{"id":1253300,"date":"2020-12-15T16:24:30","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T13:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1253300"},"modified":"2020-12-15T16:24:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T13:24:30","slug":"the-35-best-rock-albums-of-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1253300","title":{"rendered":"The 35 Best Rock Albums of 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lists & Guides<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The 35 Best Rock Albums of 2020<\/h1>\n
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From Chubby and the Gang\u2019s debut to Bob Dylan\u2019s comeback, Bartees Strange\u2019s genre-bending to Country Westerns\u2019 classicism, these were the rock albums we loved most this year.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Pitchfork<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Yves Tumor, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, Haim, and Bartees Strange (photo by Julia Leiby). Graphic by Drew Litowitz, photos via Getty Images.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Rock, in its purest form, is predicated on a group of people gathered in a room. There\u2019s no doubt it has suffered in the era of coronavirus. But bands persevered. Artists like Soccer Mommy and Porridge Radio expressed a distinctly 2020 sense of isolation in prescient albums recorded before the pandemic, while raging punk bands like Dogleg and Soul Glo summoned the catharsis we all hope to feel when we can attend live shows again. These are the best rock albums of 2020. The entries are listed in alphabetical order, and include several releases that also appear in our overall list of the year\u2019s best albums.<\/p>\n

Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.<\/p>\n

Check out all of Pitchfork\u2019s 2020 wrap-up coverage here.<\/p>\n

(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Memory Music<\/p>\n

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Bartees Strange: Live Forever<\/em><\/h2>\n

\u201cGenres keep us in our boxes,\u201d Bartees Strange sing-raps on \u201cMossblerd,\u201d a song that sounds like it\u2019s falling apart even as he\u2019s putting it together. No artist wants to be pigeonholed, but for Strange this resistance is crucial to the art he makes as a Black man working in a field most associated with white dudes. On his first album, Live Forever,<\/em> there\u2019s a righteous defiance to the way the D.C.-via-Oklahoma artist scrambles 2000s indie rock (the intimacy of Bon Iver, the bombast of the Arcade Fire) with hip-hop cadences, emo intensity, and punk catharsis, as though he\u2019s working it all out in real time. His deep familiarity with each of those touchstones\u2014he prefaced Live Forever<\/em> with an EP of National covers\u2014allows him to explode them from within and rethink not just how but if<\/em> they speak for him. It makes for a complex and personal statement about the nature and worth of Black creativity and labor. \u2013Stephen M. Deusner<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Whatever\u2019s Clever<\/p>\n

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Ben Seretan: Youth Pastoral<\/em><\/h2>\n

The opening track of Ben Seretan\u2019s Youth Pastoral<\/em> builds from a gentle flutter of flutes and fingerpicked guitar into increasingly knotty layers, bursting with exuberance as Seretan sings about feeling \u201cfree to be.\u201d In the eight songs that follow, the New York-via-California singer-songwriter reckons with the Christian faith of his childhood and the growing pains of leaving the church. Powered by driving guitars and softened by droning winds and synths, the tender Youth Pastoral<\/em> reckons with a question that requires no churchgoing history of your own to understand: how to find meaning amid a tumultuous life on earth. \u2013Allison Hussey<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways<\/em><\/h2>\n

If nothing else, Bob Dylan\u2019s 39th studio album should forever put to rest the idea that the storied songwriter is losing his voice. On his first collection of original material in eight years, he sounds unusually attuned to the suggestive power of his craggy instrument, using small changes of inflection to convey wry self-mockery, roaring prowess, and a certain uneasy nostalgia. Rough and Rowdy Ways<\/em> can be approximately divided into two types of song: the ballads, which nearly evaporate as you listen, and the more conventionally rocking blues-based numbers. It is a testament to Dylan\u2019s spectral presence as a singer, and the sympathy of his accompanists, that the uptempo tunes often seem as misty and elusive as the slow ones.<\/p>\n

