Best Debut Album. Samia – The Baby
Twenty three year old Samia Finnerty’s debut album deals with the bad feelings of becoming an adult with soft and subtle lyrics.

10. Dan Deacon- Mystic Familiar
A cohesive album of lush bubbly digital compositions. A bit experimental, but always joyful and fun. A kaleidoscope of trippy sounds to make the day a bit brighter.

9. Sylvan Esso – Free Love 
Short & sweet but full of bouncy pop music. Folksy minimal melodies paired with synths and quirky sounds. It feels experimental but you’ll be dancing and head nodding to their fun spectral sound collages.

8. Code Orange – Underneath 
Pittsburgh’s hardcore punk quintet brings a maelstrom album full of technical and genre bending songs. Underneath explores how we can possibly exist in a digital landscape. Songs explode, skip, shift and splinter away. Futuristic and punishing. A powerful and creative result from this chaotic musical blender.

7. Land Of Talk – Indistinct Conversations 
Lizzie Powell’s bruised vocals on this a home-recorded album fits the emotional and intimate narratives. The album leaves you feeling vulnerable yet hopeful. A satisfying blend of guitar and lyrical musings but with Land of Talk’s distinctive ambiguity.

6. Adrianne Lenker – Songs 
Somber storytelling over hypnotic and rich melodies. Nostalgic imagery of love & loss over patient melody builds. Despite being quiet and shy, the album is a slow burn into examining complex emotions. An extraordinary rich album.

5. HAIM – Women in Music Pt III 
A tuneful and jammy soundtrack pulling from many styles & genres. This is easily HAIM’s boldest and polished album yet. It tackles several themes about self discovery and how to cope with loss and grief. The sisters crafted a wonderful album capturing what it’s like being young and sensitive in our current world. The album is full of soothing and vulnerable pop songs that are overflowing with infectious hooks and harmonies. This album is like a great summer book for the beach, but one you’ll want to read again and again.

4. Nation of Language – Presence 
This Brooklyn trio brings their take on synth pop on their stellar debut. The crisp production and high craft is found in every sound and beat. Dense synths adequately compliment Ian Devaney’s deep rich and melancholy voice. Although this genre is nothing new, NOL weaves the nostalgia tropes of interlocking synths and electronic drums with purpose and emotion. They are bringing some needed personality into synth-pop, creating an exciting new chapter.

3. Idles – Ultra Mono 
I loved every single dropped before this album finally came out. From the first song Ultra Mono grabs you by the face, sits your ass down and forces you to pay attention to its abrasive and incisive commands. This adrenaline fueled album came out at the perfect time of such ambiguously lost year. It is confidant, angry and full of rage towards this modern reality we live in now. By the end of it you’ll be armed to combat anything that’s thrown at you. Whether to drop kick your anger into the other room or to scream and dance it away.

2. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher 
This album will take you through all the emotions. It’s a subtle record but over time you become overwhelmed with all the sentiments hidden in every song. The production is so tight with its lush and hypnotic melodies punctuated by brilliant lyricism. Punisher plays like a movie soundtrack criss crossing between memories of a life figuring things out the hard way. Every time I play this album I am still moved and captivated with all the beauty and sadness Phoebe examines in every song.

1. clipping. – Visions of Bodies Being Burned
Clipping’s 2019 horror-core album There Existed an Addiction to Blood ends with nothing but the sound of a piano slowly burning to death. This is a peculiar end for such anxious ridden album. However, it is the ending you would expect from a horror film where the uneasiness of knowing whether the killer is finished or not. The band returns with Visions of Bodies Being Burned which could be a logical sequel to this nightmare. However, it’s not merely an album of extra tracks but rather an evolution of these established themes and builds upon them into unexpected directions. It’s dynamic & devastating and a fitting album for the top spot on 2020.

10. Purple Mountains – Self-Titled 
Heartbreak, grief, and disappointment. David Berman comes back after a long hiatus and then leaves us forever. The world will miss you.

9. Anamanaguchi – [USA] 
Bitpop, chiptune, digital soundjams. I never want to leave the video game world they created.

8. Freddie Gibbs, Madlib – Bandana
What do you expect when Freddie & Madlib get together? They just bring the best out of each other. Gritty and smooth at the same time.

7. Lightning Bolt – Sonic Citadel
Loud and punishing but still fun and melodic. Move fast, break everything. We need more intensity in this world. This band brings it.

6. Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising
Ambitious baroque pop with incredible production. Natalie Mering creates a fantasy full of magic and daydreams. Album is so lush you can feel it.

5. Alex Cameron – Miami Memory
A slight departure from his previous 2 albums that I loved, Miami Memory celebrates a 70’s soft rock sound. Alex does a good job of painting different personas but this release has an obvious lean into his own life with actress Jemima Kirke. The album is tender, playful and triumphant. The entertaining narrator explores love and masculinity through his male perspective by the use of witty pop songs. The way Alex expresses himself and doesn’t shy away from anything is admirable and alarming. The album is a non romantic celebration of love and truth. His live shows match his jubilation with a compelling on-stage persona and delightful dance moves. One of the most entertaining shows of the year.

