Introspective Light: The Music 2020 Bore
In the nine months following the end of 2020, we sit soberly reflecting on not only the revolutionary moments of the previous year, but also the realistic outcome of the remaining months of 2021. We didn’t change back to a carriage at the stroke of midnight on January 1st nor on Inauguration Day, and the world is skeptical that the hopes and plans people had for the summer — and then pushed to the fall — may ever happen at all.
The pandemic specifically bore a dire moment for the music industry. In an era when streaming numbers and subscriptions are at an all-time high and subsequently creators’ and songwriters’ revenue are at an all-time low, touring was a key asset for all musicians to make ends meet. Virtual events and live streams captured the moment but proved to not be an adequate replacement to live music for neither the fan nor musician perspectives.
During the pandemic, some artists reflected and took time, others adventurously stepped into new genres, projects and fields. But all needed to become a more self-reliant and turn to embrace technology in a way not seen since the early 2000s. Technology that birthed the streaming era (i.e. Napster, LimeWire) is largely miscredited with causing the “end” of the music industry. While some major-backed bands made headlines with their crusades against these technologies, many others credit the softwares and their accessibility with creating their careers. 2020 was unprecedentedly similar to this and the music that emerged, the artists who revised, who took time, who worked introspectively, produced bodies of work that spoke to their moment, feelings and experience.
Here is a list of some of the best music projects birthed from 2020.
Moses Sumney: græ
Moses has spoken frequently on the importance of place. The American-born Ghanaian spent his childhood split between California and Accra; and since his first album release, has been living in the rural community of Asheville, North Carolina. His comfortability with his surroundings and the understanding of support from the creative community of Asheville is felt in græ. Released in two parts throughout the Spring of 2020, it is a genre-bending, equally euphoric and utterly devastating account of self. Part One begins with insula, a 46-second Duolingo mantra of “isolation comes from insula, which means island”; and half way through Part Two, a breath, with and so I come to isolation where I’ve been islanded is universally understood and painfully reflective.
græ oscillates from physical insula to larger-than-life horns sections, periods of echoing reverberations and complete silence. It is as personal as a diary — grappling with indulgence, relationships and self reflection — and as complicated as the emotions of the year in which it was released.
Stand out moments: Cut Me, Virile, Gagarin, Neither/Nor, Polly, Me in 20 Years, Bless Me
Phoebe Bridgers: Punisher
You would be hard pressed to find an album or artist who has made more of a splash in 2020 than Punisher and Phoebe. She is one of the industry’s savviest and most creative voices currently and Punisher is a body of work filled to the brim with nostalgia, love, anxiety, questions and feelings. Beginning with with what may be the best album opener of 2020 (with Insula from græ in close second): DVD Menu, Punisher immediately sets the scene and re-establishes the art of the full album. You can’t truly admire its brilliance until you’ve listened from beginning to end, no stops, no shuffles, and you finally arrive at I Know the End. You’re deep into the track, pushed around, up and down and then you realize…this guitar and strings solo, is this the climax and culmination of everything DVD Menu warned us about?
It’s too brilliant and to me, has been an unbelievable tether to home. This album is you transported to a middle school sleepover at your best friend’s house, waking up on the floor surrounded by snacks and sleeping bodies finally at rest, and nothing but the glowing loop of a Play, Chapter, Credits, Bonus menu lighting the room.
Stand out moments: all of it. Just go. Don’t question.
Listen to Punisher on Spotify.
HAIM: Women in Music Pt. 3
HAIM began releasing new singles early in 2019, but when it was announced they would be releasing their third studio album, we all prepared. As quarantines pressed on from the periods of exacerbation and counting the first 10 days inside to confusion, concern and time lost, HAIM announced they would postpone the release of Women in Music Pt. 3 (WIMPIII) to later in the summer, “when things would be clearing up”. A month later in April it was clear nothing was changing and the date was pushed up to late June — because “fuck it” they wrote in a post.
WIMPIII is HAIM’s most mature and personal album to date. It is filled with tongue-in-cheek messages — including the album title, a nod to the routine “so..what’s it like to be a woman in the music industry?” question. The break-up-song-band turned to speak honestly about anxiety, depression, death, illnesses and sexism. It is an honest take on nervousness and quite bluntly, what happens when you grow up and the place in which you grew up and believed was the most important in the world, bears its flaws.
Stand out moments: The Steps, Up From A Dream, 3AM, Man from the Magazine, FUBT, Now I’m In It
Listen to Women in Music, Pt. III on Spotify.
