Favorite Albums of 2020

This (terrible, pandemic) year, my top 5 albums were easy to choose:

1. Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher. That voice. 
2. Nick Cave, Idiot Prayer. Live, solo, instant classic concert film, in the heart of the pandemic. 
3. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Reunions. A great songwriter tells stories about the struggles of regular Americans. Like a Nebraska-era Springsteen. 
4. Maria McKee, La Vita Nuova. One of my favorite voices of the 80s makes a great comeback record that probably no one will hear. 
5. Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Brave, smart, original, very 2020. Not sure I will be dropping most of it into a shuffle playlist, but it deserves the critical acclaim, for sure. 

Choosing #6-10 would be a lot harder. Certainly there were a lot of contenders, including releases by Taylor Swift (folklore), Sault (though their 2019 releases were even better), Margaret Glaspy, Moby (maybe his best since Play), Run the Jewels, Marika Hackman, and GoGo Penguin. 

I've collected my favorite songs of 2020 into a Spotify playlist here. 

It was also a very strong year for reissues, including: 

• PJ Harvey, Dry and To Bring You My Love Demos: great to have a legit, high quality release of these demos, even if they have been circulating in fan circles for many years. Along with the already released 4-track Demos from Rid of Me, these demos document PJ at her most raw in the early 1990s. Lots of pure gold here. 
• Gillian Welch, Boots No. 3, Volumes 1-3: a trove of 48 songs recorded in a weekend in 2002 to fulfill a publishing contract and rescued from a tornado. Many gems, and overall a great, relaxed, live-in-the-living-room vibe throughout. 
• Joni Mitchell, Archives Vol. 1 The Early Years 1963-67: across 5 CDs, this is like an autobiography in the form of recorded performances, charting the evolution of a relatively straightforward hippy folk singer into something much more. 

There were also some great quiet albums that didn't quite fit in anywhere else, but at the same time seem to hang together surprisingly well: 

• Mary Lattimore, Silver Ladders
• Olafur Arnalds, some kind of peace
• Nils Frahm, Empty
• Mia Gargaret, Gia Margaret
• Brad Mehldau, Suite April 2020
• Vikingur Olafsson, Debussy-Rameau