“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. Through it all, clearer-than-ever proof emerges not just of a great band in stride, but a cultural fact: women continue making the most vital rock music now. Melkbelly rarely stays in one place for long, whiplashing from one fractured groove to the next, always finding new ways to shift from quiet to explosive. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Graphic by Drew Litowitz, photos via Getty Images. But with the addition of six songs on the deluxe edition in May, the record kicked dirt on the arbitrary and outdated rules of rap albums. Let’s face it: listening to new music wasn’t exactly easy this year. She sings like no one else in indie rock, as though she is guided by a golden energy from within. The most revelatory sound Haim make room for on Women in Music Pt. If nothing else, Bob Dylan’s 39th studio album should forever put to rest the idea that the storied songwriter is losing his voice. –Eric Torres, © 2021 Condé Nast. 20. What stands out is Shamir’s commitment to his own vision, no matter the shape. She wants to hear a lover blinking; she sees a horse’s eyes rotting. 11/12/2020 Esquire Getty Images. –Colin Lodewick, 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. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Standout track “On My Own” is a huge, glittery anthem, and one of the most immediate songs in his catalog. “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. It makes for a complex and personal statement about the nature and worth of Black creativity and labor. So she built one via her fourth album, how i’m feeling now. We count down to number one, with entries from Soccer Mommy, Run The Jewels, HAIM and Moses Sumney . Rough and Rowdy Ways is the 39th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on June 19, 2020 by Columbia Records.It is Dylan's first album of original songs since his 2012 album Tempest, following three releases, one a triple album, that covered traditional pop standards.. Music reviews, ratings, news and more. –Stephen M. Deusner, Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp |  Spotify | Tidal, Recorded in secret in quarantine and unleashed upon the world with less than a day’s warning, folklore was the first Taylor Swift album untethered from the traditional expectations of a blockbuster release. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. The resulting songs pierce her party girl persona with something more sentimental—and sometimes quotidian—but, true to form, she buoyed the vibe with sugar-rush hooks and blowout beats. Core duo Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham (who has worked for the company that produces Pitchfork Music Festival) are most impressive in their sharp-tongued songcraft, whether confronting a distant partner or conjuring up a childhood reverie that juxtaposes hot lava and hot dogs—unsettlingly delectable. 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. Heaven flirts with familiar rock motifs as often as it subverts them, morphing into something unrecognizable. 关注. 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. Pitchfork's Best Ambient Albums of 2020. Powered by driving guitars and softened by droning winds and synths, the tender Youth Pastoral reckons with a question that requires no churchgoing history of your own to understand: how to find meaning amid a tumultuous life on earth. Home; News; Reviews; Best … Weezer were supposed to cosplay 2020 in the ... (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission. The result is some of the finest songwriting of Swift’s career, vivid storytelling both personal and fictional (and somewhere in between), stuffed with more Easter eggs than a Marvel movie. –Marc Hogan, On YHLQMDLG, aka Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana or I Do Whatever I Want, Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny honors his home island’s past of sweaty marquesina throwdowns with a score of perreo bangers for the new age. “You girls mean business,” he bellows to two “fleet-footed guides from the underworld” on the swaggering “False Prophet.” “And I do too.” –Andy Cush, In a year of isolation and unattainable intimacies, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas is our poet laureate of constant longing. The title of the Brownsville rapper’s engrossing album frames his traumas as the product of his father’s sins cursing east Brooklyn’s soil. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz, Sophie Allison paints with the shades of a bruise on color theory. The Nashville trio consists of guitarist (and bar owner) Joel Plunkett, Silver Jews drummer (and Trash Humpers actor) Brian Kotzur, and bassist Sabrina Rush, who also plays violin in the Midwest alt-country group State Champion. Equal parts retro and fresh, Future Nostalgia is redolent of elements from the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, nodding to the work of artists like Blondie, Chic, Kylie Minogue, Nile Rodgers, Prince, Madonna, and Daft Punk. Death and apocalypse lurk in every corner of Punisher—lightning flashes, sirens wail, a Giants fan gets killed at Dodger Stadium—and Bridgers shuffles through this ominous fog, still alive, still growing taller. –Ross Scarano, Megan Thee Stallion’s official debut album is a triumphant joyride that more than fulfills the promise of its title. Artists like Soccer Mommy and Porridge Radio expressed a distinctly 2020 sense of isolation in prescient albums recorded before the … 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. 