You’ve heard enough about how 2020 was a down year from everyone else so I’ll get right to it. Here is my list of Top 10 Albums I fell in love with in 2020. If you weren’t following along last year then I’ll add this reminder: these aren’t necessarily new in 2020, but they are my favorite albums that I first heard in 2020. There’s so much music out there that people have forgotten about or that never reached the popular ears because of the artists’ locations or budgets or other circumstances, so I don’t want to limit myself to only new music. If you want to read last year’s Top 10, check it out here (https://www.malnomusic.com/good-ovidius-blog/2019-a-year-in-music-part-iii-revenge-of-the-album). I’m only doing a Top 10 albums this time because doing both albums and songs was a lot for me to write and a lot for you to read.
10 – The Front of the Line by Lawson (2020). If you thought I would have enough humility to not put myself in my Top 10 then I appreciate the high esteem in which you hold me, but you’re wrong. Coming in at the top (bottom) spot is this sonically diverse, easily digestible specimen featuring my personal spins on several different genres and some new fusion styles of my own. In the artist’s own words: “My songwriting focuses on both merging sounds, rhythms, and styles of world music with traditional European-American song forms to bring new life to popular music and more attention to music from outside our cultural bubble, and composing lyrics that address mental health and the moral, philosophical, and ethical issues of our day.” One of my favorite things about The Front of the Line is how each track is so distinct from every other. A lot of albums you’ll listen to and get lost, not sure when one transitions into the next because they all share a common “sound.” That’s not my gig – every song on TFOTL is its own sound, its own idea, and it works. I’m proud as punch of the time, effort, heart, and soul I put into this and I’m deeply and eternally grateful to the other folks who made this album possible. You know who you are, so once more, thank you all.
9 – Long Time Ago by Azumah (1989, re-issued 2020). From the Nyami Nyami Records website: “Originally released in 1989, these original compositions are steeped in South African musical traditions yet infused with the singular visionary craft of Smiles Makama, the innovator and wizard from eSwatini (Swaziland). Mbiras, marimbas, percussions, musical bows and bewitching vocal harmonies sustain political and spiritual mantras for an ecstatic trip reminiscing of the best work of Nana Vasconcelos, Don Cherry, Malombo and Soweto based band BCUC.” I’ve been a fan of Nyami Nyami’s output since I first heard of them at the turn of last year – they re-release classic African popular music, making it available digitally and printing new vinyls. Another one of their drops is higher on this list. Long Time Ago, to me, sounds like a life-party. There are xylophone tracks, and there are bow tracks. The bow tracks are distinguished, rhythmic, thought-provoking, and deliberate. The xylo tracks that open and close the albums are musical Sloppy Joe’s, and if you don’t like Sloppy Joe’s, you’re not my friend anymore.
8 – Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette (1995). This album is just barely younger than me, but I only heard about it while I was on jury duty this past January. I picked up the newspaper, like the old folks used to do, and started reading the black words, archaically printed in ink as if screens and electricity didn’t exist. The article was about the new musical based on Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill that started on Broadway late in 2019 (and ended up getting the most Tony nominations of the season). I deeply appreciate how “the unicorn” expressed her own struggles and triumphs with mental health. Way ahead of her time, Morissette made it clear that she simultaneously gave both “too many” and “absolutely zero” #@%&$. One of my criticisms of many “great pop singers” is that they’re too calm – their voices are too even keel. Alanis Morissette doesn’t have that problem. Her voice tells you exactly how she feels. Witty, anxious, spunky, aggressive, sad, happy, short, healthy. Great album.
