The 2020 Album Rundown: #5 - 1
We’ve arrived at last, at the final installment of the 2020 Album Rundown. Five albums I adore, each for distinct reasons, but all because they’ve allowed me to reflect on this year in one way or another. This year has not been a happy one, but music’s gotten me through it in more ways than I can count. These five albums have been the backbone of this arduous journey, and they’ll stick with me for quite a while. It’s weird to think about, but almost every record in this top five manages to be an album that I don’t think would’ve hit me remotely as hard if 2020 hadn’t been the clusterfuck it has been.
Alright, enough poetics. Here are five albums I think you’ll enjoy from 2020.
The Avalanches, We Will Always Love You
I haven’t been as genuinely nervous over an album release in years as I have been for the third Avalanches record. Honestly, it’s probably the most I’ve fretted over a record since…the second Avalanches album, which came out 16 years after their debut, Since I Left You, a release I think is categorically perfect.
Now, here’s the truth: I don’t think We Will Always Love You is what I wanted from an Avalanches record, a group known for blending bizarre samples and original electronic music into a newer, greater sonic goulash. Having said that, here at the tail end of 2020, I think it’s what I needed it to be: haunting, melancholic, far more spaced out and chill, but ultimately riding an undercurrent of hope and optimism despite the pain and sorrow. It weaves its way across a 71-minute journey - and, much like its predecessors, We Will Always Love You is certainly a capital-A Album, not just a collection of tracks - waxing and waning with psychedelic children’s choirs, glistening guitar, and a pretty substantial set of guest vocalists.
The first half of the album feels ethereal, leaning on a voice message that echoes the album’s title and guest spots from Leon Bridges and MGMT. There are fleeting instances where you think, “oh yeah, this sounds like an Avalanches track,” but then they fade away into the inky black of starstuff. Halfway through the album, nearly halfway through “Wherever You Go,” a crucial shift occurs, and WWALY amps up into a much more energetic space that hearkens back to a vibe you might find on Wildflower or Since I Left You. This second half is incredible, from “Music Makes Me High” to the joyous reverie of “Gold Sky,” Kurt Vile’s distinct lyrical style resting above a freewheeling drum beat. The Avalanches even managed to make me like something featuring Rivers Cuomo, as the album version of “Running Red Lights” is a fun, sugary track that signals the album’s denouement. The final track, “Weightless,” translates the Arecibo message into recorded sound - purportedly for the first time - before bringing the journey to a close with the voice message that kicked it off.
It’s kind of beautiful, in its own bizarre way, much like all of the Avalanches’ music.
Johnny Marr puts the whole album into perspective for me in “The Divine Chord,” opening the song with, “I still remember you, the way I dreamed of you, the way I hoped that you imagined I’d be…long before I came to realize, the hard truth: things aren’t always what you want them to be.”
Run the Jewels, RTJ4
The madmen have finally done it: Run the Jewels has simplified their album names down to the simple acronyms that everyone already used. It might signal the fact that RTJ4 - their fourth proper release, believe it or not - is leaner, meaner, and just top-to-bottom brutal, or it might just be them leaning in to the hype. Who can say?
What can be said is that RTJ4 is, at the end of the day, exactly what you think it is: a relentless, track-by-track storm of hip-hop screaming in anguish about police brutality, billionaires, the realities of income inequality, and the rot of capitalism. The production is as slick as it’s ever been, making these songs feel like they were recorded and designed to be broadcast to stadiums and massive, open spaces. The booming “FIRE” screamed out during “holy calamafuck,” El-P’s repeating laughter in “a few words for the firing squad,” the echoing motivational speech sample in “never look back;” it all lends RTJ4 a generous, magnificent sense of space.
Much like Run the Jewels 3, RTJ4 feels so appropriate for the year it came out in. El-P and Killer Mike feel so clued in to just how messed up everything has gotten, how polarizing the simple act of existing and holding beliefs can be. It’s cathartic, in a way. You can tell they’re still having a lot of fun with the music they’re making, and it shines through in the production, the way their voices carry their verses, but there’s that extra hint of pain, the weakened, battered stance that comes with the four years in between releases and all the struggles that have come about in the Real World as a result.
Still, they keep fighting, signaling to people that there’s more work to be done. I think that’s the ultimate message RTJ4 is trying to express: the fight is far from over. Things don’t change through apathy.
RTJ4 is available as a free download from their website, as well as Spotify.
Tim Heidecker, Fear of Death
Comedian Tim Heidecker is a name I never expected to put on an end-of-year album list, and yet here we are with Fear of Death, a beautifully introspective, curious, but ultimately fun release about death, life, and the trials of…having to put up with all of that. Released as a sort of follow-up to last year’s What the Broken-Hearted Do…, a folk rock album released as a response to the Internet hoax that his wife was leaving him, it’s a genuinely great record, from top to bottom.
The anxieties of middle-age and the world we live in feature prominently throughout, from the title track’s lament of “I think I’m done growing,” to what I think is a legitimately beautiful track in “Nothing”. Heidecker waxes poetic about the realities of future cemeteries in “Property,” and laments the end of a relationship in what feels like a follow-up to Broken-Hearted with “Someone Who Can Handle You.” The sting of loss resonates throughout all of Fear of Death, in a way that - again - feels laser tuned to 2020’s reality.