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. What We Drew burbles between frenetic drum patterns and hip-hop cadences, glossy electro beats and sinister synths. As befits an artist obsessed with being a superhero, Burna Boy’s music is thoroughly posthuman: much of its succulence comes from how the singer’s lilting cadences mesh with Auto-Tune. –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. As his acoustic guitar pulses forward and the details pile up, Elverum gestures toward a deeper, universal history: Look long enough, and you might see yourself in the photos. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. –Rawiya Kameir, For 25 years, Dan Bejar has come across as the smartest absinthe-sipping aesthete in the room. The Sunlight Mound - Psychedelic Porn … The album reflects her newfound ease, all big skies, wide open spaces, and Americana twang. The album reflects her newfound ease, all big skies, wide open spaces, and Americana twang. To the casual listener, Beatrice Dillon’s avant electronic tracks might seem austere. “I can’t wait to be alone, to be one with my blackest fire,” she exhales on “Nu World Burdens,” over a twinkling melody and drums warm enough to make your heart flutter. Gordon’s howls are hell-bent and infatuated, with Tumor’s raspy pleas pushing them both closer to the edge of oblivion. Above is Metacritic's list of the 40 best-reviewed albums of 2020, ranked by Metascore. You can practically smell the sweat and beer from the crowd. The music expresses the joy of wildness, with fast and burly songs set off by handclaps and harmonica solos. You air-drum the little hitch in “Fox” again and again across your steering wheel; you throw your chest forward in your home-office at all the perfectly executed half-time breakdowns; you do isometric lunges while Stoitsiadis sings about disintegrating. 281k members in the popheads community. The Philly-based artist’s self-titled seventh album is a culmination of sorts, bundling together every divergent thread he’s followed over the last five years, from synthpop to country-tinged balladry, with bright and welcoming sonics. Rarely does a particular sound last longer than a single beat. Yves Tumor, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, Haim, and Bartees Strange (photo by Julia Leiby). ), 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. Fourth album The Slow Rush pushes the approach even further, towards canons previously unexplored. 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. Dream-sequence strings float atop dissonant shudders; Sumney’s voice transfigures mid-run like a stage trick, his falsetto a sudden flapping dove; he sings about being between polarities of desire and identity as if to lay claim to both at the same time. Within these entrancing soundscapes, stray ruminations float to the surface. Each element, shorn of everything extraneous, glows with significance. Alongside a new backing band, after losing the other original members to mandatory military service, she questions a young, freethinking artist’s place in a society that expects deference and decorum. “Last Man Standing” describes a musician packing up his instrument alone onstage at the end of the night, a poignant metaphor for the twilight of a performer’s career. No artist wants to be pigeonholed, but for Strange this resistance is crucial to the art he makes as a Black man working in a field most associated with white dudes. Pitchfork's 50 Best Albums of 2020 show list info . –Noah Yoo, Touché Amoré crafted one of the year’s best punk records using unusual tools, like pedal steel guitar, and riffs that may seem more suited to post-rock. Her glittering debut, The Angel You Don’t Know, features waist-winding afropop rhythms; bouncy, avant-pop melodies; experimental modulated vocals; and playful lyrics as Instagram-ready as any artist this side of Drake. Recording it over a few short weeks at the onset of the pandemic, Charli escaped isolation’s creative doldrums by opening up a feedback loop with her fans, sharing real-time updates and allowing them a hand in her process. –Sheldon Pearce, Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Bandcamp |  Spotify | Tidal, Hannah Read can make a melody out of anything. But in her instrumentation, she reaches for organic matter, sometimes painstakingly: Grimes meticulously tweaked acoustic guitar loops on “Delete Forever,” layering actual violins and banjo until they recall a post-apocalyptic campfire song. Instantly, it felt more like an unfocused, loose, and chaotic mid-aughts Lil Wayne mixtape with memorable tracks like “All In,” where the flexes are brilliantly batshit (Lil Baby threatens to wreck his Lambo truck just to prove, to no one in particular, that it’s not rented). Look, Pramuk seems to declare, at how much we contain. 