7 – Famous Men by Magnolian (2016). Magnolian (real name: Dulguun Bayasgalan) is an “Indie-Folk crooner from Mongolia.” I’m expecting he got his name from the opening scene of Monsters, Inc. because there’s no way that it’s just coincidence. “Indie-Folk crooning” is a great way to describe what he’s selling, and Famous Men is a great meditative listen. The day that we got sent home from the DSO because of the pandemic I went up to meet some friends in Amarillo (we had been planning to meet up, and I was able to come a day early with the cancellation of work/life in general). There was an aura emanating from the Earth that day – you could feel it in the air, see it coming out of the pores in the concrete of the highway – uncertainty, and, way out in Northwest Texas, a disturbing quiet – a calm before the storm? That night after everyone else went to sleep I listened through famous men while looking out the glass door into the deep blue night sky. With the way the sound envelopes you thanks to the wonderful production, the music is reassuring without being aggressive. It understands what it doesn’t understand, and unpretentiously moves forward – like the wisest among us do in the midst of mass confusion. It’s pop-style music that really is “beautiful.” And to top it off, Famous Men features one of my favorite album-craft tricks: a “reprise with a twist” at the end of the album. [Thanks, Andrew for telling me about this one ;) ]
6 – The Band’s Visit, Original Broadway Cast Recording (2017). From the musical by David Yazbek and Itamar Moses, based on a 2007 Israeli film – this is great stuff. I’ve always preferred “operatic” musicals, like Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, that follow more of the “classical” European-American tradition and feature less of the electronics, guitars, and similar trappings of modernity. This is probably because I grew up on movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones with scores composed by John Williams, so orchestral music became my “default” idea of musical accompaniment to a theatrical performance and everything else seemed out-of-place. The Band’s Visit is an impeccable mix of Moses’ take on classical music from the Middle East (the band in the story is Egyptian) and your day-to-day Broadway-style musical music. In the performance there are interludes performed by an on-stage band of pure instrumental classical music, and these made it on the album (along with a bonus track in this style). The oud, doumbek, fiddle, clarinet, and cello ensemble’s tracks make you wanna get up and dance. The actual songs on the album are variously hilarious, through-provoking, nostalgic, and romantic, and they are all very well-written and well-performed. I saw the show live at the Winspear early in 2020 and still find myself singing “Ummmmmm Kulthuuuuuum, and Omar Shariiiiiif” whenever I think of one or the other legendary artists. As a bonus, the music from this show helped to inspire the equally-fantastic music written to accompany “Aladdin, Habibi,” the evening-length dance piece produced and premiered by Dark Circles Contemporary Dance in 2018 (music by Brandon Carson).
Honorable Mentions: The soundtracks to Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers, 2013) and Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975). 2020 was the Year of the Movie-Watching for me and my quarantine, and both these films made it across my screen. I think it is certain that the latter inspired the former, as both are music-heavy cinematic investigations of a geographically and chronologically specific American musical culture. Altman studied the Country and Gospel music scenes in Nashville in the ‘70s. The movie contains an hour of music performed by the actors, many of the songs (Most? All?) being original, written specifically for the film. Keith Carradine won an Academy Award for his song, “I’m Easy,” but “It Don’t Worry Me” is the one that struck me the most. Especially with the context in which it appears in the film. Inside Llewyn Davis came much later IRL but focused on the ‘60s Folk scene in NYC (and a little bit of Chicago). The songs are performed by the actors, but with the exception of one comedic tune are covers of songs first written and recorded by the real-life greats of that era. Oscar Isaacs is in-humanly talented. Both movies are artistically relevant films, with really quite good music.
5 – I Wish You Were Mine by New Tutenkhamen (1979, re-issued 2019) Here’s the other Nyami Nyami album I mentioned. From Bandcamp: “One of the greatest enigmas of the music scene in mid- to late-1970s Harare was the New Tutenkhamen, a band which played an eclectic brand of Zimbabwean township music combining traditional rhythms and western influences. . . . From the afro-jazz jam session aesthetics of ‘Tutenkhamen Theme’, ‘Big Brother Malcom’ and ‘Forever Together’, to the almost Van Morrison-sounding ‘Sunday Morning’; from the upbeat rock ballad ‘True Love’, to the funk-infused dance song ‘Togetherness’; from the bouncy jazz exhortations to work hard in ‘Ane Nungo’, to the brassy, raunchy foot-stomper ‘Me & Dolly’. The title track ‘I Wish You Were Mine’ is a ska-infused ballad that wouldn’t be out of place in post-war Birmingham, while the star of the show is ‘Joburg Bound’, itself a fast-paced rock piece with Motown undertones and funky guitar lines.” This music came out during the later years of the Second Chimurenga/Zimbabwe War of Liberation and “provides a fascinating insight into a fraught time in Zimbabwe’s history, and the bands plying their trade through the turmoil, making music for young people, by young people.” As Bill Nighy’s character says of Van Gogh in the best Doctor Who episode ever: they “transformed the pain of a tormented life into ecstatic beauty.”
