from coping with a country that devalues you at it wrings you dry for profit. Alternately serene and anxiety-inducing, Circuit City wasn’t an easy listen, but it powerfully defined the tumult background of a long, long year.

NIIKA – Close But Not Too Close

This record stuck with me for reasons I have to assign to my enduring live for Bitte Orca, but also because this filled a specific itch for me. It’s pop music that slowly unfurls like smoke, technically accomplished (maybe a little showy) but unwilling to sacrifice structure or intriguing melody. Niika’s voice remains a pitch-perfect wonder, and her songs keep it at the center even astray break out into their own little eddies. As pop records go it’s as serene as a gentle sky.

Oceanator – Things I Never Said

More than anything, its Elise Okusami’s simple honesty that stuck with me the most on her debut LP. Oceanator’s Things I Never Said turned a ton of heads this year, as a multi-instrumentalist once most notable for drumming in Vagabon began to make real headway as a solo artist. Its tracks are made of incredibly simple parts, but those humble arrangements allows Okusami’s arrow-like words to strike true.

Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire, Immediately

Mike Hadreas’ penchant for dramatic storytelling and sumptuous arrangements hit a noticeable height in Set My Heart on Fire, Immediately. It felt like an anti-ageist anthem, finding the newly-christened forty-year-old searching (and succeeding) in opening himself up to new wonders and fresh feelings. The music followed suit in masterfully textured tracks like the dusty “Describe” and the string-pierced “Your Body Changes Everything.” 

Pink Siifu & Fly Anakin – FlySiifu’s

Pink Siifu is truly one of those artists I feel honored to have discovered, given that he’s responsible for two of my favorite releases this year. Unlike NEGRO’s incensed experimentalism, FlySiifu’s, his collab with whipsmart MC Fly Anakin, floated in nothing but smoke and good vibes. It felt in line with Liv.e’s lysergic breakout record Couldn’t Wait To Tell You… in how it lifted itself on humble stakes, content to spit rhymes on a bevy of contributed, focused productions. Easygoing and infinitely enjoyable, FlySiifu’s stands out still; I can’t recommend it enough.

Ratboys – Printer’s Devil

Leave it to Ratboys, up there with America’s most efficient, hardest-working bands, to kill a perilous year like 2020. Printer’s Devil might as well have come out in a different year, but the moment “Alien With a Sleep Mask On” comes on I get sent right back to the first moment I listened to it, sitting in Caffe Zingaro, and had to stop myself from singing along in public. Leaving behind the mellowness of their earlier records, their newest stuck to hard-hitting anthems and bright, sprawling upgrades of their signature “post-country” songs. In its heightened production budget and remarkably effusive tunes, the record felt like an arrival fitting for a band vouched by Bernie Sanders. It hasn’t left my library since.

TOPS – I Feel Alive

TOPS’ latest was pitch-perfect pop released at the break of spring but bearing the soft-lit easiness of an autumn-bound teen movie (or a Prefab Sprout album cover). Like all great pop, it does its job effortlessly while remaining deceptively simple, full of tiny touches (a series of guitar slides on “Pirouette”, or keyboard twinkles on “Ballads and Sad Movies”) that elevate it to greatness.

Wednesday – I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone

I write for Post-Trash on occasion, and I had the luck of picking out this record to cover based solely on the artist and album name. I say “luck” because I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone turned out to be a hell of a shoegaze record, as Karly Hartman embodied the distinctive crossbreed of angst and ennui covering Midwest adolescence as she and the band raged out in walls of noise. It still bears one of the best opening salvos of the year, in the blast of “Fate Is…” and the slowcore grandeur of “Billboard”.

Young Jesus – Welcome To Conceptual Beach

Young Jesus are arguably one of the best underground bands around, and Welcome To Conceptual Beach further held that status accurate. For an act so grounded in cynical, existential dread and theological discourse, Beach played it quite straight; true to maturity, it felt as though John Rossiter was finally coming to terms with some form of comfortable faith. That may have come across as cheesy to some, but the plainspoken beauty of songs like “Pattern Doubt” and “(un)knowing” can’t be ignored. It’s yet another solid release from a band that can’t do much wrong, and still stands as one of the year’s best.

Yves Tumor – Heaven to a Tortured Mind

Safe In The Hands of Love may have proved the more cohesive project, but Yves Tumor’s follow-up was even more of a star-making moment for the experimental artist. Heaven to a Tortured Mind doubled down on accessibility without sacrificing the noisy splendor central to their work. Vortices of clamorous mutterings shared the stage with some of the most unabashedly gorgeous songs of Tumor’s career, including the glammy “Kerosene!” and the bombastic “Gospel for a New Century.” That may have imbalanced the record as a whole, but its highs are so high that it instantly reframed Tumor as a latent pop artist, prepared to bring some confrontation to a bigger stage.

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That’s it! Make sure to check out all these records and support the artists if you can! Have a lovely New Year!