My End of 2020 List

(Annual disclaimer: this always gets wordy, which is ok. There’s no law that says you have to read this—though we’re talking about 2020 here, so nothing’s completely off the table. List-making, for me, combines a bit of personal scrapbooking, a defiant shout into the gaping piehole of the void, and perhaps a sliver of hope that maybe somebody discovers something they love here, like I consistently do from the lists I read. Maybe it can be like when I used to work at Tower Records on Mass Ave in Boston, and someone would come in and start asking about some Lauryn Hill single or Stones import and, naturally, a two-way exchange would ensue, me learning about the MC5 or Superdrag while pushing the Jayhawks or something, both of us walking away with something new to chew on. That’s the hope, at least.)

We lost a lot in 2020: John Prine, Bill Withers, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Little Richard, Toots Hibbert, Ennio Morricone, Eddie Van Halen, Neil Peart, Charles Portis and so many more (not to mention, for some of us, our sense of taste and smell, among other non-people)…but none as close and personal and devastating to me as my friend and bandmate Pat Campbell. I tried to write a bit about Pat here. And I made a couple of playlists full of music Pat was part of.

Usually I post this wrapup on Facebook, but I’m trying to slowly wean myself off reliance on Mark Zuckerberg’s dystopian empire and drift to other platforms, like Medium here, which may be just as fraught with controversy. I just haven’t heard about it yet.

And usually this post is called Best of (Year), but “Best” seemed wrong on a year like this. “Life-saving” seems overly dramatic and while “favorite” seems closer, I landed on a more generic “End of 2020.” So there.

It was a strange year for music. Seems like a lot of listening turned into a mental health tactic or a search for aural comfort or a quest for distraction. Discovery seemed to be put on the backburner more than in a “normal” year. At least for me.

At the end of last year’s post, I signed off, “Thanks for another wonderful year. 2020 looks to be even better. See you there!” I feel like I should both laugh and apologize. I’ll do my best to sign off vaguely here today.

LET’S START WITH THE ALBUMS I LOVED THAT CAME OUT IN 2020. A TOP 15 or so. (Mostly unranked with songs I loved from each album in parentheses AND italics for your browsing convenience.)

Bonny Light Horseman — s/t

I’m a raving Anais Mitchell fan, since picking up her album Hadestown at Slowtrain (RIP) ages ago, then her solo set at Folks Fest, and especially her last two albums: 2012’s brilliant Young Man In America and her voice-and-acoustic-guitar album Xoa. Holly and I made sure to see her musical adaptation of Hadestown on Broadway (in the same theater we had seen Springsteen On Broadway, if you want to get cosmic) when we were in New York last year. It was incredibly moving, a testament to both hard work, artwork, and the power of great songs and great stories. So, when I learned that she had reworked some old folks songs with Fruit Bats’ Eric D. Johnson and Josh Kaufman (who I’d heard play guitar with Josh Ritter, but also plays with Hiss Golden Messenger, The National, and—this year—on a certain Taylor Swift quarantine record), I was all ears. It’s an album that sounds deceptively simple and intuitive with few moving parts, which is a tribute to the gifts of the musicians involved who somehow made these re-interpreted folk songs feel both new and classic all at once. The blend of Mitchell and Johnson’s unique voices works wonders. The little details—a swelling saxophone over here, some subtle groovy drums just like Pat Campbell used to play over there, the vocals and guitars—are just right. I said I wouldn’t rank the albums, but this was my favorite. I returned to it constantly like a favorite sweater—never tiring of it, often pining for it—which is saying something in a year when my listening habits were A.D.D.-addled at best.
(Bonny Light Horseman, Deep In Love, The Roving, 10 Thousand Miles)

Phoebe Bridgers— Punisher, the Copycat Killer versions, holiday EP
For my money, nobody owned 2020’s album promotional cycle like Phoebe Bridgers. I, for one, curled into a ball and whined that my labor of love, decade-in-the-making album (Two-Headed Hearts, available on Bandcamp, iTunes, and anywhere else the noble souls who still buy music buy music) had fallen into a cultural Sarlacc pit (which gives me faith that maybe, 20 years later, it’ll come back strong?). But Bridgers took it all head-on with ingenuity and creativity—sure, the album itself, but also a concert at Red Rocks for no one, some creatively memorable late night performances, a presidential Tiny Desk appearance, an iconic/ironic cover song with Maggie Rogers, a holiday EP with one of my favorite heartbreaker holiday songs, a nice cameo on an Ethan Gruska song, and then—the icing—an EP of songs from Punisher, stripped of Punisher’s production and scored with Rob Moose’s incredible string arrangements. I may even love the Copycat Killer versions more than the Punisher versions in some cases, not a knock whatsoever on Punisher. I loved Bridgers’ first record, Stranger in the Alps, and worried that a sophomore slump was looming, but Phoebe Bridgers would not be denied.
(Graceland Too, If We Make It Through December, Savior Complex [both versions are great but the Copycat Killer version destroys me], Punisher, Garden Song)

