My year-end list is usually based on the albums that resonated most with me. Sometimes they’re the 10 albums I listened to more than any others, and sometimes they’re albums that I found powerful and compelling, even if I didn’t always return to them as often as other music. This year’s list is a mix of both, on albums that are by turns riveting, thought-provoking, uplifting, soothing or just plain kick-ass. Here are my top 10 albums of 2020:
1. Run the Jewels, “RTJ4” — Fierce, funny and painfully pointed, Killer Mike and El-P always feel like they’re at the very forefront of cultural upheaval. This album was finished before Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in May, but “RTJ4” seems to anticipate the cataclysm that followed with sharp wordplay and apocalyptic beats.
2. Fiona Apple, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” — There’s a lot happening musically on this album, but what’s so striking is Apple’s don’t-give-a-fuck confidence. She sounds wholly comfortable giving free rein to her wide-ranging musical ideas and eclectic song structures, and if they’re not always hummable, they’re invariably engrossing.
3. Bruce Springsteen, “Letter to You” — Springsteen is charged up on his 20th studio album, which features songwriting that stands alongside almost anything else he’s written. Mostly a meditation on growing older and losing valued friends and collaborators, “Letter to You” isn’t mourning them, it’s celebrating them, on Springsteen’s most E Street sounding record since “Born in the U.S.A.”
4. Phoebe Bridgers, “Punisher” — Subdued yet enthralling, Bridgers’ second album is the work of a young singer who is nonetheless fully formed. She’s an ace writer who manages to blend various influences, and she has an eye for detail, and a penchant for vivid turns of phrase. “Punisher” is one of those albums where it’s hard to pick a favorite song because they’re all so strong, seeping slowly into your soul until they spill over.
5. Sault, “Untitled (Black Is)” — Existing at the intersection of jazz, soul and R&B, “Black Is” was the first of two untitled albums the enigmatic English collective Sault released in 2020. The other, “Rise,” is also outstanding. But while the latter is more of a catharsis album, “Black Is” is the statement piece, what Marcus J. Moore called “a capital-B Black record that funnels rage and sorrow into contemplative streams of thought, over equally brooding music meant to slow your heart rate.” In part, that’s because you’re almost holding your breath so you don’t miss even a beat.
6. Kathleen Edwards, “Total Freedom” — The Canadian singer and songwriter returned this year with her first album since 2012, a break during which she opened a coffee shop and generally avoided music. The hiatus did her good, and the combination of additional life experience and her already formidable skills as a writer make for sharply written, deeply tuneful songs. She also has a sly sense of humor that shines through in her lyrics. As a whole, “Total Freedom” is an overdue reminder of how good Edwards really is.
7. Jess Williams, “Sorceress” — A vastly underrated album by a singer and songwriter who is only getting better. “Sorceress,” her fourth album, blends folk, country and a dash of psychedelic rock into “a fully realized collection of 11 songs that are at once polished, precise and visceral,” as I wrote in a review for Paste.
8. Jennifer Castle, “Monarch Season” — A haunting album with an elegiac, autumnal feel, Castle recorded her sixth LP by herself in her kitchen at home in Ontario, Canada, on the shore of Lake Erie. The sense of solitude permeates “Monarch Season.” It’s there in every quaver of her voice, or the rich harmonica parts she plays, or the resonant piano lines, or delicately picked pastoral-folk guitar parts. The beauty and simplicity of the album are enough to put a lump in your throat if it catches you in the right mood.
9. Angelica Garcia, “Cha Cha Palace” — Garcia is a brash and pointed singer, and she's funny, too. There's a lot about identity here — she was born in LA to parents with Mexican and Salvadoran heritage — and her music has a distinctive melting pot vibe, with big rock guitars, bits of electronica, a duet with her mom, a sample of her grandmother, dembow beats. It doesn't really sound like much else out there right now, which makes “Cha Cha Palace” something all its own.
10. Bonny Light Horseman, “Bonny Light Horseman” — Reworked versions of ancient folk songs carry a deep-seated appeal for me, and the trio of Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson and Josh Kaufman do it with songs from the British Isles on their self-titled debut in a way that conveys the deep emotion and longing that must have characterized these tunes when they were new, which in some cases was hundreds of years ago.
Honorable mention: Helena Deland, “Someone New”; Sault, “Untitled (Rise)”; Bob Dylan, “Rough and Rowdy Ways”; Katie Von Schleicher, “Consummation”; Lilly Hiatt, “Walking Proof”; U.S. Girls, “Heavy Light”