4 – More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley (2004). Straight up, that last quote might refer to every album on this list. Rilo Kiley makes my Top 10 again with their third studio album. In terms of how its crafted, it doesn’t have the epic storyline of The Execution of All Things, but the songs are great. They’re catchy, well-produced, well-performed, and they strike a chord somewhere deep in my heart. “A Man / Me / Then Jim” topped my Apple Music listening list with 37 plays and spawned an arrangement of my own (“A Man / Me / Then Gyil) that is one of my favorite songs to perform.
3 – Wɔyaya by Osibisa (1971). The album art alone would be enough to land this in the top three, and the same goes for the title track, but the whole album is great. I’m not usually one for instrumental music – this is just that good. Osibisa are labelled as a “Ghanaian Afro-Rock” band and were founded in London in the late ‘60s. The album’s name (often spelled “Woyaya”) purportedly comes from the Ga language and means “We Are Going.” It’s fitting, because the music is mobile. It’s for dancing, swaying, grooving, and all that good stuff. When they do drop in lyrics, they hit HARD. The soundscape is lush, featuring synths, organs, flutes, vocal choruses, drumset, saxes, tasteful guitar and bass, and much more. The title track was covered by Art Garfunkel in his debut solo album, and his version, which was popular, SUCKS compared to the original, but don’t skip to the end (“Wɔyaya” is the last song). Listen through the whole thing and you’ll get the payoff you deserve. Maybe even start listening to the album at exactly 11:24 PM on NYE and the closer will begin right on the stroke of midnight, opening 2021 with the hopeful, exciting, determined vibe that we all need.
2 – Un Canto por México, Vol. 1 by Natalia Lafourcade (2020). When do you know that an artist is completely self-satisfied, content with the knowledge that they are a total badass? When they start covering their own songs. Natalia Lafourcade is living that life, and rightfully so. Her work prior to 2020 was fire, plenty of her own songs along with revitalized covers of greats like Agustín Lara, Chavela Vargas, and Simón Díaz, and singing along with the likes of Los Macorinos, Omara Portuondo, Rodrigo Amarante, and Gilberto Gil. From my own experience, Un Canto por México, Vol. 1 is a recreation of an idealized, epic live performance of Lafourcade’s greatest hits. She brings in a few new songs and treats the classics with a new vibe that sounds like its connecting more deeply with her Mexican musical heritage. Trumpets, accordions, Latin American drums and percussion, and plenty of guitarrón give her a backing sound like unlike anything on her other albums. There are moments where you feel like you’re in a scene from the “golden age of cinema,” and others where you feel like you’re at a party in Lafourade’s homeland of Veracruz (these sentimental transportations are blatantly intentional and perfectly executed). This is incredible music.
1 – And here it is. Big #1. I tried to get this album on vinyl many moons ago, but something went down and it never showed up. Months later, I remembered it and downloaded the MP3 version. WOW. Like seriously, WOW. The creative use of sounds that you won’t find in a typical song stands equal to the greatest of them – Tom Waits, PHOX, Patrick Watson, me, &c. Brushes on drumset, mbira, shakers, someone slapping rhythms on their legs, flutes, ... is that bass clarinet? Some kind of tuned pan drum, claves, water pouring, BOWED CYMBALS, the list goes on. The band is Monoswezi, a group consisting of musicians from MOzambique, NOrway, SWeden, and ZImbabwe. The album, their first, is The Village (2013). The Band’s website described the album as “a collection of rearranged Zimbabwean traditional songs blended with a cool Nordic edge.” I don’t know quite what a “Nordic Edge” sounds like, but I love this music, and highly recommend you listen to it now.
...
So that’s my list. The best albums I had the privilege of getting to know in 2020, a rough year in many accounts, but one that reminded me and a lot of other people of the importance of music and the social connections that inspire and are inspired by the art form. Let’s get together and sing, jam, dance, play, and listen more in 2021.
Lawson
30 December 2020
MacTown
10 – The Front of the Line by Lawson (2020). If you thought I would have enough humility to not put myself in my Top 10 then I appreciate the high esteem in which you hold me, but you’re wrong. Coming in at the top (bottom) spot is this sonically diverse, easily digestible specimen featuring my personal spins on several different genres and some new fusion styles of my own. In the artist’s own words: “My songwriting focuses on both merging sounds, rhythms, and styles of world music with traditional European-American song forms to bring new life to popular music and more attention to music from outside our cultural bubble, and composing lyrics that address mental health and the moral, philosophical, and ethical issues of our day.” One of my favorite things about The Front of the Line is how each track is so distinct from every other. A lot of albums you’ll listen to and get lost, not sure when one transitions into the next because they all share a common “sound.” That’s not my gig – every song on TFOTL is its own sound, its own idea, and it works. I’m proud as punch of the time, effort, heart, and soul I put into this and I’m deeply and eternally grateful to the other folks who made this album possible. You know who you are, so once more, thank you all.
9 – Long Time Ago by Azumah (1989, re-issued 2020). From the Nyami Nyami Records website: “Originally released in 1989, these original compositions are steeped in South African musical traditions yet infused with the singular visionary craft of Smiles Makama, the innovator and wizard from eSwatini (Swaziland). Mbiras, marimbas, percussions, musical bows and bewitching vocal harmonies sustain political and spiritual mantras for an ecstatic trip reminiscing of the best work of Nana Vasconcelos, Don Cherry, Malombo and Soweto based band BCUC.” I’ve been a fan of Nyami Nyami’s output since I first heard of them at the turn of last year – they re-release classic African popular music, making it available digitally and printing new vinyls. Another one of their drops is higher on this list. Long Time Ago, to me, sounds like a life-party. There are xylophone tracks, and there are bow tracks. The bow tracks are distinguished, rhythmic, thought-provoking, and deliberate. The xylo tracks that open and close the albums are musical Sloppy Joe’s, and if you don’t like Sloppy Joe’s, you’re not my friend anymore.
8 – Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette (1995). This album is just barely younger than me, but I only heard about it while I was on jury duty this past January. I picked up the newspaper, like the old folks used to do, and started reading the black words, archaically printed in ink as if screens and electricity didn’t exist. The article was about the new musical based on Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill that started on Broadway late in 2019 (and ended up getting the most Tony nominations of the season). I deeply appreciate how “the unicorn” expressed her own struggles and triumphs with mental health. Way ahead of her time, Morissette made it clear that she simultaneously gave both “too many” and “absolutely zero” #@%&$. One of my criticisms of many “great pop singers” is that they’re too calm – their voices are too even keel. Alanis Morissette doesn’t have that problem. Her voice tells you exactly how she feels. Witty, anxious, spunky, aggressive, sad, happy, short, healthy. Great album.
