ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2020

Too low. This is #2, and I’ve just grown fonder of it as the months go by. Her debut was my fav album of the last decade, mind, so something to live up to, but it basically did that.

This is my #2* that is

An issue wrt rock might be that at this point in rock history, similar to jazz, it is difficult for new rock music to be something other than i) a m/l pastiche of the many accessible styles of rock music from the past 70 years ii) consciously avant-garde quasi-art music like Horse Lords or Oranssi Pazuzu iii) something with enough contemporary pop elements as to be heard as "pop" or "country" rather than "rock"?

― to party with our demons (Sund4r), Thursday, February 4, 2021 10:42 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Imho genre is a marketing category and rock is one of many pop costumes rather than the current meta-genre that encompasses all (when it tries to be that like the 1975 ppl just say it uses “contemporary pop elements” and no longer rocks)

shoutout phoebe bidges i guess

I was unsure about the production at first but don’t even remember my issues with it anymore. She tries out some stuff and that’s good.

Speaking of, an underrated album that won’t show here that Phoebe produced is Christian Lee Hutson’s

D-40, I agree! I just mean that I think this is what frustrates people who are actively looking to get into new explicitly "rock"-identified music. (In the supposed rock era, e.g. the year 1975, everything from Elton John to the Carpenters to the Eagles to Black Sabbath to Henry Cow to Pere Ubu was classified as some kind of "rock".)

hey sund4r - you like rock music? Me too! wanna go to a cool rock show? i think you like rock bands like these

http://www.rirocks.net/images/1971%2012.04%20Byrds%20-%20URI%20b.jpg

ah fuck messed it up

https://pg1.b5z.net/get/ob5z/s1000-*/zirw/1/i/u/10023017/i/ec/bmo021.JPG

Phoebe Bridgers also my #2 album. Her work, along with that of Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, is the richest indie music I've heard in years. I just keep listening and listening to this album, and finding new depths, new angles ("Moon Song" is my favorite lately). I sometimes wish she'd rhyme a little more, but I'm there more for the enunciation than the words.

i like it so far! i just think that brandy clark record is exceptionally sharp songwriting wise, esp lyrically, "pawn shop" is like pretty much the ideal of taking cliches and taking them into something clever and new, which i guess is kinda country songwriting to me

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 4, 2021 10:46 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is the Brandy Clark / Kasey Musgraves specialty, and I absolutely love them both, but country songwriting is fundamentally storytelling (something Clark does well on "Pawn Shop") -- Expectations is an open diary from a youthful female queer artist, stories that aren't being told by anyone else in the genre. These lyrics - told to this audience - are dramatically more exciting to me than a clever turn of phrase:

Marchin' in line in the halls of my Catholic school
Seven Hail Marys if I copped an attitude
And God was a word I had spoken but I hardly knew
Kneelin' down at the altar with no clue who I was talkin' to

Cynically I've felt like ilx is anti indie rock because it is an easy target and it is more fashionable to champion pop. Only because the criticisms about genre cliches sometimes feel interchangeable as arguments against pop, like you could just use them against popular artists that are part of whatever genre isn't your taste. For instance I'm not immersed enough in the pop genre to be able to parse things as well because when I hear it I just hear all the production cliches that associate it with "the music playing at the grocery store/Target ad/dentist waiting room". For me, that's not pop's problem it's mine. So similarly dismissive broad notions against indie rock often scan like the same thing in another direction.

speaking of genre, here's an hour of experimental sound that offers some small modicum of crossover appeal

https://i.imgur.com/vyzOsIj.jpg
#25: playboi carti - whole lotta red - 406 points - 15 votes - 1 Nº1 vote

Playboi Carti what what what what what what what what

“The Atlanta rapper’s third record is both wildly innovative and strikingly consistent. It’s hard, melodic, experimental, and unlike anything else happening in mainstream rap.”
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/playboi-carti-whole-lotta-red/

I was not familiar with the Kelly Lee Owens album before the tracks rollout and I fucking love it, particularly when it picks up the aggression ("Melt!")