Run The Jewels- RTJ4
This will surprise no one: I am a socks-and-sandals, camera-around-the-neck, travel-guide-in-hand tourist in the land of hip hop. I will not, as they say, “front.” But there’s something about the production and songs and swagger on all of RTJ’s albums that just gets to me. This is not—for NSFW or NSFQWK (Not Safe For Quarantining With Kids) lyric reasons that earn every last syllable of a parental warning sticker—an album I could ever play around the house with my kids around, but it got plenty of time in the headphones and the occasional solo quarantine field trip in the car.

RTJ are in tune with the world happening around them—mirroring, echoing, and even prefacing current events. The lyrics for “Walk In The Snow”, recorded long before police violence and civil unrest lit additional fire to the Black Lives Matter movement, had some lyrics both documentary and prescient:

“And every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free
And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me
Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, ‘I can’t breathe’
And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV
The most you give’s a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy”

(JU$T, yankee and the brave, pulling the pin)

Ethan Gruska— En Garde
The album as a whole feels a tad uneven for my unadventurous ears, but its peaks are stunning. Great songwriter, great performances, great production. And maybe the adventurous side will make (more) sense later?
(Enough For Now, Dialing Drunk, Maybe I’ll Go Nowhere)

Clem Snide—Forever Just Beyond
Songwriter Eef Barzelay, the creative force behind Clem Snide, is that dear friend I lost track of 20 years ago and, suddenly we’re texting and emailing and calling and we grab lunch, and we pick up right where we left off. I couldn’t have loved his album Soft Spot more than I did, full of realistic love songs and vulnerability and wit and melodic truth. But then we lost each other. So, when I heard the songs “Roger Ebert” and “Some Ghost”, it was like that conversation where you pick right up. No need to catch up. We’re already caught up.
(Roger Ebert, Some Ghost, Don’t Bring No Ladder)

Sylvan Esso—Free Love/WITH
This duo is on a streak. Free Love is probably my third favorite of their three albums, but that’s far from an insult, considering my love for the other two. The live version of “Slack Jaw” from their live album WITH burrows itself in my synapses and tear ducts.
(Ferris Wheel, What If, Slack Jaw [live version], Rooftop Dancing, Ring)

My Morning Jacket—The Waterfall II
I guess I just needed some good old-fashioned rock?
(Feel You, Magic Bullet, Run It)

Matt Berninger- Serpentine Prison/Jeff Tweedy- Love is The King
I said 2020 was about aural comfort, right? It’s not an End of the Year list for me until there’s an appearance by either The National or Wilco. So here are versions of both: frontmen of consistent, solid American rock bands, doing the solo thing. Neither veers too far from expectation, but both add to their catalog of great songs.
(Distant Axis, Silver Spring, Love Is the King, Guess Again, Half Asleep)

Gillian Welch—All The Good Times/Boots №2: The Lost Songs
Proof that all the production in the world can’t beat a great song, played and sung well. These recordings are mostly just Welch and longtime partner David Rawlings, who together decided to release a ton of unreleased songs after they had to spend a night in a literal Nashville tornado rescuing the original tapes from the elements. “Why do we care so much about these songs, yet don’t release them?” they asked. Thank goodness they did, because between those songs and the cover songs on All The Good Times, Welch’s 2020 output is like the best bowl of soup on the coldest day of the year.
(Beautiful Boy, Hello In There, Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie)

Waxahatchee—Saint Cloud
Great songs. And, newly sober, I appreciate how she (along with folks like Jason Isbell) unmasks the myth that inebriation is a key to artistry. Her best album by no stretch at all.
(Can’t Do Much, Arkadelphia, Oxbow, Lilacs, Ruby Falls)

Mac Miller—Circles
No album on this list’s ranking suffered more from the interminability of 2020 than Circles. The year was just so long that I nearly forgot it. But Miller’s swan song, with help from one of my musical favorites (Jon Brion), is excellent.
(Blue World, Circles)

