In the midst of all that this year has been, music remained my refuge, as it always has. I spent a lot of the year making Spotify playlists, a type of mental fidgeting, a productive distraction. But with so much time at home, I listened to a lot albums, and a number of them many times over. Here are the albums that shaped my year in music:
I don’t number my list anymore because it forced me to make too many arbitrary decisions, but I do like to single out the albums that were my favorite among favorites. This year, three albums crossed that threshold. Way back in January, Waxahatchee released Saint Cloud. It’s indie-country with a blues backbone. The lyrics are a sharp exploration of coming home to recover who you are. Then there’s Taylor Swift’s Folklore. I often enjoy her albums, so I wasn’t surprised there. Adding The National’s Aaron Dessner and the group of folks who work with him, including Bon Iver, made it inevitable that I’d vibe with the album. But what stands out to me is Swift’s songwriting. I’m awed by her ability to give details that effectively straddle the hyper-specific and the universal. The way that “The Last Great American Dynasty” self-consciously becomes about her is brilliant. A surprise release like Swift’s, Fleet Foxes’ Shore arrived in September. I listened to nothing else for two weeks. Other good music demanded my attention, and I refused. Shore is an immersive experience. The music is complex, like all of Fleet Foxes’ music, but this time it keeps the doors and windows open. It invites you in.
Next is not an album, but in a year without live music, I’m terribly grateful for Josh Ritter’s “Silo Sessions.” They were a weekly series of webcasts through the early months of the pandemic in which Ritter would play an acoustic set. I love Josh Ritter and have seen him live many, many times. These weekly sessions were charming at-home affairs, complete with the occasional technical glitch. Ritter would play from his deep catalogue and talk about his songs and where we were all at. My wife and I made it a weekly commitment to watch, unwinding in the yard under the late afternoon sun or moving around the kitchen while we made dinner. It felt good to have a friend over once-a-week in those early days of the stay-at-home regulations.
This year I was let into the world of Lori McKenna. Why didn’t I know before now? Her The Balladeer continues her precise, perfect songwriting. The title track is absolutely devastating. HC McEntire’s Eno Axis draws on the North Carolina indie-folk community to support her poetic reflections about rivers and everything that sustains meaning in life. It is a gift that keeps giving, as a friend recently described it. I listened the hell out of John Craigie’s Asterisk the Universe; make sure you catch the B-sides too. The first track, “Hustlin’” gives a good sense of his balance of humor and depth. I kept returning to the pastoral folk of Zachary Cale’s False Spring. And Jeff Tweedy’s Love Is King continues his string of releases that I connect with. The songs fill the house like friends.
In 2020, a lot people have turned to the familiar. Reviving folk traditions, an effort to locate a home in sound, something that could stay out of the reach of world events. Even before the pandemic, we were given Bonny Light Horseman’s self-titled debut. Anäis Mitchell, Josh Kaufman (who plays on all the indie music I love), and Eric D Johnson (Fruit Bats) take traditional songs as starting points. Sometimes they stay close, and other times they become the template for something totally new. The album has never been far from me this year. Out of nowhere, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings dropped All the Good Times, reel-to-reel recordings of the pair playing some of their favorite songs by other people. It feels like you’ve stumbled into their backyard one spring afternoon while they’re doing what they always do – making music when the rain falls, when the sun warms the ground, and on “Abandoned Love” when the tape runs out. Wesley Schultz, the singer for the Lumineers, released Vignettes this fall. It feels unrehearsed and intimate. Like many, Schultz is meditating on songs that have stuck with him through the years. It works. His version of Springsteen’s “My City of Ruins” is amazing.
I enjoyed the return of a couple of indie veterans. Brian Fallon’s Local Honey is my favorite set from him since The Horrible Crows. HAIM’s Women in Music, Pt III is masterful. Each listen reveals some detail in production or songwriting that I haven’t yet caught. It’s almost enough to make me want to go back to Los Angeles. Almost.
There were a number of albums that I loved that don’t fit along my usual indie-folk listening axis. When Tony Allen passed, I checked out Rejoice, his release with Hugh Masekela. A beautiful African jazz album. My appreciation for Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) led me to guitarist, Afel Bocoum. His new album Lindé is worth repeated listens. I knew of Thomas Bartlett because he’s part of The National’s orbit of friends and players. I think it was a prompting from Spotify that made me check out Bartlett’s Shelter. I lack the language to technically describe the album; one review calls them “piano nocturnes,” which sounds about right to me. Shelter kept me company in the predawn before my house awoke. It enchanted those hours I arrived at through the anxiety and sleeplessness of the early pandemic.
Melody Gardot returned with Sunset in the Blue. It feels to me like she’s taking stock of where she’s been. The album moves effortlessly between the many styles she’s explored. It makes your Sunday mornings feel beautiful, like you get to borrow a little bit of her grace for a moment. Kelly Lee Owens’ Inner Song is the only electronica album that reached me this year. Perfectly titled, it reveals a mental landscape contained at its boundaries by song-form rather than drifting off into ambient atmospherics. I’ve never knowingly listened to a fiddler’s album. Fiddles are part of a lot of the music I love and a lovely soundtrack when in a pub, but I’ve never committed to a record of fiddle-songs until this year’s Unearth Repeat by English fiddler, Sam Sweeney. I have nothing to compare this to, but I do know that in the midst of the hellscape that has been 2020, it has brought me great peace and joy.
“My Year In Music” Spotify Playlist
Album List:
Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud
Taylor Swift, Folklore
Fleet Foxes, Shore
Josh Ritter Silo Sessions
Lori McKenna, The Balladeer
HC McEntire, Eno Axis
Bonny Light Horseman, S/T
Jeff Tweedy, Love Is King
John Craigie, Asterisk the Universe
Zachary Cale, False Spring
Wesley Schultz, Vignettes
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, All the Good Times
Brian Fallon, Local Honey
HAIM, Women in Music, Pt III
Hugh Masekela & Tony Allen, Rejoice
Afel Bocoum, Lindé
Thomas Bartlett, Shelter
Melody Gardot, Sunset in the Blue
Kelly Lee Owens, Inner Song
Sam Sweeney, Unearth Repeat