2020-2024: Your 10 Albums - DISCUSSION THREAD

Congrats! We’re 60% through the dogshit time period that is the 2020s. Let’s reflect on the music from the first 50% of it.

I think we might all be a bit burned out on ranking art, so I’m thinking we just vote for the ten albums we’re most passionate about - the ones you want to shove in people’s faces, or where if someone said something good or bad about it, you’d feel compelled to post a wall of text or talk their ear off or behave like a lunatic. Or maybe you’d do that unprompted.

(If you’re a true art-ranking sicko you can rank them in this discussion thread if you feel like it, but there’s no obligation or pressure for anyone to do that.)

I’ll start a voting thread where people lock in their picks (let’s keep it to one album per artist per voter), and at the end I’ll tally up the votes and see how things go and do a countdown or something.

What 10 albums from 2020-2024 do you feel most passionate about / compelled to shove in people’s faces?

Bookkeeping Note - after you vote, try to quote your official list from the voting thread into this thread and give a one or two sentence (or more) description of each album and include a bandcamp or Youtube link to a song from it for easy playing. That way we get a easily sample-able list of albums to try.

Deadline: Saturday, March 7th

Here’s the voting thread.

9 Likes

And let’s have a limit of one album per artist.

Per voter, right? Or can I not vote for an artist if someone else already voted for them?

1 Like

Oh shoot, per voter, I’ll edit to clarify. Thank you!

According to RYM I haven’t rated an album 5/5 since 2017.

Oh yes. This is great. Thanks! Will have a proper think.

1 Like

Got a list of 18. Will give them a proper listen over the weekend.

So is it the usual point scoring format then? 1st place gets 10pts, 2nd place 9pts… etc?

this will be fun

1 Like

Been a wildly inventive, if a bit low key period for music I think. One of the most interesting. Very few world crushing non-Taylor / Beyonce records. Everything feels niche now.

Pheobe Bridgers and boygenius count as separate artists, right?

I was planning on doing it where everything gets one point this time, hopefully that sits well with people. I’m just kind of burned out on ranking albums.

4 Likes

3 Likes

That’s a tough one but I’m going to say yes since there are two additional songwriters (and also so that if we ever do this exercise for the 2000-2004, I can get both the Pumpkins and Zwan in there).

1 Like

Great half-decade for loud albums surging with disgust and despair, imo.

Anyone got links to the 5 years of AOTY voting can’t be fucked searching myself.

Here you go!

6 Likes

This is the kind of public service that’s required

4 Likes

Giving this a go. Nice to listen to some things I’ve not listened to for a while. Could happily have this lot on repeat for quite some time without wishing for anything else. Just alphabetical order because I’m a coward.

Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark (amazing reunion album with which is probably my favourite by them, lovely songwriting and story-telling)

Ashenspire - Hostile Architecture (passionate, political, poetic, dark and dissonant – some kind of avant-garde black metal?)

Birds in Row - Gris Klein (huge energy and tunes – screamo/post-hardcore)

Bruit ≤ - The Machine is Burning and Now Everyone Knows it Could Happen Again (beautiful post-rock/modern classical/ambient from the band that released my favourite album from 2025)

Brutus - Unison Life (impassioned punky post-hardcore – massive energy and tunes)

GEZAN with Million Wish Collective – Anochi (like nothing else I know – sounds like the collapse of the world followed by the remains of humanity, nature, and… gremlin-kind, coming together in choir to build a new imperfectly beautiful future)

Hania Rani - Nostalgia (lovely modern classical/electronic piano/synth-based live album that seems to capture an extra bonus spark of something from the studio versions)

Hidden Orchestra - To Dream is to Forget (electronic sounding music from acoustic instruments, expansive worlds of sound with field recordings, it’s gorgeous but also got a subtle dark edge)

Loma - How Will I Live Without a Body? (indie-art-ambient pop?… not really sure, but great atmosphere and songs – my favourite from 2024)

ØXN – CYRM (side project from Radie Peat from Lankum, Katie Kim and John ‘Spud’ Murphy that I enjoyed even more than Lankum’s album released the same year)

Hope I’ve done this right!

3 Likes

Ok, so I’ve quickly gone through my AOTY playlists / FB posts and knocked up a shortlist from each year. How I’m going to choose just ten I’m not sure;

2020
Run The Jewels - RTJ4
Bow Church - The Spirits In This Forest Are Older Than Your Gods
Aesop Rock - Spirit World Field Guide
Mare Cognitum & Spectral Lore - Wanderers: Astrology of the Nine

2021
Ethereal Shroud - Trisagion
DVNE - Etemen Ænka
Bicep - Isles
Elderwind - Fires
Warrington-Runcorn NTDP - Interim Report 1979

2022
Absent In Body - Plague God
Bob Vylan - Presents The Price Of Life
Loop - Sonancy
Final Light (Perturbator & Cult of Luna) - Final Light
Arcas - Arcas
Ultha - All That Has Never Been True

2023
Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze - The Fractal Ouroboros
Craven Faults - Standers
Moonlight Sorcery - Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle
HEALTH - RAT WARS

2024
Schammasch - The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean
Haunted Plasma - I
Dödsrit - Nocturnal Will
Anciients - Beyond The Reach Of The Sun
The Jesus Lizard - Rack

3 Likes

Brat. Brat is the best album.

The end.

2 Likes