There is something profoundly restorative about Saint Cloud’s back-to-basics, largely analogue approach; its reliance on subtle, wending melodies and guitar licks that resound with dog-eared familiarity. LS Read the full review. Most of the lyrics are unintelligible, except for when Domenic Palermo defeatedly sings, “Isn’t it strange / Watching people / Try and outrun rain?” – D.C. 25. Claire Boucher – AKA Grimes – intended Miss Anthropocene as a concept album about a personified, demonic climate crisis. The clenched fussiness of 2017’s Crack-Up abated for more subtly detailed, openhearted arrangements – padded and cottony on Featherweight, earnest and loving on Sunblind, a tribute to departed songwriters such as Richard Swift and Arthur Russell – as Pecknold resolved to accept the things he cannot change, to surrender to contentment and honour community in divided times: “We’ve only made it together, feel some change in the weather.” LS Read the full review. Aided by producer Blake Mills and a crew of A-list session pros (including bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Jim Keltner), he commands every one of the numerous styles he attempts. You can identify the collectivism that also charged up the Black Lives Matter movement this year in these songs of solidarity, hope, pain and catharsis, filled as they are with chants and swelling vocal harmonies; the anonymity of the group’s members itself suggests a goal bigger than any one individual. The often bad-faith assaults on Boucher’s personal life couldn’t touch her art – the calling that may have been her real-life salvation. Anyone longing for a pop star in the tradition of Prince or David Bowie – someone so sexually intoxicating, musically flexible and supernaturally individual they remind you how bland and mortal you really are – should make haste towards Yves Tumor. Guest stars from across the Black Atlantic – Skepta and Ella Mai from the UK, HER from the US, Damian Marley and Projexx from Jamaica – create the sense of a diasporic dialogue, where reggae, dancehall, rap and Afro-swing seamlessly and sensually intertwine. In collaboration with a supreme court of rap producers including The-Dream, the Alchemist, Hit-Boy and No ID (plus curveballs James Blake and Khruangbin), Jay’s production is astounding, with dial-scrolling samples from Vashti Bunyan, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, John Williams’ Valley of the Dolls soundtrack and Louis Farrakhan. - Zach Schonfeld, “Disco revival” is hardly a novel concept in pop music, but it takes a certain kind of star to make it feel fresh again. The mafia-themed, isn’t a radical departure from anything either has done before. to carnal vintage funk (Super Stars), Ariel Pinkish psych pop (Strawberry Privilege), and a really blockbuster lead single in Gospel for a New Century. The Best Indie Albums Of 2020. by: UPROXX Music Twitter December 4, 2020. See which albums are sitting at the top of this year's charts. The suburban iconography in her songs takes on a supernatural aura – going to the store “for nothing” while high on speed; being wasted on someone’s front lawn – and her keen sense of irony is undercut by the yearning to believe in something. It was more than worth the four-year wait, offering a reason to believe in a year where there weren’t many options. BBT Read the full review. Metacritic User Poll: Vote for the Best of 2020! By Louder 16 December 2020. And so Róisín Machine turns the thrill of the chase into a generator for self-sufficiency. The effect is like clambering inside a single particular mind, one that is – as the brilliantly unreadable title suggests – jangled by anxiety but also fumbling towards happiness. Her debut, Petals for Armor — produced and largely co-written by her longtime Paramore bandmate Taylor York — is a fairly stark departure from her band’s radio-friendly rock and emo roots, boasting dance-friendly synth lines, strings and electronics behind Williams’ more controlled voice. She breaks free of constrictions, skewers and then undresses the affectations used by the powerful to conceal their abuses, and interrogates her own part in these structures. After securing his place in reggaetón, Bad Bunny shifted the goalpost to a more global outlook with his second solo album, (which stands for “Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana” and translates as “I Do Whatever I Want”). “We’ll be safe and sound / When it all burns down.” Let’s assume she’s talking about the concept of genre. With, , the Canadian composer/DJ finally emerged with what may be the warmest, most empathetic electronic album of 2020. LS Read the full review. “The Old Earth” both accepts unrelenting misery and yearns for a cataclysmic reckoning in which Andrew Craighan’s trademark drawn-out melodies and crushing death-doom dirges become antonyms for dissociation. Five years later, naming his follow-up The Slow Rush couldn’t be anything but a cheeky wink. 19. It’s been a year of letting go, a prospect more comforting for some than others. Published: December 9, 2020. . LS Read the full review. - Z.S. “royal screw up” shines a light on her own insecurities, while also making revelations. Towering choruses burst with relief for the simple fact of survival. Enter Dua Lipa, who (much like Madonna and Kylie Minogue) flipped the genre on its head with her sophomore album, . It should be underlined that the sororal US trio’s first two albums, Days Are Gone (2013) and Something to Tell You (2017) are very good: slick without smoothing too much over. On the exquisite Key West (Philosopher Pirate), he’s an old rogue hymning the last of his life at the far end of America, afternoon beer palpably in hand. Though he was a member of the New York hip-hop group Natural Elements in the ’90s, Ka found solo success relatively late in life. The Best Albums of 2020 This year was highlighted by projects from artists like the Weeknd, 21 Savage, and Megan Thee Stallion. There are frequent pleas for better communication and reciprocity, likely to comfort anyone gaslighted into thinking, “Is it just me?” But when the connection works, it really works, as evinced by the numerous rapturous slow jams. Mac Miller, Circles "Good news, good news, that's all they want to hear," Mac Miller laments on the centerpiece to his first posthumous album. LS Read the full review. On, , his storytelling remains gruff and rich with detail, his matter-of-fact lyricism full of unflinching wisdom (“Never marinate on beef you don’t plan on finishing,” he growls on “Patron Saints”) and his grainy production more complex than ever. Yet Folklore found a moment of stillness in the turmoil, turning even the darkest musings into something sparkling and beautiful. “It’s all one river crossing,” he sings, inviting you to stop resisting and step right in. / Break yourself? BBT Read the review. This list only includes new albums receiving at least 15 reviews from professional critics (though you'll find a quick list of the top albums with a smaller number of reviews at the end of the gallery.). Snaith flirts with old-school hip-hop breakbeats on “Home” and dusty jazz loops on “Lime” (digging up. Reflective closer “One More Hour” perfectly caps the album, drifting listeners through various stages of Parker’s journey of time and love. If the Oscar nominee has demonstrated anything in the last 20 years, it’s range. The first thing that hits you is the quality of the songwriting and production; then the message of the song falls like a feather, not a brick. Now a “full-time rapper” (“Glock in My Lap”), 21 balances the felonious with the luxurious. Guest vocals can be either gnomic (“destiny is stuck in heaven blowing nitro”, Zsela intones) or collapsing (Sampha’s corrupted cries), though Loveless’s chorus of “don’t you want to know me better?” makes for his best earworm since 2010’s Maze. The lithe buoyancy of Hus’s vocals remained, accompanied by flourishes of sax, piano, guitar and strings. BBT Read the full review. More than simply disco literate, it is also a wonderfully meta exposition of Kylie’s pop identity, how she has embodied hope and joy and lived in service of the perfect pop song – its own bid for immortality. It’s all tied together with oracular pronouncements from Morgan Freeman, who muses on the nature of snitches with a twinkling gimlet eye. BBT, The Atlanta rapper-producer power duo follow their hit 2016 tape with another trap masterclass. The Best Albums of 2020 Jeffrey Lee Puckett posted December 7, 2020 Here we are with the final installment of Discogs’ year-long look at the albums that you, the community, have told us are the most desirable from the first year of each decade . LS Read the full review. –. Savage Mode II is the aural equivalent of watching black Air Forces step out of a Wraith. Apple’s lighthearted yet confrontational songs made a terrible year a little easier to process. As the pandemic turned the world upside down nine months ago, many musicians and their livelihoods were heavily impacted. By sampling, editing and chopping together his own recordings, and folding in various collaborators, including his teenage daughter Ruby, he gives it an impulsively impressionist feel. It’s best listened to on vinyl or iTunes, as the album is presented as one continuous piece of music, so ads or artificial track breaks can kill the vibe. Recorded on both sides of the pandemic, the group’s layered fourth record offers the warmth of a tweed sweater — best exemplified by “Can I Believe You,” the delicate “Young Man’s Game” and the bittersweet tribute to Richard Swift, David Berman and others on “Sunblind.” In a year that’s felt like a long winter, has brought a meditative sense of acceptance. –, Foo Fighters Swing for the Stadium (Again) on, Miley Cyrus Embraces Her Rock Star Destiny on. Shedding the careful precocity of their debut, the Bailey sisters’ second album skipped the traditionally salacious we’re-grown-now stage of pop evolution to paint in complex emotional shades. Interludes where people recall the colour of their bedroom wall are next to songs about the insignificance of human history in the grand scheme of the universe. The same goes for power ballad “I’d Die For You,” where she parallels a soaring Stevie Nicks. Plus it quickly fulfilled its promise by offering escape when it arrived in the darkest days of the pandemic. Thirty years after the invention of the “parental advisory: explicit content” sticker, pop celebrated Tipper Gore’s prudish legacy with its filthiest year in recent memory. Metro’s usual atmospheric snares, chords and nighthawk mood are offset with some gloriously cute flourishes, such as the dreamy backwards tones of Mr Right Now or the classic electro of Steppin’ on Niggas. It’s peaceful, unhurried, and concerned only with internal turmoil. There’s been a loose school of electronic producers to emerge in recent years including Objekt, Laurel Halo, Call Super and Minor Science, who, informed by jazz, dub, techno, jungle and ambient, create a kind of maximal minimalism: richly detailed productions that nevertheless drape elegantly. After a decade-plus in the game, Gibbs still finds inventive ways to frame moving weight and riding on his enemies. Best of 2020: Music Critic Top Ten Lists Published: November 30, 2020. The songwriter’s debut LP, Fake It Flowers, takes on ’90s nostalgia, offering hints of Lush, Elliott Smith, Veruca Salt, Sonic Youth and…Pavement.