Dadrock — Best Albums of 2020. What a fucking year. Here are the…
By: Steve Seidel
Tags: Album Review, 2020, Music, Best Of, Indie

What a fucking year. Here are the albums that stood out for me in 2020.

Fiona Apple, Fetch The Bolt Cutters

When Wilco released their masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001, it was the perfect soundtrack for the post-9/11 era. “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad sad songs” (“Jesus, etc.”); “I would like to salute, the ashes of American flags” (“Ashes of American Flags”) — Jeff Tweedy’s plaintive lyrics resonated with an audience grappling with a new world order. But remarkably, he wrote those songs before the planes crashed into the WTC. Wilco finished production in early 2001, months before 9/11. The album’s prescience is haunting. Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters doesn’t directly foretell a global pandemic, or suggest that we would all be on lockdown for most of the year, but there is a homespun quality to the music, created pre-pandemic, that made it the perfect soundtrack as time lost meaning, high fidelity was replaced with ambient echos of living room concerts on Zoom, and we found unique ways to entertain ourselves. Pots and pans are used as percussion. Dogs bark in the background. Fetch The Bolt Cutters was like a visit from an old friend who shows up unexpectedly, but you’re damn glad to see them.

2. Haim, Women In Music Volume III

A creative leap for a trio of Jewish girls from the Valley. There’s certain consistency to the tracks as the album unfolds; you keep waiting for the dud but the dud never seems to come. Not sure what they mean by “bonus tracks” but the trio of songs that close the album (“Now I’m In It”, “Hallelujah” and “Summer Girl” are among the strongest of the album. All killer, no filler.

3. Run The Jewels, RTJ 4

On May 29th, for an excruciating 8 minutes and 46 seconds, George Floyd’s life was extinguished. At a time when we were already stuck at home looking in the literal and proverbial mirror, an American reckoning was explored anew. Five days later, RTJ dropped their fourth album. On tracks like “yankee and the brave (ep. 4)” and “holy calamafuck” you can practically hear the concrete underneath a million boots hitting the streets in anguish and indignation.

4. Waxahatchee, St Cloud

Katie Crutchfield AKA Waxahatchee knows a thing or two, because she’s seen a thing or two. Exhibit A:

Tomorrow could feel like a hundred years later

I’m wiser and slow and attuned

And I am down on my knees

I’m a bird in the trees

I can learn to see with a partial view

I can learn to be easy as I move in close to you

5. Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher

“I Know The End” as the credits roll on this emotional, deep dark turgid year. The Spotify Canvas for that song is Phoebe making out with an older woman on a loop which is distracting.

6. Bruce Springsteen, Letter To You

2020 was poised to be a big year for Bruce, with a new album and world tour with the E Street Band put on hold due to the pandemic. Letter To You is his twentieth studio album; in a modern spin, it was released as a documentary on Apple TV+ which is a good way for us “visual learners” aka aging dadrockers to take it in. A trio of tracks (“If I Was the Priest,” “Janey Needs a Shooter” and “Song for Orphans”) feature lyrics from deep in the archives of Bruce’s diaries, reworked for now, and give a clever nod to the early days of his “next Dylan” hype almost a half century ago. Letter To You is also an album of reflection and loss from a man who presumably can’t go on doing this forever, but damn if he’s not going to try.

7. Nathaniel Rateliff, And It’s Still Alright

An elegy for his lost friend and producer Richard Swift, who took his own life in 2018. They were scheduled to record this album together. A new depth to Rateliff’s canon as he steps away from the Night Sweats and delivers a powerful acoustic leaning collection of thoughtful songs.

8. Bob Dylan, Rough & Rowdy Ways

Is the lyric “I’m just like Anne Frank — like Indiana Jones. And them British bad boys the Rolling Stones” Dylan’s stab at a hip hop boast? Rough & Rowdy Ways is an appropriate description for Dylan 39th (!) studio album. Closing it with a 16 minute tribute to the JFK assassination is such a Kanye move. Get ready for Ye’s 16 minute elegy of Biggie and Tupac.

9. Jason Isbell, Reunions

Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places, but Isbell’s latest has received faint attention in year end best of lists, which is a head scratcher. Hall of Fame Twitter troubadour Isbell delivers another stellar collection of meditations on love, loss and broken souls.

10. Jay Electronica, A Written Testimony

Jay Electronica has been around since myspace was our primary promotional music driver, yet A Written Testimony is somehow his debut album. Both contemporary and a throwback to a more compelling era of hip hop, when Jay Z and Kanye were at the top of their games.

11. Avett Bros, The Third Gleam

If I could quarantine pod with one artist, it’d be the Avett Brothers, hands down. You’re sitting down to a nice brew of coffee and hot oatmeal, look over, and Scott pulls out a banjo and harmonica, Seth with a simple acoustic. The best…part…of waking up, is Avetts in your cup!

12. Andy Shauf, The Neon Skyline

There’s something about the Springsteen of Saskatchewan*’s music that makes you stop what you’re doing whenever you hear it and figure out who it is, where is it coming from, where is it going.

[*”Springsteen of Saskatchewan” is a preposterous and inaccurate way to describe Shauf; I just liked the way it rolled off the tongue.]

13. Drive By Truckers, The Unraveling

“Thoughts And Prayers” is a devastating gun control missive that makes you look back wistfully at the halcyon days when the only floating virus we were concerned with was the bullet.

14. Clem Snide, Forever Just Beyond

“Roger Ebert” and “Don’t Bring No Ladder” is a devastating 1–2 punch to kick off an album.

15. Everything Is Recorded, Friday Forever

Not much of a track record of successful side projects created by record label execs, yet here we are. XL Recordings founder Richard Russell delivers the goods, a completely contemporary experience, out Gorillaz-ing the Gorillaz, though to be fair their album was very good as well.

16. Car Seat Headrest, Making A Door Less Open

Do yourself a favor if you haven’t already — pause the podcast and spend 5 minutes with “Can’t Cool Me Down”. Or if you prefer, check out a 2020 band practice during quarantine in their performance of it on Fallon.

17. Jeff Tweedy, Love Is The King

With its No Depression alt country flourishes, Love Is The King plays like a great lost Uncle Tupelo album, albeit one where Tweedy took the mic for all of the songs. Obama dug it.

18. Sufjan Stevens, The Ascension

The anti-lockdown album — where releases by the likes of Fiona Apple, Taylor Swift, the Avett Bros etc sound like they were made within the confines of quarantine, The Ascension is big, majestic and expansive.

19. Sylvan Esso, Free Love

Makes me miss the days of cocktails in a hotel lobby, and mall dressing rooms.

20. Taylor Swift, folklore

What are you doing to me, Taylor? I’m a grown man, heading towards a half century of living, listening to your output this year like it’s your personal Nebraska. When my kids come in the room I self consciously turn it off. I need help Taylor.

The full list: