Listmas: 2020 top tens
Featuring two (2) new reviews!
1. Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis
This grab-bag of jazz, blues, spirituals, and jaw-harpery, more Charles Ives than Harry Smith, surpasses Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile, her previous high-water mark. There’s a long tradition of black metropolitanism with Langston Hughes at or near the wellspring that attempts to recombine shards from a less urban, more Southern black history into a coherent experience—necessarily always with an acknowledgement of suffering, but one suffused with joy and freedom and with the contradictions inherent in a phrase like “Emma Jean’s white play cousin.” What sets Roberts apart, in addition to the highness of her modernism and her total respect for her sources, is her omnivorousness. As her series has wound its way nonlinearly and non-chronologically upriver, it’s accumulated additional modes and flavors: here, jug bands and barn dancers join her ever-growing second line. Whether reclaiming a shanty that drifted from the cotton fields to the Atlantic or constructing spaces for her sax or guests like Steve Swell to permeate, her purpose is always clear and her band recognizes her urgency. While she’s more than adequate as a singer, it’s her rapid yet laconic delivery of spoken words that most forcefully express that one person’s history is another’s memory, that the past isn’t even past. Roll the old chariot along.
Grade: A PLUS (“Trail of the Smiling Sphinx”, “Her Mighty Waters Run”, “All Things Beautiful”)
2. Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
The most I can find to complain about is that while some of her lines shoot for the moon and get there, other similes fall to Earth like Skylab crashing into Australia. But that’s it. This is an original and creative album whose risks pay off better than on any rock album in years—perhaps since Tune-Yards’ Whokill, Fetch the Bolt Cutters’s most comparable predecessor in the way its songs emerge from its percussion, unless you want to argue, perhaps correctly, that Apple’s howl is Tom Waits’s, controlling for gender expectations. While Merrill Garbus puppeteers for an audience, Apple’s work is very much a studio creation that feels almost mechanical no matter how many dead animals she and drummer Amy Aileen Wood use as instruments. Apple asserts total control of her space, and if you enter, you do so on her terms: she gives “you raped me in the same bed your daughter was born” the most singalongable tunelet on the record, whereas you might have to practice “ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies” to sing it right. You don’t have to sing it right.
Grade: A PLUS (“For Her”, “Shameika”, “Drumset”)
3. Elizabeth Cook: Aftermath
The best Southern rock album of the year, and maybe in many years if Waxahatchee’s too indie to count. Referencing forebears from T. Hall to J. Prine, what Cook serves up is less a homage than a metamodern deconstruction, though pace Sturgill, Cook’s usages remain on dry Earth land. In each of her settings, regardless of their exact space-time coordinates, there’s a contrast worth noting. So for example, when “Bayonette” shifts 12-bar form across the border, we’re sent hurtling towards dialectics: does the Mexico of the song consist of more than symbols and sombreros? And is the South, as constructed by country music, any more real? Armed with two chords and a lie, two Marys and a Terry, Cook depicts situations where it can’t be assumed that all parties share the same truth, yet this doesn’t mean there’s any shortage of truth in stories of Margaret Atwood’s alleged ancestor, or of the Virgin hanging out in Chattanooga waiting for her son to choo-choo home.
Grade: A (“Thick Georgia Woman”, “Bayonette”, “Half Hanged Mary”)
4. Rina Sawayama: Sawayama
She proclaimed herself an “ordinary superstar” on 2017’s Rina EP; this time she conducts herself like one, producing perhaps the most High Millennial album to date. She charts her generation’s infatuations, progressing from nü-metal to R&B to Carly Rae Jepsen to, well, they’re still obsessed with her, but that doesn't prevent Sawayama from constructing a deeper statement than one could imagine from Jeppers. This takes a form not unlike a flashing neon Sonic the Hedgehog Saying There Is No Such Thing As Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism sticker, maybe with But That Doesn’t Mean You’re Not Going to Feel Guilty in smaller print. The challenge posed by the album is to love oneself when it’s trivially true that that’s easier said than done, more so for a goddamn intellectual who, aware how constructed her identity is, feels obligated to reconstruct it herself. Which, you will be glad to know, she’s more than capable of doing: she can choose new family while respecting her biologicals. If it takes a sample from extremely dead white male Beethoven to provide common ground for all her lives, that seems as close as one can get to ethical consumption to me.
