If It's Too Loud...

I don't think any album captures 2020 the way that RTJ4 did. If you were looking for escapism from your music this year, Run the Jewels were not the band to look to. The album came out right in the middle of protests denouncing the death of George Floyd and ongoing police brutality in America. Buildings were on fire, racist statues were being toppled worldwide... and RTJ4  came out. Even though it obviously was recorded long before the explosion happened, it felt like it was recorded smack in the midst of it. Run the Jewels are a political hip hop group, and this album perfectly captures the anger and rage rushing through the veins of many Americans. But, as serious as it is, it's a banger of an album. Somehow it's the perfect soundtrack to channel your rage through protests and have a party celebrating any victories you achieved. Plus, any album that puts Pharrell Williams and Zach de la Rocha on the same song, and it's an instant classic banger about how many founding...

I never thought of myself as a huge Fiona Apple fan. When she released Tidal  way back in 1996, I liked it, but I was never obsessed with it. It was good, but nothing that floored me the way it floored everyone else. Since then, Apple has drifted in and out of my consciousness with different releases. Earlier this year when she was set to release Fetch the Bolt Cutters , which was somehow only her fifth album, there was an incredibly strong buzz behind it, but I didn't expect a whole lot. Fetch the Bolt Cutters  has blown me away every time I've listened to it over the last eight months. It showcases an artist doing exactly what she wants to do. It's creative and unique. It's beautiful and angry. There's been a lot written about how Fetch the Bolt Cutters  is the perfect album for 2020, and I certainly can't imagine this album coming out any other year. You can listen to it perfectly on the surface level on just the creativity and vibe of the music, but the more...

Sapling may be a hyper local to us Massachusetts punk band, but their release No Sequoia has been out all but three other releases on my top albums of the year list. How, you may ask? Obviously, it's a great album. But Sapling tap into my absolute favorite type of punk. It's not badass hardcore that will scare you with a threat of violence. Instead, Sapling will relentlessly mock you into nonexistence. The songs on No Sequoia are noisy, loud, obnoxious, and in your face. But they also have a killer groove and are some of the catchiest you will hear all year. They capture this amazing middle ground between noise punk that's purely noise and noise punk that's electronic noise. The songs bounce wildly from silly and fun to deadly serious and political, usually in the same song. Plus, you can dance to it, as long as you agree to mock the same people they do. Songs of note: "Bikini BDRK," "Maria vs. Machine Maria," "Bitchshifter," "Everythi...

One day late in the summer I started seeing posts from a musical artist named Little Hag on Facebook. I figured I would remember following someone with that name, so I did a little digging. Turns out Little Hag used to be Avery Mandeville of Avery Jane and the Mandevilles, who I discovered while making a Artists of New Jersey playlist for a family vacation. Discovering Little Hag was one of the true joys of 2020. I listened to Whatever Happened to Avery Jane? almost daily for the first few weeks after it was released.  Whatever Happened to Avery Jane? is this perfect blend of pop and indie rock. It has this wonderful sense of humor that I simply can't resist, even though I'm probably (definitely) too old to love this album as much as I do. "Tetris" helps solidify that feeling with lyrics like "Everyone wants to fuck me / No one wants to see me cry" and "Text bitches 'til your eyes fall out." This is the kind of album that has me checking concer...

I first discovered The Bobby Lees back in February. We received a promo email mentioning that their upcoming album was produced by Jon Spencer, which is going to grab my attention. I listened to "Coin" once and became instantly obsessed with the Woodstock, NY band. Their blend of punked up dirty blues (with an emphasis on the punk) is one of my soft spots for music. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion influence is heavy on Skin Suit , but not overwhelming. The Bobby Lees take JSBX's sound and go off in their own heavier, more intense direction. As I started falling down a rabbit hole of my new musical obsession, I went to their tour dates to see if they were playing near me. That's when I realized they had played the night before at O'Brien's in Boston with two other bands I like (Zip-Tie Handcuffs and Baabes). No big deal, upstate NY is semi-local, so I'm sure they'd be back soon, especially with a new album. Oh, 2020, great dasher of dreams... That could...

