--Luke Jarzyna
In the simple and true words of the person who runs one of my favorite record stores, to whom many of the discoveries on this list I owe credit: - “there is so much good music!” I’m still catching up with a lot of things from this year, but here are ten of the best things I heard.
Fools - Fools Harp, vol. I
This collection of ambient and instrumental songs from Grizzly Bear’s Christopher Bear thrums with curious energy, as if it all were made from benign irradiated clay. Bear’s spread of pitched percussion and tidy synths sound so near. The grooves seem to blossom with fresh verve every time I listen.
Squirrel Flower - I Was Born Swimming “My body is buzzing as I start to dance” Ella Williams sings on the lusterful “Streetlight Blues.” Squirrel Flower’s live shows draw audiences into the exact spell that this lyric describes. I Was Born Swimming articulates all kinds of resonant phrases across its eleven songs. Hear the fuzzed out polyrhythmic spiral at the heart of “Red Shoulder.” Hear the broad, meditative optic on “Belly of the City.” Hear the sly, cloying humor of “Honey, Oh Honey!” I echo others when I say these songs feel like nodes along a path towards self-understanding and a clear view. With each listen I gain appreciation for the integrity of the song-craft Williams exhibits on I Was Born Swimming. I feel like these songs will meet me anywhere.
Chicago Underground Quartet - Good Days
On Good Days we find the Chicago Underground Quartet united for their first album since 2001. Good Days is a rangy yet lean mix of free jazz and funk. Groovy, hypnotic, and invigorating. Johnson’s synth bass and organ (filling in for original CUQ bassist Noel Kupersmith) fills out the spacious low end, perhaps at his most uncompromising bridges of “Unique Spiral.” In bouts of noisy propulsion, Rob Mazurek’s piccolo trumpet meets Jeff Parker’s guitar on the opening rendition of Alan Shorter’s “Orgasm.” Fans of Parker’s 2020 album with the New Breed Suite for Max Brown (more on that album later) might appreciate hearing Mazurek and Parker span out broad harmonic registers across the eight songs on Good Days. Meanwhile Chad Taylor’s solo log drum piece “Lome” sounds especially breathtaking before the final, cardiovascular surge of “Westview.” This album, which was recorded in one single day, is a textural delight. As the many sonic prisms open across Good Days, you can hear instinctual generosity in the players, perhaps a symptom of both this speedy recording process and these players’ highly developed musical nerve.
Westerman - Your Hero Is Not Dead
Your Hero is Not Dead bewitched me more than anything else this year. After a handful of listens, Will Westerman’s oddball lyrics started to feel like the only things that would tether me to this terrestrial plane. In that breathless, needful feeling that great music inspires, I would rush to hear him sing “confirmation’s easier when you don’t think so much about it” or “I love to watch that nothing come,” or “walk me through the blue corn at sun down.” Westerman matches his generous, evocative lyric “I” with deeply felt new wave song constructions. For example, the verse-chorus-verse structure on “The Line” sounds less like a progression of ideas than the same material folded in on itself several times, a testament to its own durability. Through Westerman’s careful yet buoyant compositions, Your Hero Is Not Dead achieves the rare feat of creating strange musical shapes that also serve as a reliable space for pleasure and rest.
Andy Shauf - The Neon Skyline
Andy Shauf pursues a breezy concept by connecting all the songs on this album in some way to a bar: the eponymous Neon Skyline. That destination, that ordinary vector, springboards Shauf into narrative vignettes that provide glimpses of human concerns. “Living Room” tells a nested story about not knowing how to show appreciation for a kid’s artwork. We hear an inside joke traded between friends and potential lovers on “The Moon.” As the joke devolves Shauf describes amicable bonds that radiate and dissipate. “Clove Cigarette” articulates a delightful, Proustian reminiscence: “And that green plastic table with those green plastic chairs / And you touch my summer skin and you toss your golden hair.” In styles from baroque pop to down tempo synth bummers, Shauf has created a dynamic neighborhood of songs.