4. black midi – Schlagenheim
Despite being named after a dense computer crashing composition, this uk-based debut album only borrows the disorienting feeling that the music genre produces. It is explosive, energetic and challenging. The band takes cues from mathematical noise rock and experimental post punk but fuse these genres into something bizarre and new. Because there are familiar musical qualities one can latch on to, when the band goes anarchistic into uncharted dark inhuman sounds there is still a sense of control in the uncontrollable. The album is full of detours but always returns to a creative center. The album is bold and reckless balancing vulnerability and chaos.

 3. Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell!
The sixth studio album is full of her best melodies to date. Blending allusive and romantic songs for this modern age we live in. Much like how the painter Rockwell depicted American life in highly stylized scenes, Del Ray depicts moments of old Hollywood, summertime and hope weaving them into a atmospheric personification of the American Dream. There is a Hemingway-esque quality to the songs with deliberate syllables and sounds which heighten the emotional tension contained within. It’s an honest masterpiece full unfiltered beauty, emotion and heartbreak.

2. clipping. – There Existed an Addiction to Blood
Clipping. always hits my “best of” lists, but this is the first time the band has delivered an album full of deep and powerful cuts. This release takes cues and draws inspiration from elements of horror and the occult. With this diabolical theme, Daveed and company is able to use anxiety to heighten the intensity of the songs. There Existed an Addiction to Blood has several layers of meaning seeping throughout, from invoking fear of your fellow man to exposing how we are all under siege. The album is a manifestation of the seemingly nightmarish times we seem to living in and the band’s sounds and lyrics invite this confrontation. The final 18 minutes is the sound of a piano burning (created by avant-garde Annea Lockwood) and it is a fitting end for such an apocalyptical album. A final scene that we would expect from a journey full of horror, pain and rage. The vinyl design on this release also matches the mood of the album.

 1. Caroline Palochek – Pang
Caroline Palochek has an uncanny ability to lure you into her unique musical world. Pang is her first album under her own name since ending Chairlift and although apprehensive at first, Caroline delivered a wondrous art pop album. She takes you on a journey from sweeping symphonic songs to intricate and delicate melodies. The album had its share of tension, pain and remorse but also intense bliss. Her enchanting voice guides you through such varied songs that can be natural or synthetic. Pang has such a musical range and is full of new surprises on every listen.

The Memorable

Daughters at Warsaw
I didn’t see how it was possible for Daughters to capture the intense mood and sense of dread that is found on their latest album. Listening to You Won’t Get What You Want drags you to such a state of unease anxiety, that a live setting would feel awkward. Boy was I wrong. The band pulled off the complicated abstract shrills in front of a ravenous crowd. The energy was palpable and downright scary being surrounded by possessed bodies.

clipping. at Zone One
Clipping previewed their new album to the smaller stage at Elsewhere. They played a tight set of their experimental hip-hop, including some of from their yet to be released There Existed an Addiction to Blood. Sharp dynamics and a great crowd.

Caoline Polachek at Bowery Ballroom
I was excited to see a live performance by Caroline as I was already immersed in the world of her new album Pang. The new songs came alive and made me appreciate them in an entirely different light. Her stage presence and visual backdrops were beautiful and technically clever. She plays again in January.

Ken Stringfellow at Mercury Lounge
Touched came out on a dubious release date of 9/11/2001. A day for me filled with confusion and sadness. Despite the timing, Ken’s album came out it exactly at the time we needed. The album was filled with songs of grief and healing. I was unsure of many things that week including whether anything would be back to normal. When Ken decided to play in NY nine days later it was the beginning of a return to something familiar and feeling safe. As the city still smoldered, Ken played an emotional set to about 50 people that were encapsulated with sadness but also needed some comfort. For Mercury Lounge’s 25th Anniversary Ken revisited Touched to reconnect with a city and to bring songs of the celebration of life, renewal, resilience and joy.

Youth Code at Elsewhere
Youth Code gave one of their best performances I’ve seen from them and gave one of the most intense shows of the year. They brought a total assault with their relentless energy. The set was full of their aggressive tracks as well as unveiling some incredible new ones.

Honorable Mentions

JPGMAFIA at Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sold out, sweaty, frenetic show. A one man tour de force who did not disappoint.

The Forgettable

Health at Elsewhere
I was very excited to catch HEALTH live supporting their solid V4. Slaves of Fear. However the lack of charisma and energy made the show boring, especially after being upstaged by openers Youth Code. HEALTH shows usually contain an intensity that makes their music even more captivating. They played one of the best shows ever at Market Hotel in 2016 but this show was a far departure from that. The sound, performance and crowd never really reached the frenetic pace you’d expect. They closed the evening with Youth Code coming out to play Innocence (my fav song of 2018) and was the only redeeming moment by blasting out the best closer of any show.

Black Midi at Warsaw
I unfortunately had to walk out on Black Midi. The sound at Warsaw was terrible and the live performance was bland and sloppy. Disappointed that the band couldn’t match the beautiful elements found on Schlagenheim, one of my favorite albums of this year.