Still, without question, it’s Garcia’s performances and curatorial instincts that make this such a powerful statement of self. Well, yes. The 50 Best Albums of 2020. Descendants of Cain’s frosty tone evaporates in its final minutes: “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev)” is Ka’s dedication to the people who saved him. –Sam Sodomsky, On Eternal Atake, Lil Uzi Vert employs an extraterrestrial concept that should be kitschy—in the album’s trailer, he’s jetted into the cosmos in a saucer the size of a city block by a humanoid cult—but instead lends the LP an intergalactic sheen. These are tracks with expressive, textured sounds. Stereogum's 50 best albums of 2020. The Allmusic 2020 Year In Review. Pitchfork's Highest Rated Albums of 2020. 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. Let’s face it: listening to new music wasn’t exactly easy this year. Nigel House.Powerful, primal, passionate music-making. Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud13. But the raw energy of Apple’s voice is the album’s life force, and there’s no mistaking the subjects of her missives—be it the men who refuse to recognize their abusive behavior; the women who, like Apple, were conditioned to compete with other women; the mean girls and those who called their bullshit; the users and the silencers; the people she fears will leave her. Lyrically, Burna muses on fame, destiny, and, on “Monsters You Made,” the legacy of colonialism in Nigeria. 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. Wait up, is that disco I hear? His deep familiarity with each of those touchstones—he prefaced Live Forever with an EP of National covers—allows him to explode them from within and rethink not just how but if they speak for him. The final addendum came in June: the protest anthem “The Bigger Picture” is a jarring inclusion on an album that isn’t overtly political—and that also makes it perfect. –Chal Ravens, There was the ambient danger that El-P and Killer Mike would eventually begin to bore us with their roughneck brilliance—another bruising Run the Jewels album to add to the pile, is it? On the slow-burning “It’s Lomelda,” she croons off a list of her musical heroes and their work, from Yo La Tengo to Frank Ocean to Sufjan Stevens’ devastatingly spare “The Only Thing.” She turns a conversational bit of advice into a soaring mantra on “Wonder,” repeating the phrase “When you get it, give it all you got, you said” across vocal peaks and valleys. Across the hour-long odyssey, Uzi hops between kaleidoscopic new worlds: one where it sounds like he’s skipping across a Sega Genesis circuit board, another where he’s hosting an ethereal party alongside a turnt choir. 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. An undeniable collaborative enterprise, Jarvis' vocals as captivating as ever.Emily, Buy now Bonus Exclusive: Suite For Iain and Jane / House Music All Night Long 12". “Oh, emptiness/Tell me about your nature,” she sings on “zombie girl.” While songs mostly consists of Lenker’s silvery vocals and brambled acoustic guitar, and instrumentals turns toward fingerpicked meditations and wind-chime drones, both sound like nothing so much as the rustic abode that Lenker has likened to “the inside of an acoustic guitar.” These records put you right inside that hollow. Lauren Laverne reveals the full Top 10 of 6 Music Recommends' Albums Of The Year list for 2020. –Allison Hussey, It was an album that was rumored to be rap’s next opus before it even materialized. If you'd picked up a pen at the end of last year and listed the things to look forward to in 2020, you'd have been spoiled for choice. Osees - Protean Threat14. –Dani Blum, Cut off from her usual muses—her crew and the club—Charli XCX needed a different kind of community space to inspire her this year. His first album of 2020, YHLQMDLG , ⦠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. On their pop- and R&B-bending second album Ungodly Hour, they’re figuratively slapping an ID card on a bar and saying, “Bartender, I need a drink.”, The Bailey sisters have quietly lost some of the wide-eyedness of the past and instead turned towards the flotsam and jetsam of twentysomething life. To all the artists, labels, our friends and our customers, thank you for your support in 2020. Amidst the pandemic that ravaged the globe in 2020, a centuries-old injustice fought to the fore and demanded to be seen and to be heard. Pick up the December 2020 issue to discover the Top 20 reissues/archive albums of the year. Infinite worlds are contained within the threads of that teal yogurt shop shirt and that infamous cardigan, carving a path for the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe to expand ever onward. –Vrinda Jagota, Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal, While the Korean-American producer Yaeji has anchored her previous work in strobe-lit beats and floor-shaking bass, her first full-length mixtape captures the anxious, aching throb of the morning after a night out. The song’s title sentiment is simply uttered on the hook—he’s wounded, yet hopeful that the sentiment’s warmth can be felt. - - - 50. Rarely has there been an artistic statement this stirring, this staggering, this powerful. That’s the precise kind of biting honesty that Alana, Este, and Danielle brilliantly amplify on Women in Music Pt. 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. 1: Hey Colossus - Dances/Curses; 2: The Soft Pink Truth - Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? Her howled words and the music’s occasionally sharp edges are both caustic and restorative forces. Putting that lens to the side, his stories about the ease of embracing hate (“Solitude of Enoch”) and post-prison families (“Unto the Dust”) are just as gripping and vivid. Close friends and peers contributed voice, reeds, percussion, and piano; the album’s nine tracks shift from airy drones to richly rendered deep house, from lyrical etudes to propulsive classical minimalism. Rebuild on Help, a gorgeous, crestfallen record about possession and healing old list thing a miss year... And more, containing wild energy and profound chill and absolutely their best yet Bunny, Danielle! 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