Grade: A (“Bad Friend”, “STFU!”, “Chosen Family”)
5. Juice WRLD: Legends Never Die
But rappers do—despite a squeaky-clean criminal record, the Feds hounded him to an OD death on an airport runway, six days after his 21st birthday. And it’s as big a fucking waste as any tragedy I can name. We called the genre “emo rap” because we lacked original language to describe what a few 808s & Heartbreak fans were uploading: expressing their thoughts and feelings without the sense of shame that comes with age and taste and wondering if one needs a beatmaker with more elite credibility than Marshmello. Among his peers, Juice was notable for his refusal of irony, and for the fact that what his relentless (and supposedly mostly improvised) introspection revealed was a naive but fundamentally decent kid. But what stood out most was his tenderness, his warmth filling the void in Auto-Tune-mediated expression Kanye never knew was there. Who knows what else he could’ve worked out.
Grade: A (“Wishing Well”, “Hate the Other Side”, “Tell Me U Luv Me”)
6. Taylor Swift: Evermore
Sure, Folklore was a singer-songwriter album too, but there she was warming up muscles she hadn’t flexed since she decided to leverage the industry power she won playing everygirl into being white America’s biggest pop star for a while. If her singular status means gestures toward everywomandom would be risible, she’s never lacked imagination, and she’s quite capable of centering songs around the unfortunately mortal, like her friend Este from Haim. Evermore has her highest density of dumb/genius Taylor Swift lines ever (dumbest and not least genius: “We were like the mall before the Internet/It was the one place to be”), packed into essentialist Gordon Lish-edited narratives. While this is consistent with the values of college-aged Taylor, the level of complexity she’s operating at now is only possible thanks to her turn to indie-folk, as pop-country doesn’t permit the patience with which she explores nearby melodic perturbations, without hooks per se but always with a destination in mind. On the other hand, pop-country is inherently better music than indie folk, so there is a trade-off. Still, at some point you have to be an adult, and sing like one too. Her new lower register, which owes a lot to Matt Beringer’s, has a clarity and solidity currently rare in indie vocalists of any gender. I don’t know who she had to sacrifice to become one of white America’s best singers on top of everything else, but no body, no crime.
Grade: A (“’Tis the Damn Season”, “Champagne Problems”, “Marjorie”)
7. Guiss Guiss Bou Bess: Set Sela
Though I’ve recently hit middle age, meaning that the only thing stopping me from constantly posting that music was better in my day is that my day was the late ’90s, I’m glad to report I can still be heartened by something that sounds genuinely new. This Senegalese-based group builds their sound around sabar drumming with chanted vocals and electronic crayoning that for the first time in Afropop, as far as I know, pushes beyond Congotronics. Crucially, Grenoblois bleeps guy Stéphane Costantini used to be a percussion guy, so he and bandleader Mara Seck are simpatico, with the electroclaps and the hand-and-stick drumming distinct from each other, but mutually reinforcing. Snatches of West African guitar and swathes of synths energize the rhythms as much as their dance crew must do their live performances. Hopefully their plan to take over the festival world this year is only delayed.
Grade: A (“Majorettes #1”, “Majorettes #2”, “Dieuleul Lii”)
8. Kalie Shorr: Open Book: Unabridged
She sounds almost exactly like twang-era Taylor Swift, down to the conversational phrasing and the unspontaneous spots of melisma. No doubt this is in part due to her manager, one Todd Cassetty, who having supped from the circa-2010 Swift revenue stream, provides funding for session musicians just a little short of the best money can buy. But surely it’s also due to a twentysomething singer being a teen when Fearless and Speak Now and Red came out and realizing one road out of Portland, ME for an aspiring songwriter ran through Nashville, even if she was more into her older siblings’ Alanis records at the time. Her attention to craft can be heard in the extra bounce in her pre-choruses and the fact that her bridges exist. Only since she didn’t grow up stupidly rich, she writes about real shit. She’s had her share of pain and loss—a sister who OD’d is directly referenced on the album’s two great tracks and haunts the rest. She gets still more idiosyncratic on “Gatsby”, in which she maintains a toxic lifestyle because would you rather be alone with your thoughts? I don’t know about you, but that feels like 22. (The Unabridged reissue adds four good new songs, which is probably worth the thematic dilution.)
Grade: A (“The World Keeps Spinning”, “Escape”, “Gatsby”)
On the opening track, “Soar Estranho” at first seems to refer to a particularly cranky Minimoog that is nevertheless normalized by the second verse, only for other equally strange sounds to make their entrance. That’s the story of the album, with many tracks starting with relatively few elements, then absorbing outré noises often made by outré collaborators. Ana Franco Elétrico, for instance, sings melodies of non-standard shape, and Nassif and producer Arto Lindsay tailgate her across pages of confused staves. Though Nassif’s own low-register vocals outline his tunes accurately enough, they have an air of too-hip-to-care, which fortunately for him is back on the retro cycle’s upswing, just as plastic funk is. Special mention goes to Ricardo Dias Gomes, the fourth or fifth banana of the New or No Wave band of your dreams, who plays all manner of keyboards while leaving the overcomplication to others.
Grade: A (“Soar Estranho”, “Cor”, “Plástico”)
10. Luke Combs: What You See Ain't Always What You Get
Adding six new tracks to the seventeen of last year’s What You See Is What You Get—a far more accurate title—this is too long almost by definition, yet when I hacked it down to a lean 51-minute playlist titled What You Get, I found myself missing the cuts. His consistency is one key to his becoming the biggest voice of the new phase of bro country (2 Bro, Not 2 Furious), along with his evolution from being a beer, trucks, and girls guy to a beer, trucks, and wife guy: the Paisleyesque “Forever After All” got him a Hot 100 number 2. If the high school lineman lacks the history coursework and arm strength of scholarship quarterback Sam Hunt, he more than compensates with the surprising agility with which he handles the signifiers of “Blue Collar Boys”, building a credible white working class identity with barely a hint of resentment. And if turning his social media black one day in June isn’t enough for me to want to hand him a Senate nomination just yet, he’s exactly the guy you need to sing a pandemic song called “Six Feet Apart”.
Grade: A (“Six Feet Apart”, “Does to Me”, “Forever After All”)
Note: For year-end polls, I’m dropping the Roberts as having no year-of-impact case (I just flat missed it last year, my bad) and including Aly Keïta, Jan Galega Brönnimann, and Lucas Niggli’s Kalan Teban.
***
JAZZ/CLASSICAL ALBUMS
Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis (2019)
Mark Lomax, II: The 400 Years Suite
Andrew Norman, Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic: Sustain (2019)
Daniél Bjanason, Iceland Symphony Orchestra: Concurrence (2019)
Broken Shadows: The Tower Tapes #2
Anna Högberg Attack: Lena
Eric Revis: Slipknots Through a Looking Glass
Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra: If You Listen Carefully the Music Is Yours
Stephan Thelan: Fractal Guitar (2018)
Kris Davis: Diatom Ribbons (2019)
WORLD ALBUMS
Guiss Guiss Bou Bess: Set Sela (2019)
Thiago Nassif: Mente
Aly Keïta, Jan Galega Brönnimann, Lucas Niggli: Kalan Teban
Kefaya + Elaha Soroor: Songs of Our Mothers (2019)
Dudu Pukwana and the Spears
Constantinople & Ablaye Cissoko: Traversées (2019)
Karol Conká: Batuk Freak (2013)
Cadence Revolution: Disques Debs International Vol. 2
Zam Groove: Music from Zambia
Los Wembler’s de Iquitos: Vision del Ayahuasca (2019)
COUNTRY/METAL/IRISH ALBUMS
Elizabeth Cook: Aftermath
Kalie Shorr: Open Book: Unabridged
Luke Combs: What You See Ain’t Always What You Get
Lori McKenna: The Balladeer
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit: Reunions
Rodney Crowell: Texas (2019)
Midnight: Satanic Royalty (2011)
Brandy Clark: Your Life Is a Record
Jinx Lennon: Border Schizo FFFolk Songs for the Fuc**d
Chapel of Disease: And as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye (2018)
RAP/R&B ALBUMS