Bartees Strange - Live Forever
Live Forever is the most fun indie rock album I heard all year. A curious mood pervades this whole album. Bartees Strange mixes instantly recognizable hooks and disarming formal experiments in a manner that reminds me of a lot of great indie rock from the last two decades. All at once I hear Grizzly Bear’s percussive Veckatimest anthems, the icy, synthesizer balladeering on Bat For Lashes’ The Haunted Man and the sleek, frenetic blues on TV On the Radio’s Dear Science. However, Strange never sounds detached. He delivers somewhat confessional and often humorous lyrics in a confident, earnest strut. United under his passionate, dexterous vocals, Live Forever announces an important new voice in indie rock.
Chloe x Halle - Ungodly Hour
This thoroughly entertaining R&B album unites a massive range of pop styles in a bouncy 13 song arc. “Busy Boy,” “Tipsy,” and “Wonder What She Thinks of Me” show the sisters entertain bold narrational positions to talk about revenge and betrayal. “Catch Up” presents some pretty good advice about how to treat other people and how to treat yourself. I wish I had that song when I was 16. I echo other critics who say this album has no skips! A lot of top 40 music went over my head in 2020 save for this inviting, tasteful collection of songs.
Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
My favorite part of this adventurous and important album is how Apple connects personal narratives to an expansive social world. “I thought being blacklisted would be grist for the mill, until I realized that I’m still here” Apple sings on the title track, giving humorous texture to isolated depths. “Heavy Balloon” twists biological metaphors to describe how depression exponentially compounds. She describes how the bright sun forces “forms of life inside of me to retreat underground,” how this submerged energy grows “relentless like the teeth of a rat.” I’m grateful for how Apple connects biological imagery to experiences of mental illness, what some people call an “invisible” disability. Fetch the Bolt Cutters gestures towards a paradigm where recognition and acknowledgment both seem tenable. I’m certain that people will find in it material for reconciliation. The album title comes from the show “The Fall” but the word “fetch” also indexes the chorus of dog barks heard throughout the album, and who accompanied Apple during the process. I think in some ways the verb use of “fetch” signals another of the album’s robust themes: a desire for a call and response, true acknowledgment of wrongdoing and justice, something antithetical to the echo chamber.
Jeff Parker and the New Breed - Suite for Max Brown
Jeff Parker and the New Breed’s album Suite For Max Brown is a feat of composition, space, and collaboration. Few other albums released this year exhibit such an exciting and economical series of musical arcs. The album picks up right where 2016’s underrated The New Breed left off with another remarkable Ruby Parker feature on “Build a Nest.” A waterslide string of miniatures creates the album’s center: “Metamorphoses,” the formidable “Gnarsciss,” “Lydian, Etc,” and “Del Rio” provide a rush of synthesized grooves, reminiscent of the compact pleasures on Tierra Whack’s Whack World. We hear Parker in many of the different modes he’s honed for decades as a guitarist, arranger, virtuosic beat wizard, and generous, group-minded collaborator. For example, the anatomically precise layers on “Fusion Swirl,” credited as a solo track to Parker, get mirrored on the penultimate trio song “Go Away”--which Parker supposedly wrote for Donald Trump (because he wanted Trump to go away). Parker engages an ebullient esotericism with his maneuvers between sampled and live sounds. Yet somehow these songs feel so familiar. In this way, Suite For Max Brown exemplifies aspects of the spirit that pervades the ongoing, global jazz conversation across musical Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, London, and beyond. Something that sounds politically efficacious and near, yet diffuse and international. Something rooted in genres and traditions, yet sustained by constant innovation and inter-group collaboration. Something so irresistible in its tasteful, bold assemblage of ideas. Like many great works of art, this decidedly strange album feels like an extension of the modern sensorium.
Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
Perfume Genius soared to new heights with this latest LP.Saxophone from Sam Gendel, production work from Blake Mills, and strings from Rob Moose bring a warm core to these introspective, erotic pop songs. Perfume Genius’ ideas have never sounded so clear.I think I’ve said everything I need to say about it over here.
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