i was right

I just realized that the thing I'm responding to in "Melt!" is the descending bassline that lands on a rumble extremely evocative of the bassline to "Pro-gen" by The Shamen

amazing record i'm gonna put it on right now

It’s hard, melodic, experimental, and unlike anything else happening in mainstream rap

oh please let this actually be true

Great post indexed.

was talking about carti but also down for that post to be read as me talking about the shamen xxp

if lucy dacus releases a record this year it better fucking do well on here

Playboi Carti album is fantastic

playing catchup here but goddamn Slum of Legs is great

everytime i feel like i can't take anything more even vaguely "post punk" something like this (or FACS recently) pops up

maybe it's the violin but it has some spirit the kind of anarchic joie de vivre of the mekons a little bit?

I like both the Kelly Lee Owens and Phoebe Bridgers albums and I think they're pretty well placed here. If I'd voted, they would have been high teens/low 20s picks for me. I love the moods on the Owens album, and I think "On" is one of the best break-up songs I've heard in recent years. Bridgers' songs don't always distinguish themselves melodically (some do!), which is a trait she shares with Julien Baker, but in both cases I'm there as much for the overall vibe. And Bridgers is a really good lyricist, the title track to "Punisher" is a gorgeous meditation on the art-artist-admirer nexus.

I think at this point I'm just wholly uninterested in white people singing country songs unless they're Dolly Parton

Carti too low

nevertoomuch

Evan otm upthread.

just glad to see this here! Would not have expected it higher than Punisher (voted for both)

slum of legs also has a song named after the band, something i will always love

is "anti indie" really gonna hold much water with Punisher ahead of Positions?

i was right

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, February 4, 2021 12:03 PM (five minutes ago)

you were! I said this already but it was hard gauging ilm enthusiasm this year, at least for me

Carti album is trap taken to its logical end point, a distillation of its tropes, skewed and then amplified

um

slum of legs also has a song named after the band, something i will always love

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 4 February 2021 17:10 (six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

*fun lovin' criminals intensifies*

I love the KLO and Carti albums but decided to vote for those on the tracks poll instead. Glad to see them place here.

imago - WHYUIOUGHTTA!!!!!

jumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehousejumpouthehouse
jump out that bitch. jump out that bitch. jump out that bitch. jump out that bitch. jump out that bitch. jump out that bitch. jump out that bitch. jump out that bitch.

yesss glad carti made it, i wound up putting it in my top 5

Carti album is trap taken to its logical end point, a distillation of its tropes, skewed and then amplified

― Party With A Jagger Ban (dog latin), jueves 4 de febrero de 2021 12:11 p.m. (seven minutes ago

I thought the Morgan Wallen track with a trap beat was trap's end point.

I knew if I waited long enough someone would set that post on fire for me

the incredibly repetitive, violently spontaneous and sonically abrasive nature of Whole Lotta Red make it hard to believe it's as short as it is. 63 minutes but it's in a full sprint pretty much the whole way. There's a lot of crossover with Poppy.

63 minutes isn't short???

the only moment that drags is "metamorphosis" and carti's verse + cudi's hum is still a cool combo

wait 63 minutes is long, right?

i like the carti, it's cool sonically...wears me out a little bit

his style can be cool but a little too teepee for my bunghole for me sometimes

lmao at the mental image I now have

the only moment that drags is "metamorphosis" and carti's verse + cudi's hum is still a cool combo

― tiwa-nty one savage (voodoo chili), Thursday, February 4, 2021 10:23 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

really think the only reason this song drags is cudi gets a verse. cudi please cut it back to humming in the future

yes, exactly

63 minutes is short is what i'm saying.

anyways, here's (probably inevitably) something less assaultive but equally creative.
#24 benefited from something of an accounting filip here as the LP proper and its follow-up EP were nominate as a single vote and there was not cry to change it until after voting was done. We took the ballots at face value and are treating both as an individual work for the purpose of reporting. Consider it bonus material!