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So back to 2020. You may well wonder why I've opted to list only my top 5 albums, and not go for a more expansive top 10. As it happens, I planned this post long ago and didn't get around to writing it until now. Looking at my draft list, there were 5 albums that just really stood out, so I'm sticking to that.
5. Fleet Foxes - Shore
As a long-time Fleet Foxes fan, I instantly liked this album when it came out, but after several listens and closer scrutiny it just didn't have the necessary ingredients to propel it further up this list. It's probably not the most essential record they've put out, but it still sits very nicely in their largely excellent back-catalog. As I turned 40 in 2020, I started to have this nagging feeling that liking the Fleet Foxes is the sort of thing I'm expected to do as a forty-something... F**k that, it's still a damn good album.
4. Leo Takami - Felis Catus And Silence
As if to dispel the middle age trope (see above), here's an album from an artist I've been unfamiliar with until this breakthrough release. Felis Catus And Silence is an instrumental record with jazz and ambient influences, but the music is difficult to pin down to a particular genre. Unlike his previous album, 2017's Tree Of Life (which is well-worth tracking down), this record is more compact and thematically unified. With track names like 'Garden Of Joy', 'Children On Their Birthdays', and 'Garden Of Light', the music is more often optimistic and almost celebratory, interspersed with more contemplative ambient cuts. Well worth checking out if you haven't heard of the artist.
3. Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension
The first proper follow-up to Carrie & Lowell, which topped my 2015 list and remains a fixture in my all-time top 10, I greeted The Ascension with no small amount of trepidation back in 2020. This album sounds at face value like a return to the kind of electronic instrumentation preferred on 2010's The Age Of Adz, with the addition of a persistent and deep-seated sense of anxiety that pervades most of the tracks. Clocking in at around 80 minutes, there are skippable stretches, and some tracks can outstay their welcome if the mood isn't right - especially later songs like 'Death Star' and 'Sugar'. But these moments never really detract from the overall quality of the record. Several songs stand up there with the best in Stevens' discography, and while the overall mood of the record chimed all too well with the experience of living in a COVID afflicted world, there are sustained glimpses of transcendence - most notably the title track, amongst others.
2. Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud
This one very nearly made the #1 slot... And amazingly Saint Cloud is the first Waxahatchee album to feature on this blog. A lot has been made of the Dylan influences on this album, but at the end of the day the release feels like a major game changer in Katie Crutchfield's output - it's all so much more lyrically direct and cathartic, even more so than the previous Waxahatchee album, 2017's Out In The Storm.
1. The Strokes - The New Abnormal
What a pleasant surprise this was. It was inconceivable, say in 2019, that a *Strokes* album would take my #1 album slot in 2020. With a title that was all too apt to the COVID situation that was to unfold through the year, the music really speaks for itself on The New Abnormal. There's not a dud track on the record, and it keeps on building nicely, doing what the Strokes do best until the end of the last track. With their debut album being massively over-hyped by the music press back in 2001, each subsequent Strokes album seemed destined to fail in some respect, in many instances probably unfairly. I mean, to be honest, in the last 10 years I've probably listened to 2011's Angles a lot more than Is This It. Anyway, The New Abnormal was well worth the wait, and for me, definitely the best Strokes album to date.
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