7 – Famous Men by Magnolian (2016). Magnolian (real name: Dulguun Bayasgalan) is an “Indie-Folk crooner from Mongolia.” I’m expecting he got his name from the opening scene of Monsters, Inc. because there’s no way that it’s just coincidence. “Indie-Folk crooning” is a great way to describe what he’s selling, and Famous Men is a great meditative listen. The day that we got sent home from the DSO because of the pandemic I went up to meet some friends in Amarillo (we had been planning to meet up, and I was able to come a day early with the cancellation of work/life in general). There was an aura emanating from the Earth that day – you could feel it in the air, see it coming out of the pores in the concrete of the highway – uncertainty, and, way out in Northwest Texas, a disturbing quiet – a calm before the storm? That night after everyone else went to sleep I listened through famous men while looking out the glass door into the deep blue night sky. With the way the sound envelopes you thanks to the wonderful production, the music is reassuring without being aggressive. It understands what it doesn’t understand, and unpretentiously moves forward – like the wisest among us do in the midst of mass confusion. It’s pop-style music that really is “beautiful.” And to top it off, Famous Men features one of my favorite album-craft tricks: a “reprise with a twist” at the end of the album. [Thanks, Andrew for telling me about this one ;) ]
6 – The Band’s Visit, Original Broadway Cast Recording (2017). From the musical by David Yazbek and Itamar Moses, based on a 2007 Israeli film – this is great stuff. I’ve always preferred “operatic” musicals, like Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, that follow more of the “classical” European-American tradition and feature less of the electronics, guitars, and similar trappings of modernity. This is probably because I grew up on movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones with scores composed by John Williams, so orchestral music became my “default” idea of musical accompaniment to a theatrical performance and everything else seemed out-of-place. The Band’s Visit is an impeccable mix of Moses’ take on classical music from the Middle East (the band in the story is Egyptian) and your day-to-day Broadway-style musical music. In the performance there are interludes performed by an on-stage band of pure instrumental classical music, and these made it on the album (along with a bonus track in this style). The oud, doumbek, fiddle, clarinet, and cello ensemble’s tracks make you wanna get up and dance. The actual songs on the album are variously hilarious, through-provoking, nostalgic, and romantic, and they are all very well-written and well-performed. I saw the show live at the Winspear early in 2020 and still find myself singing “Ummmmmm Kulthuuuuuum, and Omar Shariiiiiif” whenever I think of one or the other legendary artists. As a bonus, the music from this show helped to inspire the equally-fantastic music written to accompany “Aladdin, Habibi,” the evening-length dance piece produced and premiered by Dark Circles Contemporary Dance in 2018 (music by Brandon Carson).
Honorable Mentions: The soundtracks to Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers, 2013) and Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975). 2020 was the Year of the Movie-Watching for me and my quarantine, and both these films made it across my screen. I think it is certain that the latter inspired the former, as both are music-heavy cinematic investigations of a geographically and chronologically specific American musical culture. Altman studied the Country and Gospel music scenes in Nashville in the ‘70s. The movie contains an hour of music performed by the actors, many of the songs (Most? All?) being original, written specifically for the film. Keith Carradine won an Academy Award for his song, “I’m Easy,” but “It Don’t Worry Me” is the one that struck me the most. Especially with the context in which it appears in the film. Inside Llewyn Davis came much later IRL but focused on the ‘60s Folk scene in NYC (and a little bit of Chicago). The songs are performed by the actors, but with the exception of one comedic tune are covers of songs first written and recorded by the real-life greats of that era. Oscar Isaacs is in-humanly talented. Both movies are artistically relevant films, with really quite good music.
5 – I Wish You Were Mine by New Tutenkhamen (1979, re-issued 2019) Here’s the other Nyami Nyami album I mentioned. From Bandcamp: “One of the greatest enigmas of the music scene in mid- to late-1970s Harare was the New Tutenkhamen, a band which played an eclectic brand of Zimbabwean township music combining traditional rhythms and western influences. . . . From the afro-jazz jam session aesthetics of ‘Tutenkhamen Theme’, ‘Big Brother Malcom’ and ‘Forever Together’, to the almost Van Morrison-sounding ‘Sunday Morning’; from the upbeat rock ballad ‘True Love’, to the funk-infused dance song ‘Togetherness’; from the bouncy jazz exhortations to work hard in ‘Ane Nungo’, to the brassy, raunchy foot-stomper ‘Me & Dolly’. The title track ‘I Wish You Were Mine’ is a ska-infused ballad that wouldn’t be out of place in post-war Birmingham, while the star of the show is ‘Joburg Bound’, itself a fast-paced rock piece with Motown undertones and funky guitar lines.” This music came out during the later years of the Second Chimurenga/Zimbabwe War of Liberation and “provides a fascinating insight into a fraught time in Zimbabwe’s history, and the bands plying their trade through the turmoil, making music for young people, by young people.” As Bill Nighy’s character says of Van Gogh in the best Doctor Who episode ever: they “transformed the pain of a tormented life into ecstatic beauty.”
