2020 was quite a year, eh? For much of it, I felt pretty darn disconnected from music. And everything else. But as I started putting together this list of my favorite albums, I realized I’d (somehow) been paying attention—and that music had helped carry me through the pandemic. Not all the way through it, of course, but we’re getting there, right? Right?
I’ll just note, as I always do, that my list skews toward Americana, folk, and other roots-y music styles. But I get around. Or at least my ears do.
10. Die Midwestern, Arlo McKinley – “Bag of Pills,” a song about dealing drugs and dealing with loneliness and loss, is probably the song of the year for me. But, really, Die Midwestern is an album full of moving songs about hard times and grit. It’s not all grim, though. The vibe on some songs, including (oddly) “Suicidal Saturday Night,” is downright mirthful. McKinley’s debut album—at age 40—is a country-punk revelation.
9. Ghosts of West Virginia, Steve Earle & the Dukes – Most of the songs on Ghosts were written to accompany a play about coal miners, but the songs work well on their own—and, indeed, cohere into a freestanding testament to a particular, hardscrabble kind of life. Three opening songs (“Heaven Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” “Union, God and Country,” and “Devil Put the Coal in the Ground”) immediately set the mood, outstandingly so. Another standout: “Black Lung.”
8. Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings E&F Sides – In some ridiculous sense, these sides are the leftovers from avant-garde jazz percussionist McCraven’s double-sided Universal Beings album from 2018. (Those would be the A, B, C, and D sides, don’t you know?) But these pieces are different; each comes across as a short—“song-sized,” even—burst of beat-heavy creativity. I could imagine the pieces appealing to fans of hip hop, world music, and even contemporary classical music. McCraven calls this “organic beat music.” They’re some dang interesting beats.
7. Italian Ice by Nicole Atkins – I’ve worked from home every day since mid-March, and, gosh, it has often been far too quiet. Whenever I wanted a little infusion of life, a shot of musical caffeine, I started turning to Atkins’s stunning bit of retro pop. There’re some disco vibes here, with a splash of Dusty Springfield, and some ’70s soul, too. I found myself dancing around the apartment to Italian Ice several times this year. Ok, several times every week.
6. Reunions, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – This is the fifth time a Jason Isbell album has landed on one of my Top 10s. Reunions is, perhaps, a little smoother than those albums and, to be frank, that’s not necessarily a compliment. But below the go-down-easy production values is a set of songs filled with struggles and self-questioning. Yeah, that’s the stuff. I’m particularly fond of “Dreamsicle,” a song about a kid facing his parents’ divorce, and “Be Afraid,” a song about, well, courage.
5. Bonny Light Horseman by Bonny Light Horseman – Horseman was the first album I really fell for in 2020. It was January, and the world still seemed familiar and manageable. That quickly changed, of course, but the album’s gentle harmonies and focus on centuries of folk tradition stood me in good stead—as the world sorta fell apart. The album somehow felt like a reminder that humanity would surely (probably?) manage, yet again, to survive. Horseman (not Horseman, y’know) is a folk supergroup (Josh Kaufman, Eric D. Johnson, and Anaïs Mitchell), and you can’t listen to Horseman (not Horseman, y’know) without being amazed at the brilliance of the harmonies. Horseman’s members sound like they’ve been singing together for a lifetime.
4. HiRUDiN, Austra – And now for something completely different. Austra is Katie Stelmanis’s synthpop project, and she imbues HiRUDiN with her big vocals—which are discordant and otherworldly but also warm and irresistible. If I think about it, I know HiRUDiN is a breakup album; it chronicles a journey through, and out of, the end of a relationship. But I just don’t tend to think too much about the lyrics. It’s that, well, nearly sci-fi voice that pulls me in. It’s a sound so fresh and distinctive that I almost—almost, mind you—can forgive Austra’s use of a (caution: cliché ahead!) children’s choir on one track. Added weirdness bonus: The album’s title refers to a peptide produced by leeches. Naturally. Check out: “Risk It,” “Anywayz,” and “I Am Not Waiting.”
3. Old Flowers by Courtney Marie Andrews – At one level, Old Flowers is another breakup album—but it’s so much more than that. It’s about love (and the power of that) and the absence of love (and the power of that, too). There’s a pervasive melancholy here, of course, and a rawness. “There’s no replacing someone like you,” she sings on “Burlap String.” And you feel that. Indeed, each of the 10 songs on Flowers stirs some feeling in me. That’s a result of Andrews’s smart songwriting and her heartfelt delivery. And, maybe best of all, these are songs that pull you in musically. I sing along. I hum along. I feel along.
2. Drive-By Truckers’ The Unraveling – If you haven’t felt angry this year—at something, at many things, maybe—when will you? Unraveling is the soundtrack to accompany that anger. Powerful.
1. Shortly After Takeoff by BC Camplight – I’d already fallen hard for Takeoff when I saw that a music critic for The Guardian had, rightly, christened it a “masterpiece.” Truth be told, I’ve been a fan of Brian Christinzio’s BC Camplight for years. One of the best live shows I ever attended was a BC Camplight show at the Tin Angel, a now-defunct, odd listening room in my neighborhood. Christinzio has since left Philadelphia for, of all places, Manchester, but I haven’t forgotten the power of that show. But even if I had, this album—full of musicality and dark, smart lyrical humor—would remind me. The songs are deeply personal. We hear about the death of Christinzio’s father and the son’s struggle to cope with that, with adulthood, with mental illness. At the same time, each song is strikingly different musically. Takeoff is proof, I’m telling you, that pop music really can be profound. It’s a masterpiece.
Honorable Mentions: Good Souls Better Angels, Lucinda Williams; Sturgill Simpson’s Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1; Odin’s Raven Magic, Sigur Rós; Pablo Sainz-Villegas’s Soul of Spanish Guitar; Show Pony by Orville Peck; Debussy – Rameau, Vikingur Ólafsson; Folkesange, Myrkur; John Moreland’s LP5; Mipso, Mipso; The Mavericks’ En Español; Agricultural Tragic, Corb Lund; Lydia Loveless’s Daughter; songs, Adrianne Lenker; Songs for the General Public, The Lemon Twigs; Prairie Love Letter, Brennen Leigh; Gill Landry’s Skeleton at the Banquet; About Love and Loving Again by Christian Kjellvander; Shore, Fleet Foxes; Eleven Hundred Springs’ Here ’Tis; Alles in Allem by Einstürzende Neubauten; Total Freedom, Kathleen Edwards; The New OK, Drive-By Truckers; Charley Crockett’s Welcome to Hard Times; A Small Death, Samantha Crain; and Zach Bryan’s Quiet, Heavy Dreams.