Blitzen Trapper—Holy Smokes Future Jokes
Another friend I’d lost touch with, this time since 2010’s Destroyer of the Void, though Pat tried to make it otherwise. Pat loved Blitzen Trapper and was always pushing them on me, so it’s fitting that they broke through the noise this year. This album has so much fabulous off-kilter weirdness, songwriting-wise. Their chord changes are like the fashion-forward friend you have—you envy both the choices and the confidence to strut them.
(Requiem, Masonic Temple Microdose #1, Magical Thinking)

SAULT—Untitled (Black Is…)/Untitled (Rise)
The result of me looking at NPR’s End of Year lists before making mine. A revelation. Not even sure what to say except, go take a listen.
(Wildfires, Free, Monsters, Stop Dem, Pray Up Stay Up)

Fiona Apple—Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Has an artist ever articulated their inner dialogue more dizzyingly than Fiona? Taylor Swift (below) will get the wider credit for making the most of social distancing, but Fiona Apple has been doing the social distance thing since long before bat soups and quarantine and masks and Italian evening singalongs were a thing. For a woman who, after her first album, was already calling out the machine and misogyny and other B.S., the lines from “Under The Table” ring true:

“Kick me under the table all you want
I won’t shut up.”

(Shameika, I Want You To Love Me, Under The Table)

Taylor Swift—folklore/evermore
Another (cameo) appearance by The National, but only on the coattails of the Reigning Queen of Journal Entries That Become Hits (not a knock). A friend recommended making a playlist with both albums on it and hitting shuffle. It worked.
(this is me trying, the 1, hoax, tolerate it, ’tis the damn season)

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OTHER QUALIFYING ALBUMS THAT HAD A GENUINE MOMENT WITH ME, BUT JUST SUFFERED BENEATH 2020’S SHRUNKEN ABILITY TO FOCUS EVEN FOR, LIKE, A MINUTE ON, LIKE ANYTHING
Sufjan Stevens—The Ascension
Flaming Lips—American Head (who knew this would be the year I’d reconnect with Wayne Coyne and Sufjan Stevens? The Lips’ album in particular really gave off some nice psychedelic comedown vibes.)
Nnamdi — BRAT (boundless creativity and genre-hopping, my favorites are “It’s OK” and “Salut” )
Kathleen Edwards—Total Freedom (welcome back, Kathleen)
Neil Young—Homegrown (an archival release, but still)
Bob Dylan — Rough & Rowdy Ways (unlike Neil, Bob made new music and it’s still relevant and fiery and bloody)
Teddy Thompson- Heartbreaker Please (besides his duet and country covers album, this collection of original songs is the one that best captures his love for Everly-era rock n’ roll and the three minute song. And it’s a break-up album, so extra points, I guess [because those tend to be the historic albums—Rumours, Sea Change, Blood On The Tracks, For Emma Forever Ago]. For my money, Teddy Thompson is one of the great underrated voices in music)
Adrianne Lenker- songs (came to this one and Teddy Thompson’s a little late in the year, but a solo record from the Big Thief frontwoman? I’m in.)

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FRIENDS WHO RELEASED MUSIC IN 2020 I CAN FULLY VOUCH FOR
Dominic Moore- The Middle Ages
(Alice Darling, Any Point In Time, Say A Prayer For Me, This Is the Story of Paul)

Sarah Sample—(singles) Nothingman, The Old Barn Owl

M Horton Smith — (single) Dawn of a New Design

Ryan Tanner — Crushed Romantic
(The Big Time, So High)

Ryan Innes — (single) Stay Foolish

Pinguin Mofex — Side B Act 3, Party (2020), Side A Act 2
(Sitcoms with a Sick Mom, The Last Supper, Split It Up Spit It Out)

Daniel Young — Television Static
(Moments Like These, Clean Cut, Pretty Soon [Ain’t Soon Enough To Get You Off My Mind])

Adam & Darcie—Rivers EP
(All The Colors, You Next To Me)

