Friends, I was so close to not doing one of these this year, but my bad case of archive fever was too strong to resist. For the first time since the depressive loops of my early 2010s, I’ve really struggled with music this year. Yo-yo’d between extremely intense relations to music (listening to Grimes’ ‘IDORU’ three times in a row in spring’s post-cycle endorphin twilight, crying to Mogwai in the supermarket, thrash dancing to old Boiler Room sets alone in my bedroom, knocking everything over, basically living inside Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Garden Song’) and a very numb sense of trepidation about listening altogether. Have gone whole weeks without listening to anything except ’10 hours sounds of a meadow in june’ on youtube. Have gone whole months without noticing new releases. Music has anchored the year in strange ways. I think about the man in my block who kept singing/screaming Oasis’ ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ in the shared garden, and did this several times throughout lockdown 1.0. I was so concerned. Boards of Canada albums I fell into, haphazardly studying. The conditions of lockdown, not to mention PhD and other pressures, have slowed down my output of published music writing, but I continued to diarise my listening habits and it was a pleasure to write on occasion for GoldFlakePaint, Secret Meeting and other places on new releases from Jason Molina, Phoebe Bridgers, Katie Dey, Superpuppet, Fair Mothers, Modern Studies. As ever, you can dive into the music journo archive here.
What follows is a selection of albums I’ve managed to dip in and out of, form some kind of bond with or which otherwise stayed with me. One of music’s main attractions this year was its provision of sociality: whether through late-night Instagram DMs or seeing everyone’s Spotify listening (pale vicarious experience of sonic simultaneity as commons), running Pop Matters workshops with the inimitable Conner Milliken or losing myself in heartfelt comment sections, music was a kind of touchpoint for contact when other kinds of talk or response seemed impossible. That you could screenshare FKA twigs’ ‘Cellophane’ video and all silently hold in tears while free-writing together on Zoom, that you could send some kind of bedroom performance to a friend when words were scarce, that you could buy stuff for Bandcamp Fridays and feel like you were doing *something* for artists while our livelihoods were otherwise being stripped away by lockdowns, recession and endless government (in)decisions. That you could send lyrics in acts of solidarity. That you could sit round a fire in the Trossachs and listen to ‘Farewell Transmission’ with smoke in your eyes or be in Hackney with a heatwave and Lucinda Williams; that you could cycle past psych buskers on Kelvin Way, or lie on the floor with Grouper recordings from 2018; that you could breeze down Sauchiehall listening to ‘Gasoline’ in a world without cars; that you were lucky enough to see your cousin, Hannah Lou Clark, play The Hug and Pint before lockdown; that you could micro-analyse Angel Olsen remixes with Douglas, lamenting another postponed gig or remembering an old one; that you could walk yourself into autumn melancholy with Grace Cummings, longing for the wind and sea; that you could read Amy Key’s excellent essay on Joni Mitchell’s Blue and remember the first of January, sober as a trembling bell and listening on repeat as everything refused to wake, and wine. Admittedly, I may have missed many significant things. Tell me!
Previous EOTY lists:
In no particular order:
Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher
Angel Olsen — Whole New Mess
Waxahatchee — Saint Cloud
Savage Mansion — Weird Country
Yves Tumor — Heaven to a Tortured Mind
Sylvan Esso — Free Love
Mogwai — ZEROZEROZERO
Minor Science — Second Language
Caribou — Suddenly
Moses Sumney – græ
Grimes — Miss Anthropocene
Open Mike Eagle — Anime, Trauma and Divorce
Run the Jewels — RTJ4
Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today
The Kundalini Genie — 11:11
Sparkle Division — To Feel Embraced
Juliana Barwick — Healing is a Miracle
Arca — KiCk i
Pelican Tusk — Rhubarb’s House (EP)
The 1975 — Notes on a Conditional Form
Porches — Ricky Music
Fiona Apple — Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Martha Ffion — Nights to Forget
Gia Margaret — Gia Margaret
Mary Lattimore — Silver Ladders
Jason Molina — Eight Gates
Sufjan Stevens — The Ascension
Fleet Foxes — Shore
Keaton Henson — Monument
Half Waif — The Caretaker
U.S. Girls — Heavy Light
Katie Dey — Mydata
Kelly Lee Owens — Inner Song
Eartheater — Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin
Oneohtrix Point Never — Magic Oneohtrix Point Never
Jessie Ware — What’s Your Pleasure?
Perfume Genius — Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
Field Medic — Floral Prince
Braids — Shadow Offering
HAIM — Women in Music Pt. III
Porridge Radio — Every Bad
Christian Lee Hutson — Beginners
Soccer Mommy — Color Theory
Four Tet — Sixteen Oceans
Lawn — Johnny
Lomelda — Hannah
Bright Eyes — Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was
Pinegrove — Marigold
Adrianna Lenker — songs / instrumentals
Duval Timothy — Help
The Pictish Trail — Thumb World
Tomberlin — Projections
Tennis — Swimmer
Laurel Halo — Possessed (Original Score)
Alex Rushfirth — The Moon in the Clouds
NNAMDÏ — BRAT
Autechre — SIGN / PLUS
Superpuppet — Under a Birdless Sky
Bartees Strange — Live Forever
The Avalanches — We Will Always Love You
A.G. Cook — 7G
mariaology 