Deradoorian is quietly self-possessed, nearly beatific, in her movements through these environs, distinguishing herself with a rare quality among her psychedelic cohort: restraint. Her mother’s terminal illness and her own struggles with depression appear in a wintry synesthesia of yellow, blue, and gray. Her songwriting may be more openly topical than usual, but her sound hasn’t changed much. Started as a lockdown exercise for my own benefit, the list grew from there. For each tart complaint (“I hate your mom”) or fatalist disclosure (“I’ve been playing dead my whole life”) is a glimmering prophecy that one day things might be just fine, even if that day comes at the very end of civilization. “I no be politician/Me no like no politics,” Burna insists—and that rings true. Girls: Heavy Light 14. She sings like no one else in indie rock, as though she is guided by a golden energy from within. Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2020 wrap-up coverage here. “Why doesn’t it feel the same when I’m in the air?” she murmurs on “In the Mirror.” “My life is in a weird place,” she raps in Korean on “Free Interlude.” But she finds clarity, and joy, in examining it nonetheless. “I have a gift, I’ve been told, for seeing what’s there,” she sings on “The Eye,” and her perspective has never sounded so clear. With Slowdive’s Neil Halstead in the producer’s chair, the Los Angeles harpist swells her gentle ambience with a more strident sound but remains as transporting as … But he’s anything but dreary in his delivery, using loud guitars, louder drums, and his own brash and unwieldy voice to set scenes of filthy rental cars and beer-can pyramids. Chet “JR” White, the bassist and producer best known for his work in the band Girls, died in October 2020 at age 40. –Mehan Jayasuriya, There is no greater proof of the universe’s cruelty than embarking on a long, clarifying hike, then receiving an email about a 20%-off sale at Macys to interrupt your peace of mind. –Marc Hogan, After zoning in on starry ambience and minimalism on 2017’s Eternal Recurrence, Angel Deradoorian returns to polyglot psych rock on Find the Sun. –Jillian Mapes, © 2021 Condé Nast. Let's face it: listening to new music wasn't exactly easy this year. –Jia Tolentino, From her early punk recordings alongside sister Allison to her quietly devastating solo albums, Katie Crutchfield is always steadfast in her truth. Never before has eating cereal sounded like such a riot. –Alphonse Pierre. Pitchfork was the only publication to have included the album on a 2007 end-of-the-year list, while over sixteen popular publications included the re-release on their 2008 lists. Heavy Light is filled with existential dread, but it aspires to a gentler world, one where the burden of being isn’t so leaden. leader’s latest solo album, a collection of pure pop melodies smuggled into strident, feisty punk songs. Pitchfork's Best Ambient Albums of 2020. III is themselves. For each tart complaint (“I hate your mom”) or fatalist disclosure (“I’ve been playing dead my whole life”) is a glimmering prophecy that one day things might be just fine, even if that day comes at the very end of civilization. Since 2015’s modern classic Currents, he’s favored a sound led by lush synth chords, hooky basslines, and danceable grooves. On standout track “THC,” the band slowly cranks up the tension until it erupts into an onslaught of guitar fuzz. –Marc Hogan, On PITH, Melkbelly’s second full-length, the Chicago foursome refine their knotty but melodic noise rock. Baby can jump from whining about middle-school crushes to name-dropping denim brands to attempting to encapsulate one of the most tense and unjust moments of our lifetimes. With creaking Crazy Horse guitar solos, basement-Sabbath sludge, and A Thousand Leaves-rustling mysticism, 2020 finds clarity in controlled chaos, an eye in the year’s hurricane. The 50 Best Albums of 2020（Pitchfork） 来自: indiechild (北京) 2021-01-01创建 2021-01-01更新 一直对pitchfork的选辑表示疑问，list里倒是有几张和我今年的重合。 推荐. The brilliance of Bartees’ debut is in how it carves out an expansive space within that loop. When a slightly unfinished version of Jay Electronica’s Act II appeared this October, it had been a little over a decade after its initial slated release, and most fans had given up hope on it ever actually coming out. Owens wrote the lyrics in a depressive state following a trauma-release therapy session, transforming that cathartic expulsion of her pain into a record with healing properties of its own. 11/12/2020 Esquire Getty Images. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. October 2, 2020. Artists like Soccer Mommy and Porridge Radio expressed a distinctly 2020 sense of isolation in prescient albums recorded before the pandemic, while raging punk bands like Dogleg and Soul Glo summoned the catharsis we all hope to feel when we can attend live shows again. Language has been central to Angus Finlayson’s work in music. From the motorik chug of “Saturnine Night” to the suave flute-led jazz pop of “Devil’s Market,” she renders familiar sounds with such style, character, and attention to detail that you might as well be hearing them for the first time. From the velvet-heavy chug of “Simulation” to the microdosed funk of “Shellfish Mademoiselle,” Róisín Machine knows what it means to disappear in the dry ice and come out feeling new. Equal parts meticulous and haphazard, the self-directed songs pick up on the percussive