At the same time, this album feels like it’s winking and nodding at the sheer absurdity of it all, acknowledging that we’re all dealing with So Much Horseshit right now. Sometimes, it’s good to just revel in that feeling and laugh about it. There’s a pleasant, upbeat cover of “Let It Be,” which moves right into the delightful, romping “Long As I’ve Got You,” easily the most upbeat and romantic track on the album. “Take away the sunshine, send in the rain; you won’t ever gonna hear me complain. I can take any stormy brew, as long as I’ve got you.”
Overall, I think Fear of Death will stick with me in ways that What the Broken-Hearted Do… didn’t. It balances camp, sincerity, and approachable instrumentation so well, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Still weird to have Tim Heidecker on a best-of-the-year’s-albums list, but he’s more than earned it.
Allie X, Cape God
Though it’s not my #1 album this year, Cape God showed me one of my favorite artists from this year, and let me both experience and feast upon an entire discography I hadn’t been exposed to before now, which is a tremendous feat. What’s wild is that I nearly didn’t listen to it at all: were it not for a blind decision to check my Spotify Discover and find “Susie Save Your Love” front and center, one of my favorite pop albums in years would’ve passed me by.
Cape God is the second proper album from goth-pop debonair Allie X, striking an immediate tone as she wistfully yearns for the feeling of being taken care of on “Fresh Laundry.” Throughout the rest of the album, she tackles finding a sense of confidence, losing friends, chronic illness, and the hard-to-nail-down feeling of hollow affection. Though those all read like Fairly Serious Topics, Cape God lands plenty of upbeat, peppy-poppy tracks that take the edge off of what’s on display: the polite whistling that opens and echoes throughout “Sarah Come Home,” or the certifiably club-remix-ready “Super Duper Party People” both serve as standouts in that respect. The two guest spots on the album buoy it even further: “Susie Save Your Love” features Mitski, a vocal pairing that is just “chef’s kiss” levels of inspired, while “Love Me Wrong” has Allie bouncing off frequent collaborator Troye Sivan.
As an album, it feels much more intimate and raw than I think I expected on an initial listen. “Devil I Know” is squarely focused on self-doubt and trying to deal with your own insecurities. “Life of the Party” rolls along with a great little bassline while managing to be a song about someone blacking out and potentially having a dire night out: “I was the life, was the life of the party, they stripped me down like a Barbie; They say I kissed the king, but I don't remember anything.”
I think Cape God is just a stellar example of taking fairly conventional pop song structures and injecting an incredible amount of personality and flair, transforming it into something distinct and memorable. It’s such a good album that I went back and listened to everything Allie X has put out on streaming platforms, only to discover that she’s been putting out fantastic work for the better part of five years now. Were it not for the next album on this list blindsiding me within the last two months, this would be my album of the year, without question. Go listen to it! This list will still be here when you get back.
Cape God is available on a handful of services, but not Bandcamp.
Misterwives, SUPERBLOOM
So, here’s an honest statement, that should be endorsement enough for folks that know my musical tastes (and if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you do): I don’t think I’ve loved a pop album this much since 2015 gave us Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION, which is up there in the pantheon of my favorite records ever. SUPERBLOOM is glistening, incredibly endearing, and wonderfully heart-wrenching pop music, from top to bottom. Written in the wake of the slow demise of a fraught eight-year relationship between the band’s singer and drummer, it manages to encompass so much emotional territory but make it all incredibly relatable, approachable, and just damned entertaining to listen to.
Coming in at just over an hour, SUPERBLOOM breaks down with some efficiency into two halves. Opening with “The End” and building to the brutal “Valentine’s Day,” the first half deals with the trauma and agony that comes with a monumental part of your life falling into disarray. It’s slower, the instrumentation is more sparse, and there’s just a general moodiness to it that echoes the reality of being in that state of mind. You can practically feel the unresolved tension and the texture of a broken heart in lyrics like the opener of “Stories:” “I try to find heaven whenever it's hell; I try to stay in love and do it without your help.”
After the warped, aggressive “Over the Rainbow,” where singer Mandy Lee wallows in the pits of [what went wrong / what could have been], the emotional turn comes in “It’s My Turn,” as she starts to let pieces of her destructive past slip away behind her. This second half is largely forward-looking, brighter in its instrumentation with much more prominent brass and just a generally peppier tone. It’s comfortable asking how a person picks themselves up to find a way forward - or, as Lee puts it, how they “Decide to be Happy.” There’s the fragility of attempting to open up to someone again in “Love Me True,” the rebuilding of one’s confidence in “Muse,” and the triumphant exclamation in the album’s closer and title track: “I deserve congratulations, 'cause I came out the other side.”
SUPERBLOOM is haunting, incredibly danceable, and just chock-full of stellar production. Even without the context of what it’s about, it’s a terrific package of songs that only become more excellent when you consider it as a full narrative arc. It’s my favorite album this year, and one I’m going to cherish for years to come.
SUPERBLOOM is available pretty much everywhere but Bandcamp.
The Beside the Dunes list of 2020 Albums What Are Good may officially be wrapped, but the lists continue on! As this is primarily a blog where I yell about video games, we’ve got a whole host of games-related posts that will carry us through to the dark harbor of Twenty Twenty One. If you’re interested in listening to these albums (and I think you should!), here’s a Spotify playlist to make that process a little bit easier.
Stay tuned for the kick-off post of the Second Annual Goaties, where we’ll talk about some games that were good but Not Quite Goaties Material, and a handful of non-2020 games I still loved playing this year. After checking in with Destiny, we’ll ultimately start our quest for the 2020 Game of the Year, a journey that I can only imagine will be completely surprising to the majority of the Beside the Dunes readership.
Until next time!
