It's been something, ain't it? A long, weird mush of tumult and tedium, churn and stasis. Happy it is done. Happy the orange demagoguery is done. Happy the folks are still alive. Happy this fucking list is done. Trends to detect if that is your bag. Have written about them here and elsewhere, but to briefly rethread, 2020 in music has seen: a general flight to the comforts of an untroubling, ambient glow, solipsistic solo projects with zero or solo audiences, the diminishing return of the collaborative shared file, the arching and unstartling narration of isolation, the glue of reverberated gloom, deadly online spectacles that only magnify the lacuna of life and, the continued ecological terror of tape & vinyl and its attendant global shipping. And yes it is true that the vast majority of releases this year, as ever, have been completely worthless. A smaller percentage have been worthy and good but will almost certainly never compel me to return to them. And the very tiniest slither, a micron shaved from the mountain top, have stirred me, moved me, bothered me, intrigued me, delighted me, amused me, educated me, followed me and near as damnit made me put them on this list.
2 Santa Sprees / Sum Total Of Insolent Blank
3 Blake Hargeaves / Improvisations On The Pipe Organs Of Europe
4 Horse Lords / The Common Task
5 : : / Words That Don't Rhyme
6 Tori Kudo / The Last Song Of My Life
7 R.A.P. Ferreira / Purple Moonlight Pages
8 The Neverending Trio / Side 2: 2 Month Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition
9 Star Feminine Band / Star Feminine Band
10 Isayaah Wuddah / Urban Brew
11 Cyril Cyril / Yallah Mickey Mouse 12
12 Cindy Lee / What's Tonight To Eternity
13 Jerry Gordon / Sink: Songs For These Ends
14 Caroline McKenzie / Citizen Of Nowhere
15 Meridian Brothers / Cumbia Siglo XXI
16 Still House Plants / Fast Edit
17 Aksak Maboul / Figures
18 Carl Stone / Bojuk
19 Lewsberg / In This House
20 Keiyaa / Forever, Ya Girl
21 Blanche Blanche Blanche / Seashells
22 Fiona Apple / Fetch The Bolt Cutters
23 Lori Goldston / On A Moonlit Hill In Slovenia
24 Yaseyuki Uesugi / Don't Know That I'm Losing My Place
25 Jennifer Walshe / A Late Anthology Of Early Music Vol 1
26 Natalia Beylis / The Steadfast Starry Universe
27 Caleb Landry Jones / The Mother Stone
28 Phil Maguire & Tim Olive / Invoer
29 Bill Callahan / Gold Record
30 Waxahatchee / Saint Cloud
31 Heather Frost / Petrichor
32 Blóm / Flower Violence
33 Ana Roxanne / Because Of A Flower
34 Calineczka / What Is Music And What Should It Be
35 Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra / Dimensional Stardust
36 Wilder Gonzales Agreda / I Was a Teenage Post-Rocker
37 Various Artists / CosmoPraesidium
38 Beatrice Dillon / Workaround
39 Angel Olsen / Whole New Mess
40 Kramp / Nervous Rattles
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