4 – More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley (2004). Straight up, that last quote might refer to every album on this list. Rilo Kiley makes my Top 10 again with their third studio album. In terms of how its crafted, it doesn’t have the epic storyline of The Execution of All Things, but the songs are great. They’re catchy, well-produced, well-performed, and they strike a chord somewhere deep in my heart. “A Man / Me / Then Jim” topped my Apple Music listening list with 37 plays and spawned an arrangement of my own (“A Man / Me / Then Gyil) that is one of my favorite songs to perform.
3 – Wɔyaya by Osibisa (1971). The album art alone would be enough to land this in the top three, and the same goes for the title track, but the whole album is great. I’m not usually one for instrumental music – this is just that good. Osibisa are labelled as a “Ghanaian Afro-Rock” band and were founded in London in the late ‘60s. The album’s name (often spelled “Woyaya”) purportedly comes from the Ga language and means “We Are Going.” It’s fitting, because the music is mobile. It’s for dancing, swaying, grooving, and all that good stuff. When they do drop in lyrics, they hit HARD. The soundscape is lush, featuring synths, organs, flutes, vocal choruses, drumset, saxes, tasteful guitar and bass, and much more. The title track was covered by Art Garfunkel in his debut solo album, and his version, which was popular, SUCKS compared to the original, but don’t skip to the end (“Wɔyaya” is the last song). Listen through the whole thing and you’ll get the payoff you deserve. Maybe even start listening to the album at exactly 11:24 PM on NYE and the closer will begin right on the stroke of midnight, opening 2021 with the hopeful, exciting, determined vibe that we all need.
2 – Un Canto por México, Vol. 1 by Natalia Lafourcade (2020). When do you know that an artist is completely self-satisfied, content with the knowledge that they are a total badass? When they start covering their own songs. Natalia Lafourcade is living that life, and rightfully so. Her work prior to 2020 was fire, plenty of her own songs along with revitalized covers of greats like Agustín Lara, Chavela Vargas, and Simón Díaz, and singing along with the likes of Los Macorinos, Omara Portuondo, Rodrigo Amarante, and Gilberto Gil. From my own experience, Un Canto por México, Vol. 1 is a recreation of an idealized, epic live performance of Lafourcade’s greatest hits. She brings in a few new songs and treats the classics with a new vibe that sounds like its connecting more deeply with her Mexican musical heritage. Trumpets, accordions, Latin American drums and percussion, and plenty of guitarrón give her a backing sound like unlike anything on her other albums. There are moments where you feel like you’re in a scene from the “golden age of cinema,” and others where you feel like you’re at a party in Lafourade’s homeland of Veracruz (these sentimental transportations are blatantly intentional and perfectly executed). This is incredible music.
1 – And here it is. Big #1. I tried to get this album on vinyl many moons ago, but something went down and it never showed up. Months later, I remembered it and downloaded the MP3 version. WOW. Like seriously, WOW. The creative use of sounds that you won’t find in a typical song stands equal to the greatest of them – Tom Waits, PHOX, Patrick Watson, me, &c. Brushes on drumset, mbira, shakers, someone slapping rhythms on their legs, flutes, ... is that bass clarinet? Some kind of tuned pan drum, claves, water pouring, BOWED CYMBALS, the list goes on. The band is Monoswezi, a group consisting of musicians from MOzambique, NOrway, SWeden, and ZImbabwe. The album, their first, is The Village (2013). The Band’s website described the album as “a collection of rearranged Zimbabwean traditional songs blended with a cool Nordic edge.” I don’t know quite what a “Nordic Edge” sounds like, but I love this music, and highly recommend you listen to it now.
...
So that’s my list. The best albums I had the privilege of getting to know in 2020, a rough year in many accounts, but one that reminded me and a lot of other people of the importance of music and the social connections that inspire and are inspired by the art form. Let’s get together and sing, jam, dance, play, and listen more in 2021.
Lawson
30 December 2020
MacTown