SOME SONGS I LIKED AN AWFUL LOT THIS YEAR THAT AREN’T ON THE ALBUMS LISTED ABOVE
Revival—Michael Penn (welcome back, Mr. Penn)
Willie & Nilli—Chuck Prophet
Delivery—Mikaela Davis
Hold You Dear—The Secret Sisters
Impossible Weight—Deep Sea Diver
Lose This Number—Christian Lee Huston
Parliament of Owls—Agnes Obel
Hypochondriac—Fenne Lily
Summer All Over/Vanishing Twin—Blake Mills
Different Light—Best Coast
Coming Back/Hold On/No Surprises—Madison Cunningham (last year’s reigning Album of the Year champion)
Texas Man/Everybody Loves You—The Chicks
Make Believe—Hayden Desser
Cruel—Hannah Georgas
Love Me Now—Phantogram
Sunblind/Can I Believe You—Fleet Foxes
Heartland—Hailey Whitters (i love some straight-up, unapologetic country)
Night’s Falling—Andrew Bird
Valdivia—Erlend Øye, La Comitiva, stargaze (if we don’t hear this in the next Wes Anderson movie, I’ll be surprised)

Here’s a Spotify playlist of these songs and more: spotify:playlist:1KhRw8LO3GweRTWNEZjhQ6

OLD SONGS/ALBUMS THAT BECAME NEW TO ME IN 2019
James Carr–—You Got My Mind Messed Up (an old soul record from a singer I’d never heard of. It blew me away)
Keith Jarrett— Koln concert (this is the one I returned to the most; a brilliant work by a master truly creating in the moment and made all the more brilliant if you listen to this podcast with some backstory to the recording, recommended to me by my friend Emily)
Tom Petty– — Wildflowers (already a longtime favorite, the expanded reissue was revelatory. Even just listening to the original home demo of the song “Wildflowers”, which Tom wrote and recorded at the same time, is a spiritual thing for me. And the songs they left off—”Leave Virginia Alone” for one—are fantastic.)
Time Tough — Toots & The Maytals (RIP)
Foo Fighters—The Colour & The Shape (this album and I had a REAL moment about two weeks into quarantine. Thank you, Mr. Grohl, for that.)

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BOOKS (favorites in bold)
The Dog of the South-Charles Portis
The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison (so bleak)
Movies (And Other Things)-Shea Serrano
Medallion Status- John Hodgman (shoutout to his podcast, Judge John Hodgman)
Twilight of the Gods- Steven Hyden
Born A Crime- Trevor Noah
1Q82- Maruki Murakami (decidedly not my jam)
The Road- Cormac McCarthy (re-read for Madison Arm Book Club, maybe my favorite book ever)
Essentialism- Greg McKeown (wouldn’t you think a book about essentialism could be a little….more concise?)
Born Standing Up- Steve Martin
The Book of Lost Things- John Connolly
The Hate U Give- Angie Thomas
How To Be An Artist- Jerry Saltz
Blood Meridian- Cormac McCarthy (eeeesh…)
Barbarian Days: A Life In Surfing- William Finnegan
Vampires In The Lemon Grove- Karen Russell (re-read for MABC, another all-time favorite)
Stevie Nicks- Rob Sheffield (nobody loves music more than Rob loves music)
Matilda- Roald Dahl (re-read)
The Wizard of Oz- Frank Oz
Creative Quest- Questlove
Intimations- Zadie Smith
So Long See You Tomorrow- William Maxwell (re-read for MABC, yet another all-time favorite)
One Long River of Song- Brian Doyle
How to Be An Anti-Racist- Ibram X. Kendi
Suddenly A Knock At The Door- Etgar Keret
Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone- J.K. Rowling (re-read)
Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets- J.K. Rowling (re-read)

MOVIES
It wasn’t really a year for seeing movies in the theater. I saw Tenet in a theater we rented out privately and maybe kind of understood it. Besides that, I saw Palm Springs when I did a one-week trial of Hulu. And that’s it.

TELEVISION
Did we all watch television in its entirety this year? Or were you all better, baking your sourdough loaves and making two sadcore albums and writing King Lear instead of killing brain cells on Netflix? Well, here are some things I watched this year (favorites in bold)

Disney+ Mickey Mouse shorts (just like last year, the short-burst kitchen sink creativity in these astounds me)

THE DARK STUFF: Fargo Season 4 (got lost in the middle but the third act was prime; the Wizard of Oz episode was a masterpiece), Mindhunter (daaaaaaaark), Babylon Berlin (season 3 just fell apart), Sharp Objects (beautifully shot and edited, Amy Adams was unreal, but not exactly uplifting), Perry Mason, ZeroZeroZero (still going, but can only take so much at a time)

TRIED BUT DIDN’T LAST: Tales from the Loop, Raised By Wolves, Kidding (loved the earlier season, but this one didn’t take) Ugly Delicious (same)

REWATCHED: Community (still hammers me; sue me, but I think it might be better than 3o Rock), and then we rewatched Parks & Rec and The Good Place with my two oldest kids. Who didn’t need to laugh this year?