I Was Born Swimming is a masterpiece of an album. Squirrel Flower (aka Ella Williams) hits so many of my checklists for great songs. False stops, tonal changes, slow builds from quiet, thoughtful songs into giant epics... it's all here. "I-80" starts off the album and feels like it could be multiple songs. Squirrel Flower combines modern folk and singer/songwriter elements with 90's style indie rock in ways that we've heard before from artists like Lucy Dacus, but is going off in her own direction and style with these songs. "Red Shoulder" is a great indication if you're going to love this album or not. It starts off with Williams' quiet, plaintive vocals and builds into this noisy rocker with her voice keeping the same tone throughout. And then there is "Streetlight Blues," which is my top song of 2020 according to Spotify. It crams an absolute epic, giant song into just over three minutes and thirty seconds.  Songs of note: "Red ...

To say that we were huge fans of The Beths' 2018 album Future Me Hates Me  is an understatement. It was the only album both of us chose for our top 10's at the end of that year. Does that mean that I didn't enjoy Jump Rope Gazers  as much. I don't think so. Future Me Hates Me benefitted from the excitement of discovering a new band that I truly love, plus I was able to see them live that year, so I was still riding high off of how great that collection of songs was live. Jump Rope Gazers  is truly a great album. It's filled with these great upbeat alt-rock/pop songs with a fantastic sense of humor and impossibly catchy hooks. If you loved Future Me Hates Me , you already love this album, too. And if you haven't listened yet, you truly need to as soon as humanly possible. Songs of note: "I'm Not Getting Excited," "Dying to Believe," "Out of Sight," and "Don't Go Away" Jump Rope Gazers by The Beths

There have been roughly a million quarantine albums released this year, but the best has been from Laura Jane Grace. None of them truly capture the feeling of being trapped in our house for far longer than we could have imagined while the world seems to be burning all around us. Stay Alive is such a loaded album title right now, and obviously Laura Jane Grace chose it for that reason. The vast majority of the fourteen songs on this album are just Grace and her guitar ("Shelter in Place" and "SuperNatural Possession" includes a drum machine) which gives the entire album such an intimate, personal feeling. It's a collection of songs about quarantine and the hopeless despair so many of us are feeling right now. It's not all doom and gloom to listen. Somehow Grace takes these feelings and uses them to inject a feeling of hope and community into the songs on Stay Alive. Songs of note: "The Calendar Song," "Hanging Tree," "SuperNatural Pos...

When Los Angeles punk legends dropped their album ALPHABETLAND seemingly out of nowhere back in April, my expectations were low. A legendary band releasing their first album in twenty seven years, plus it was their first album with the original line up in thirty five years? They've been touring as a nostalgia act for quite a while now, and I've heard plenty of these reunion albums, and usually the best you can hope for is not embarrassing.  But ALPHABETLAND is great. Shockingly great. It stands right up with 1980's Los Angeles , which nobody could have expected. When bands can start touring again, this is going to be the rare occasion where fans don't politely wait through a new song or use the new material to use the bathroom without missing anything good. If you haven't listened to it yet, you truly owe it to yourself to give it a shot. Sure, the songs on ALPHABETLAND  may be a little slower than some of the classics, but these folks are in their mid- to late sixt...

As acclaimed as it was, Lydia Loveless's 2016 album Real  just didn't quite work for me. Part of it is that I'm just not really a pop guy, and it was definitely a pop album. I'm sure another part of it was that I loved 2014's Somewhere Else  so much, and I was being a grumpy old man about the drastic change in sound.  That brings us to Daughter. Daughter is definitely a pop album (just check out the "I Would Die 4 U" vibe on "Wringer"), but it works much better for me. The main reason is that it melds Loveless's pop sensibilities with her older country and rock sounds. I've always appreciated hybrid sounds, and the edge and twang helps make the pop a little more palatable for me. The songwriting on Daughter is second to none. The songs on Daughter channel Loveless's emotions about her divorce, and it's heartbreaking on some songs and uplifting on others. But that's divorce. There are many great divorce albums out there (Marvin...