The Avalanches: We Will Always Love You
The direct descendent from the birth of EDM in the mid 1990s and the likes of Moby, The Chemical Brothers and Massive Attack, The Avalanches first album Since I Left You was a seminal blueprint for the art of sampling. Now more than two decades later, their third album We Will Always Love You is a novella dedicated to maintaining relationships and exploration in general.
The aptly chosen samples (as always…), featuring artists and vocalists, and juxtaposition of deeper lyrics and personal subject matter with syncopated, EDM-style hooks and production proves to be an incredibly entertaining story. There is always a soft spot for albums whose tracks blend perfectly into one another as if you imagine one band and artist having to run out of the studio while a new one comes in like a militaristic fire drill, and that is exactly what We Will Always Love You does. It is impossible to solely listen to one song without the lead in or without the narrative. It’s best enjoyed like a Christopher Nolan movie: only in IMAX and in a single seating.
Stand outs moments: The Ghost Story/Song for Barbara Payton/We Will Always Love You run, Interstellar Love, Wherever You Go, and the Pink Champagne/Take Care In Your Dreaming run.
Listen to We Will Always Love You on Spotify.
Fleet Foxes: Shore
Once you become accustomed to hearing Fleet Foxes’ signature sound, you can’t escape it. The echoing reverb, larger than life vocals and uniform chord progressions are pillars for the band. Shore is the band’s fourth album and one that was partially completed in isolation during the height of the pandemic. Robin Pickford, the bands frontman and principal songwriters, explained in an interview that Shore ended up being the band’s most optimistic albums and that, “the pandemic was a big period of reflection for me in that I recognized that a lot of my problems compared to what’s going on are just so small.”
The album’s influences are clear in Elliott Smith, John Prine, Curtis Mayfield, and Jimi Hendrix and as wide-ranging those musical heroes are, as are the tracks of Shore. It is a beautiful, holistic look at the natural world and human’s relationship to it. Any questions about its optimism can be easily answered through the album’s accompanying film, which is available on YouTube and made its rounds at outdoor movie theaters across the country during the summer of 2020.
Stand out moments: Sunblind, Jara, For A Week Or Two, and Going-To-The-Sun Road.
Run The Jewels: RTJ4
No one would argue the hip-hop duo, Run the Jewels, are not men of community and influence. Their fourth album, RTJ4, was released digitally with little notice in early summer 2020. With storybook lyrics beginning with fantasy and ending in reality, the duo address a militaristic police state, systematic and systemic racism and deliver an album that matches the urgency and tone of the protests and actions of that summer.
With features from DJ Premiere, Joshua Homme, Mavis Staples, 2 Chainz and more, RTJ4 is a holistic current events view that leverages the best of the best.
Stand out moments: ooh la la, goonies vs. E.T., walking in the snow, pulling the pin.
Grimes: Miss Anthropocene
Grimes’ fifth album, Miss Anthropocene is a full embrace of darkness, the unknown and the grit of the unplanned. Hidden behind (or perhaps in full embrace of) metaphors of AI romances, panic, and fracking in Pennsylvania, Grimes explores life in the turn of the decade with all of its intricacies, specificities and grim moments.
One of the singles, We Appreciate Power with HANA is an electronic dream and feminist calling card that is an ode to the early electronic scene of the late 90s. With echoing ballads in So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth, tried and true pops in Delete Forever and You’ll miss me when I’m not around that would not be out of place on a Charli XCX or Halsey album, and the true electronic mind benders of 4ÆM, Darkseid and Violence it is everything we come to expect from a Grimes EP and more.
Stand out moments: Delete Forever, Violence, My Name is Dark, and 4ÆM.
Listen to Miss Anthropocene on Spotify.
J Hus: Big Conspiracy
The Londoner Gambian, J Hus’ second album Big Conspiracy is a brutally honest love letter in attribution to daily life. Covering mass incarceration, police brutality, clubbing, God, and colonialism. Fight For Your Right has a razor sharp wit as is bounces from playful tributes and metaphors that calls out establishments and those who follow. Deeper Than Rap is one of the most introspective rhymes rivaled only perhaps by Dave. Play Play with Burna Boy is untouchable as a retrospective summer love song (this album was released just before COVID and it was the perfect summer song we deserved).
Stand out moments: Helicopter, Fight for Your Right, Play Play, Cucumber (entirely for its word play and jokes), No Denying, Deeper Than Rap