LIKE ALL OF YOU: The Mandalorian was crowd-pleasing, fan-service fun and maybe the best Star Wars thing to happen since The Clone Wars.

Fleabag Season 2 was incredible if not something I can’t really recommend to my family. Search Party Season 1 was millennial and weird and unbearably selfish and kind of amazing. Better Call Saul Season 4 was good but Better Call Saul Season 5 was pantheon; I thought Vince Gilligan was a fool for trying to milk the Breaking Bad cow, but it turns out: it’s his cow. Speaking of Breaking Bad, its blood-cousin Ozark had a twisty, dark Season 3.

But my favorite of 2020? Ted Lasso. I needed levity. I needed positivity. I needed heart. I needed to laugh in a bad way. Ted Lasso had all of that. And some swears which, come to think of it, I also needed in 2020.

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OTHER STUFF

A true serving of humble pie after all my impassioned pro-mask, pro-social distancing tweets: I got the virus of the year, Covid. Luckily my strain was pretty mild. I shivered uncontrollably and had some fun fevers for a couple days, some coughs and congestion, couldn’t taste for a few weeks, still feel some weird chest stuff and headaches. But, all things considered, I dodged the worst. I know many have lost loved ones. Thanks for wearing a mask.

Black Lives Matter: I had started to believe that no petition I ever signed did anything, no letter to a Congressman ever did anything but trigger an insincere auto-response; I had become cynical about our ability to effect change, seeing so few things change (gun control, etc) but some (repeat: SOME and only some) progress was made. I’m not interested in highlighting what actions I took, for fear of virtue signaling and for fear of warping my motivations which currently are not for personal validation or outside attention (TRYING to do right things/right reasons)…still a very, very long way to go. But it does seem like some more people woke up to what’s happening with racism in this country, to varying degrees, myself included.

I released my third album—Two-Headed Hearts—on February 28. Two weeks later, the world shut down—no release show, no shows at Velour and the State Room, no mini-tour to Nebraska, nothing. It doesn’t make the album mean less to me, of course, but it’s only human to wish that there had been a better way to give the album its moment in the sun, no matter how brief. I’m as proud of it and the people who helped it into existence—from Scott Wiley’s incredible production to The Madison Arm’s (and friends’) playing to Tosh Brown’s fantastic artwork to family & friends’ generous cheerleading—as anything I’ve ever done, music or not. And even 2020 can’t take that away.

The Lower Lights cancelled what would have been our 11th annual Christmas concerts. Thanks for wearing a mask

I played Fork Fest in September, a duo show with my now-dearly-departed friend Pat Campbell on drums. A month later, we all mourned his tragic and wholly unexpected passing. I sang “Where The Soul of Man Never Dies” with my friends Sarah, Scott, Darin, and Brian at the funeral service, all standing in for the broader Lower Lights family as well as a mourning cadre of musicians.

I quit my job of 7 years. I got a new job. Cue the Who.

I got to play on my friend Dominic Moore’s album, The Middle Ages, and it was fun to stretch out a bit on electric guitar. Still, my favorite guitar part on the album is Dom’s brother Colin’s spiky, hiccupy guitar part at the1:56–2:00 mark of “This Is The Story Of Paul.” I smile every last time.

I saw my first in-person rattlesnake (well, actually, I heard it first and then saw it) just on the edge of the trail up Big Cottonwood Canyon. All of my fears as a 7 year old returned. If there had been quicksand and being at school in nothing but my underwear, the trifecta of my 7-year-old fears would have been complete.

I had two unsolicited caricatures done of my head by two of my favorite designers, Bren Postma & Carl Carbonell.

I sang with Scott at the funeral of his nephew. We played “Where The Soul of Man Never Dies” and “Never Grow Old.” Mourning in the time of coronavirus was piling cruelty upon tragedy. People left behind deserve to be able to commiserate and hug and commune. And Covid stole that, from me and from friends and family I know who lost dear loved ones.

If nothing else, hopefully 2020 taught us to cherish the ones we love (and to a lesser degree the things we love), to hold them even closer and dearer.

(Insert purposely vague but still grateful 2020 sign-off here.)