thread of 2012’s The Idler Wheel… with elemental rhythms formed, in part, by handclaps, floorstomps, and furniture-banging. Each element, shorn of everything extraneous, glows with significance. For their exquisite follow-up Flower of Devotion, Dehd upgraded to a proper studio, refining their gritty alchemy without scrubbing it too clean. The latest and greatest in pop music, all in one subreddit. Ambient. Singer-songwriter Alex Stoitsiadis was supposed to be hollering his hooks over melodic post-hardcore guitars in roiling 250-cap clubs, and the scenes of heartbreak he described were supposed to be playing out for listeners in real life. Rhythmically, Burna’s Afro-fusion sound connects homebase Lagos to Kingston, Atlanta, and London. On his first album, Live Forever, there’s a righteous defiance to the way the D.C.-via-Oklahoma artist scrambles 2000s indie rock (the intimacy of Bon Iver, the bombast of the Arcade Fire) with hip-hop cadences, emo intensity, and punk catharsis, as though he’s working it all out in real time. Pitchfork once named Pavement's Gold Soundz as the top song of the 90's. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. His 2020 album of original compositions is a radically different proposition: a 43-minute ambient suite meant to counter fascism’s global spread with joy rather than despair. As she sings in the rousing chorus of “Final Bow”: “It’s as real, real, real as it gets.” –Sam Sodomsky, Three songs into Haim’s sharpest album yet, Danielle is behind the wheel in her beloved Los Angeles with a Joni Mitchell classic on the stereo, “screaming every word to ‘Both Sides Now.’” How lost must one feel to shout “I really don’t know life at all” alone in the car first thing in the morning? The 35 Best Rock Albums of 2020 Pitchfork. “If this is all that we get, so be it,” Kempf insists, a bit of wistful resignation that doubles as a mission statement for their proudly stripped-down approach. The punk quartet mocks capitalism and the patriarchy across this 13-minute self-titled release, each brief song its own fierce declaration of autonomy. Contributing Writer; Rap; January 17 2020 . Using only her transmuted and multi-layered vocals, the Berlin-based composer creates a dense architecture where choral music and meditative techno meet. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is the sound of someone freeing themself from a mental prison built by others but unknowingly reinforced by the self. She buoys her bleak lyrics with the bright melodies and buzzing guitars that soundtracked Beavis and Butt-Head’s bickering on MTV in the ’90s. –Eric Torres. Afrobeats is a prime example of the future-pop that actually transpired, a hyper-digital sound far easier and oozier on the ear. The Sunlight Mound - Psychedelic Porn … Twice as Tall triumphs not so much for its substance but as a shimmering surface, a landslide victory for the politics of pleasure. The droll, phantom-like singer writes music for faithless burnouts who still want to believe: lost souls clinging to astrology and fucked-up intimacy, striving to get by in a brutal universe with no pre-ordained meaning. The napkins might be white linen but nobody’s using them. You can practically smell the sweat and beer from the crowd. Moldy laundry, “weird chips,” and straight-up garbage line the former Bomb the Music Industry! –Peyton Thomas, Soul Glo makes punk music with real stakes and a palpable sense of danger. –Evan Minsker, Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify, Debut albums rarely come as worn-in and weathered as Country Westerns. She turns liquid on the synth-sheathed “Time,” raps on the chaotic “Riquiquí,” and glitches with her voice pitched high on “Rip the Slit.” Presented as the first of four eventual albums, KiCk i shares all the promise of becoming, in both its pain and its joy. The album is always enchanting and full of small surprises: the particularly cartoonish warble of a synth on “Sayonara,” the intimate binaural hums on the meandering “Marafon 15,” the burst of laughter answering the lure of a saxophone on the cosmos-traversing “Plans.” New details peek out on every listen, like elements of wonder waiting to be discovered. Weezer were supposed to cosplay 2020 in the ... (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) A list of Pitchfork's best music of 2020. With this intimate hospice of a record, Allison gave us both. ), Listening to Mary Lattimore’s Silver Ladders feels like blinking awake on New Year’s Day: There’s some melancholy over what has passed mixed with buzzing wonder at what lies ahead. Kempf and Balla trade yearning, hiccupy vocals across riffs that reverberate like heat waves off asphalt, as McGrady thuds away through the humid air. In summer 2018 he quit that role . –Matthew Ismael Ruiz, Sophie Allison paints with the shades of a bruise on color theory. The results are consistently stunning, from the barn-burning opener “Come Heroine,” to the masterful heel-turn of “Limelight,” which lands somewhere between a Cranberries anthem and a campfire sing-along. –Jazz Monroe, Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal, “My execution might be televised.” That line and others from Freddie Gibbs’ “Scottie Beam” appeared in black marker on handmade signs this summer, held aloft in cities across the country during what may have been the largest wave of civil-rights protests in American history. Prior to his death, he … The Latest Juice December 31, 2020 December 31, 2020. Hopefully, like Chloe x Halle, we reemerge into the real world, elegantly transformed by what happened in the wee hours of the morning. On his first collection of original material in eight years, he sounds unusually attuned to the suggestive power of his craggy instrument, using small changes of inflection to convey wry self-mockery, roaring prowess, and a certain uneasy nostalgia. The fact that Melee conjures a year so different from the one we got is part of why it leaves such a mark: The histrionics of emo aren’t just dramatic, they’re now science fiction. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission. But the best albums of 2020 proved that incredible new music will always make their way to our ears, even in the toughest of times. And in the past decade, the rooms have become markedly more luxurious, with sophisti-pop saxophone, synths, and strings giving new plushness to his formerly sparse songs. In the warm thrum of “Describe,” the oceanic splash of “Without You,” and the barnstorming buildup of “Some Dream,” Set My Heart on Fire Immediately throws open doors to the dusty rooms where we’ve all been lurking inside ourselves. Frontperson Alli Logout’s jagged vocals dissect poverty, love, and commodified dissent, making The Passion Of the rare contemporary punk album that is actually as revolutionary as it sets out to be. “Hardly linear like narratives read,” Audet sings. The 10 Best Albums of 2020. Good Woman - The Staves. –Amy Phillips, Historically, there are two trajectories from sweetie childhood star to flawed adult: the bumpy one full of high-profile foibles or the one where they wind up as robots. Songwriter and bandleader Meg Remy reckons with alienation and injustice, drawing on a palette of pop, rock, and experimental sounds to convey the anxiety of the era. –Sam Sodomsky, In 2019, Chicago indie rock trio Dehd released the sparse and scrappy album Water, with songs informed by the romantic breakup of bassist Emily Kempf and guitarist Jason Balla, accompanied by Eric McGrady’s one-tom, one-snare minimalism. –Cat Zhang, From the opening disco swagger of “4 American Dollars,” U.S. Girls’ Heavy Light crackles with kinetic energy. The album reflects her newfound ease, all big skies, wide open spaces, and Americana twang. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. –Marc Hogan, Phoebe Bridgers will tweet about eating ass with one hand and crush your heart with the other. But the best albums of 2020 proved that incredible new music will always make their way to our ears, even in the toughest of times. One day after Pitchfork published their list of the top 100 songs of 2020, they've shared their list of the 50 best albums of the year. –Madison Bloom, Hannah Read can make a melody out of anything. But the Korean title of this album means that you're sort of unwilling to adjust.” In a music industry dominated by world-conquering pop empires like BTS and BLACKPINK, Hwang’s guitar-based songwriting is as radical as the title implies. Heaven flirts with familiar rock motifs as often as it subverts them, morphing into something unrecognizable. It is. Alfredo, the dexterous 38-year-old MC’s collaboration with beloved producer the Alchemist, is by turns heavy and light—his “Beam” verse ends with a rude kiss off to an ex in the form of Jordan-Pippen wordplay: “without me the bitch wouldn’t have got a ring.” More than a time capsule, Alfredo is an unruly feast of language. Amidst the neverending whirlwind of 2020, it was tempting to crawl into a cocoon of nostalgic favorites and never come out. Live Forever argues that life is not some march toward a peak, but a closed loop—one that’s tighter if you’re Black. Below, find the results, and compare them to Pitchfork’s own list of the 100 best songs and 50 best albums of 2020. Run the Jewels: RTJ4 15. Her howled words and the music’s occasionally sharp edges are both caustic and restorative forces. Bartees Strange - Live Forever. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. Ungodly Hour is a collection of low-key tracks that demonstrated true mastery of their intricate harmonies over slinky, charismatic production. All rights reserved. Killer Mike’s verse on “walking in the snow” offers a particularly stop-you-in-your-tracks moment, as he raps, “And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me/Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, ‘I can’t breathe.’” Alongside production that subtly expands the Run the Jewels sound, the duo offer more insight into the modern American psyche than any cable news pundit could hope to muster. It makes for a complex and personal statement about the nature and worth of Black creativity and labor. Grimes once treated lyrics as meaningless sound, but here, she’s shockingly honest about the pain of posh isolation: “I’ll tie my feet to rocks and drown/You’ll miss me when I’m not around.” –Arielle Gordon, On Every Bad, Brighton indie rock four-piece Porridge Radio make a strong case for curative self-scrutiny. 20. This covers (nearly) all Pitchfork reviews in the year to date and is ranked by Pitchfork score then alphabetical on artist (first name). The Chicks dropped “Gaslighter”—the title track of their first album in 14 years—on March 4, shortly before 2020 went all the way up in flames. 281k members in the popheads community. –NM Mashurov, Rina Sawayama’s debut album is unafraid to present all of her paradoxes.