As ever with late-period Dylan albums, death lurks in every corner: as a prompt for bloody, Frankenstein-ish experiments in \u201cMy Own Version of You,\u201d a red river to be traversed in \u201cCrossing the Rubicon,\u201d a body who shares his bed in \u201cI Contain Multitudes,\u201d a nameless rival in \u201cBlack Rider.\u201d The gravity of Dylan\u2019s voice and the clarity of his vision allow him to address these wraiths as an equal, one with intimate knowledge of the darkness they inhabit. One minute, he is at peace, nearly succumbing to whatever comes next; the next, he is spoiling for a fight, ready to wrestle death to the mat one last time. \u201cYou girls mean business,\u201d he bellows to two \u201cfleet-footed guides from the underworld\u201d on the swaggering \u201cFalse Prophet.\u201d \u201cAnd I do too.\u201d \u2013Andy Cush<\/p>\n

Further Reading: The Endurance of Bob Dylan\u2019s Rough and Rowdy Ways<\/em><\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Bruce Springsteen: Letter to You<\/em><\/h2>\n

Mixing gritty rock with high drama, in arrangements packed with organ, guitar, and soaring tenor sax, Letter to You<\/em> feels more like a classic-era E Street Band record than anything Bruce Springsteen has released in at least a decade. He basks in the band\u2019s jubilant orchestrations, but also uses them toward more complicated ends. \u201cLast Man Standing\u201d describes a musician packing up his instrument alone onstage at the end of the night, a poignant metaphor for the twilight of a performer\u2019s career. \u201cRainmaker,\u201d a resurrected anthem about a leader whose charismatic deceptions win over a desperate populace, somehow predates the Trump administration\u2014a reminder that our stormy era is not an aberration, but a culmination. Not every song is so topical, but all are similarly burdened by history. Letter to You<\/em>\u2019s familiar sound dovetails elegantly with its subject matter, in which every present moment carries the full weight of the past. \u2013Andy Cush<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Static Shock \/ Partisan<\/p>\n

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Chubby and the Gang: Speed Kills<\/em><\/h2>\n

London punks Chubby and the Gang present themselves as a cartoonish version of an actual gang, replete with not one but two theme songs. On their debut Speed Kills,<\/em> they are unreformable carjackers, turnstile jumpers, switchblade wielders, and speed addicts, who get locked up, get out a few years later, and get back to stealing stuff. The music expresses the joy of wildness, with fast and burly songs set off by handclaps and harmonica solos. In a year when the president and his supporters blew the \u201claw and order\u201d dog whistle incessantly, it was a welcome escape to enter the Gang\u2019s world, where chaos is gospel and petty crime is just fun in the sun. \u2013Evan Minsker<\/p>\n

Further Listening: Staff Picks: The Year in Rock and Rap<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify<\/p>\n

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Fat Possum<\/p>\n

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Country Westerns: Country Westerns<\/em><\/h2>\n

Debut albums rarely come as worn-in and weathered as Country Westerns<\/em>. The Nashville trio consists of guitarist (and bar owner) Joel Plunkett, Silver Jews drummer (and Trash Humpers<\/em> actor) Brian Kotzur, and bassist Sabrina Rush, who also plays violin in the Midwest alt-country group State Champion. They\u2019d been playing together informally for awhile, and they decided to make an album only after some encouragement from the late David Berman, who\u2019d witnessed Plunkett and Kotzur\u2019s earliest practices as a duo. Along with producer Matt Sweeney, the band made Country Westerns<\/em> with no filler, packing every song with twangy riffs and shout-along hooks. You can practically smell the sweat and beer from the crowd. \u2013Sam Sodomsky<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Dehd: Flower of Devotion<\/em><\/h2>\n

In 2019, Chicago indie rock trio Dehd released the sparse and scrappy album Water<\/em>, with songs informed by the romantic breakup of bassist Emily Kempf and guitarist Jason Balla, accompanied by Eric McGrady\u2019s one-tom, one-snare minimalism. For their exquisite follow-up Flower of Devotion<\/em>, Dehd upgraded to a proper studio, refining their gritty alchemy without scrubbing it too clean. Kempf and Balla trade yearning, hiccupy vocals across riffs that reverberate like heat waves off asphalt, as McGrady thuds away through the humid air. \u201cIf this is all that we get, so be it,\u201d Kempf insists, a bit of wistful resignation that doubles as a mission statement for their proudly stripped-down approach. \u2013Marc Hogan<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Chicago Indie Rockers Dehd Tackle Life\u2019s Cosmic Joke With Unpretentious Charm<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Deradoorian: Find the Sun<\/em><\/h2>\n