7.4. by Sheldon Pearce. From the choppy vocoder of “One More Year” to the loping soft rock of “Borderline,” Parker allows myriad influences to flow through his songwriting: house, boogie, yacht rock, R&B. Ad Choices, The albums that got us through this chaotic year, featuring Fiona Apple, Bad Bunny, Lil Uzi Vert, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. The U.K. post-punk trio’s latest LP updates their DIY aesthetic, filling some of the negative space they’ve so expertly wielded in the past with pulsing electronics. –Brian Josephs, A band’s impact shouldn’t be hypothetical, but here’s Dogleg, the debutants of Michigan emo, whose breakout year mostly took place in the imagination. They’d been playing together informally for awhile, and they decided to make an album only after some encouragement from the late David Berman, who’d witnessed Plunkett and Kotzur’s earliest practices as a duo. 88. It makes for a complex and personal statement about the nature and worth of Black creativity and labor. 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. 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. Kate NV on the 9 Things That Inspired Her Excellent New Album, Rina Sawayama on Her Wildly Eclectic and Disarmingly Personal Debut Album, Chicago Indie Rockers Dehd Tackle Life’s Cosmic Joke With Unpretentious Charm, Lomelda’s Hannah Read Is Forever Searching for Connection, product of his father’s sins cursing east Brooklyn’s soil, How Drakeo the Ruler Recorded an Amazing-Sounding Album From Jail, How Radiohead, Social Media Addiction, and the Ravages of Climate Change Inspired Kelly Lee Owens’ New Album, Porridge Radio Make Indie Rock for the Angsty Antisocial in All of Us, The Quiet Return of Fleet Foxes and Sufjan Stevens, Get to Know Amaarae, Who’s Expanding the Sound of Afropop, Destroyer’s Dan Bejar Serenades the Apocalypse, U.S. III is themselves. The album is the first project between only Gibbs and The Alchemist, as it also marks the second time they have collaborated on a full … View reviews, ratings, news & more regarding your favorite band. Whether she’s fighting the urge to retreat back to bed or striving to permanently block a negative relationship, the 28-year-old singer and producer powers through with an impressively unbothered focus on growth amid the chaos. Share on Facebook; Share on Twitter; Open share drawer; The first posthumous album from Mac Miller plays like a compan –Alphonse Pierre, On Microphones in 2020, Phil Elverum revived his earliest moniker to ponder his formative years across a single, wistful, 45-minute song. –Allison Hussey, From her early punk recordings alongside sister Allison to her quietly devastating solo albums, Katie Crutchfield is always steadfast in her truth. So as she thrashes between anti-capitalist bops and introspective anthems, Sawayama assumes the role of both pop diva and pop rebel, subverting expectations of what the genre could and should stand for. Rosenstock surveys the debris, which doesn’t add up to much. As is usually the case, you can predict a lot of this list if you read their reviews throughout the year, but it never entirely mirrors Best New Music. 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. Pitchfork's 50 Best Albums of 2020. Hadreas sings about misery and disconnection, about feeling unrecognizable to himself, about shepherding an inexperienced lover through his first gay encounter and picking his pockets afterwards. “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. 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. In a year when the president and his supporters blew the “law and order” dog whistle incessantly, it was a welcome escape to enter the Gang’s world, where chaos is gospel and petty crime is just fun in the sun. Not even the most biased of biased haters would have the nerve to claim that Your sources! Pitchfork once named Pavement's Gold Soundz as the top song of the 90's. In the companion short film, he accompanies his thoughts by flipping through hundreds of old photos, adding bittersweet visual cues to the rambling narrative. Rock, in its purest form, is predicated on a group of people gathered in a room. The old world that Dogleg wrote about sucks in its own way, but it’s the world they deserve. For their exquisite follow-up Flower of Devotion, Dehd upgraded to a proper studio, refining their gritty alchemy without scrubbing it too clean. –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. Original Source → Comments. With Saint Cloud, Crutchfield’s fifth album as Waxahatchee, she climbs to solid ground, emerging from the storm self-assured. –Anna Gaca, Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify, With their 2018 debut Parts, Ohmme introduced a combustive art-rock style based on tightly intertwined dual vocals and improvisatory guitars, wringing sing-song catchiness from baroque complexity. 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.