Before we get too deep into listing season, a bit of fun to get a taste of your obsessions this year.
There were a lot of tracks I listened to obsessively this year but this was the fog I kept wanting to get lost in:
In a year that left our souls bruised, Phoebe Bridges cackled in the warmth of the abyss. Especially loved this session in an empty venue tor the added kick in the heart factor:
Dead Horse feels like an emo-Phoenix anthem. Classy but line a bleak joke, estranged from its joy:
PS Here’s my rolling tracks of the year playlist and might add some bits from this thread Spotify
We moved house on 19 March, the schools closed down the following day and then we were into lockdown, so March was a particularly tumultuous period in our household. Our main consideration at the time was to shield the kids and try and make everything as normal and fun for them as possible. Fortunately an album arrived at just the right time - The Lovely Eggs’ ‘I Am Moron’. We rinsed this inbetween home schooling sessions, but they particularly went for this track (they’ve even made up their own lyrics to it, plus mastered the Lancastrian delivery).
Of course, 2020 is going to be remembered as a pretty grim and scary year overall. NGL occasionally I have enjoyed a degree of wallowing in self-pity and the feeling of living through the apocalypse. Craven Fault’s ‘Erratics & Unconformities’ provides the perfect background to this. Lengthy chilly tracks that will forever remind me of venturing out of the house to walk deserted London street.
Finally, despite the current looming Christmas clusterfuck and the shadow of Brexit, 2020 feels like it’s closing on something of a more positive note - Lockdown II might be working and hopefully there’s a vaccine just around the corner. Therefore, I’m closing with an album that is goofy and fun and weird and a reminder that hopefully regular life might be coming in 2021, Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘Magic’.
If nothing else, there’s been some great music in 2020…