Juice WRLD: Legends Never Die
Serengeti & Kenny Segal: Ajai
Run the Jewels: RTJ4
Megan Thee Stallion: Suga
Zebra Katz: Less Is Moor
Lil Wayne: Funeral
Lil Baby: My Turn (Deluxe)
Young M.A.: Herstory in the Making (2019)
Sault: Untitled (Black Is)
Bktherula: Nirvana
POP/DANCE ALBUMS
Rina Sawayama: Sawayama
Red Velvet: The ReVe Festival Finale (2019)
100 Gecs: 1000 Gecs (2019)
Regular Citizen: Sleeping Unique (2019)
DJ MA1: RKS Presents: MA1 Collection
GFriend: Song of the Sirens EP
Charli XCX: How I’m Feeling Now
Baby Queen: Medicine EP
Burial: Tunes 2011-2019 (2019)
Halsey: Manic
MODERN ROCK ALBUMS
Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Taylor Swift: Evermore
Jeffrey Lewis & the Voltage: Bad Wiring (2019)
Peter Stampfel and the Bottle Caps: Demo ’84
Billy Nomates: Hippy Elite
Touché Amoré: Lament
Soccer Mommy: Color Theory
Kills Birds (2019)
Shopping: All or Nothing
Envy: The Fallen Crimson
***
For my non-music top tens, note that stuff that made my decade lists has been excluded.
NEWISH BOOKS
Svetlana Alexievich: Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
Adam Tooze: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
Alexander Zevin: Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist
Sally Rooney: Normal People
Quinn Slobodian: Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love
László Krasznahorkai: War & War (trans. George Szirtes)
Philip Pullman: The Amber Spyglass
Reina María Rodríguez: The Winter Garden Photograph (trans. Kristin Dykstra with Nancy Gates Madsen)
Daša Drndić: EEG (trans. Celia Hawkesworth)
OLDISH BOOKS
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade/The Souls of Black Folk/Dusk of Dawn/Essays
William Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost
Henry James: The Ambassadors
The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca (ed. Lorca/Donald M. Allen)
Isaac Asimov: Robot Dreams
Roger Zelazny: The Chronicles of Amber vols. 1-5
Hart Crane: Complete Poems
G.H. Hardy: A Mathematician’s Apology
André Breton: Selections (ed. Mark Polizzotti)
Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders
COMICS
Grant Morrison: The Invisibles
Kevin Huizenga: The River at Night
Tite Kubo: Bleach: Soul Society Arc
Kaiu Shirai & Posuka Demizu: The Promised Neverland
Michael DeForge: Brat
Kohei Horikoshi: My Hero Academia #1-57
Connor Willumsen: Bradley of Him
Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie: Phonogram
Daniel Warren Johnson: Murder Falcon
Riichiro Inagaki & Boichi: Dr. Stone #1-45
NEWISH MOVIES
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)
Your Name. (Masashi Ando, 2016)
Little Women (Greta Gerwig, 2019)
Peterloo (Mike Leigh, 2018)
Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2017)
Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner, 2014)
Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019)
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo, 2015)
Atlantics (Mati Diop, 2019)
The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki, 2017)
MID-CENTURY MOVIES
The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
An Autumn Afternoon (Yasuhiro Ozu, 1962)
Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)
Bay of Angels (Jacques Demy, 1963)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955)
Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)
Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
DUTCH GOLDEN AGE PAINTINGS
Vermeer: View of Delft
Rembrandt: Night Watch
Vermeer: The Milkmaid
Carel Fabritius: The Goldfinch
Gerard van Honthorst: Saint Sebastian
Jacob van Ruisdael: The Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede
Rembrandt: Isaac and Rebecca (The Jewish Bride)
Frans Hals: Portrait of a Couple
Rachel Ruysch: Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase
Jan Steen: The Feast of St. Nicholas
Next week: Top 99 songs of the year.