After zoning in on starry ambience and minimalism on 2017\u2019s Eternal Recurrence<\/em>, Angel Deradoorian returns to polyglot psych rock on Find the Sun<\/em>. From the motorik chug of \u201cSaturnine Night\u201d to the suave flute-led jazz pop of \u201cDevil\u2019s Market,\u201d she renders familiar sounds with such style, character, and attention to detail that you might as well be hearing them for the first time. Deradoorian is quietly self-possessed, nearly beatific, in her movements through these environs, distinguishing herself with a rare quality among her psychedelic cohort: restraint. \u2013Andy Cush<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Dogleg: Melee<\/em><\/h2>\n

A band\u2019s impact shouldn\u2019t be hypothetical, but here\u2019s Dogleg, the debutants of Michigan emo, whose breakout year mostly took place in the imagination. Singer-songwriter Alex Stoitsiadis was supposed to be hollering his hooks over melodic post-hardcore guitars in roiling 250-cap clubs, and the scenes of heartbreak he described were supposed to be playing out for listeners in real life. The fact that Melee<\/em> conjures a year so different from the one we got is part of why it leaves such a mark: The histrionics of emo aren\u2019t just dramatic, they\u2019re now science fiction. We\u2019re left to sit alone and imagine what these songs should<\/em> be doing. You air-drum the little hitch in \u201cFox\u201d again and again across your steering wheel; you throw your chest forward in your home-office at all the perfectly executed half-time breakdowns; you do isometric lunges while Stoitsiadis sings about disintegrating. The old world that Dogleg wrote about sucks in its own way, but it\u2019s the world they deserve. \u2013Jeremy D. Larson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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H.C. McEntire: Eno Axis<\/em><\/h2>\n

The second album of soulful Americana from North Carolina songwriter H.C. McEntire begins with an early morning prayer and ends with a slow-burn Led Zeppelin cover. In between, the Mount Moriah vocalist gives a breakthrough performance as a bandleader, using her searing voice and imagistic songwriting to set a dusky, autumnal mood. McEntire began working on the album after touring as a member of Angel Olsen\u2019s band for two years, and her time on the road is audible in these electric, live-sounding performances. As she sings in the rousing chorus of \u201cFinal Bow\u201d: \u201cIt\u2019s as real, real, real as it gets.\u201d \u2013Sam Sodomsky<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Haim: Women in Music Pt. III<\/em><\/h2>\n

Three songs into Haim\u2019s sharpest album yet, Danielle is behind the wheel in her beloved Los Angeles with a Joni Mitchell classic on the stereo, \u201cscreaming every word to \u2018Both Sides Now.\u2019\u201d How lost must one feel to shout \u201cI really don\u2019t know life at all\u201d alone in the car first thing in the morning? That\u2019s the precise kind of biting honesty that Alana, Este, and Danielle brilliantly amplify on Women in Music Pt. III<\/em>. Writing with more personality and candor than ever about a range of difficult themes\u2014depression, loss, misogyny, the complications of loving on one\u2019s own terms\u2014they\u2019ve also loosened their taut pop rock just enough to breathe more life into it, incorporating the \u201890s Lilith rock of Sheryl Crow, the blue-skied strums of Wilco, and a groovy Lou Reed interpolation. Through it all, clearer-than-ever proof emerges not just of a great band in stride, but a cultural fact: women continue making the most vital rock music now. The most revelatory sound Haim make room for on Women in Music Pt. III<\/em> is themselves. \u2013Jenn Pelly<\/p>\n

Further Listening: RIYL: Haim\u2019s Women in Music Pt. III<\/em><\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Jeff Rosenstock: NO DREAM<\/em><\/h2>\n

Jeff Rosenstock\u2019s NO DREAM<\/em> is littered with the mundane, the dirty undesired bits of life that aren\u2019t usually preserved in song. Moldy laundry, \u201cweird chips,\u201d and straight-up garbage line the former Bomb the Music Industry! leader\u2019s latest solo album, a collection of pure pop melodies smuggled into strident, feisty punk songs. Rosenstock surveys the debris, which doesn\u2019t add up to much. But he\u2019s anything but dreary in his delivery, using loud guitars, louder drums, and his own brash and unwieldy voice to set scenes of filthy rental cars and beer-can pyramids. Somewhere in these melodic tantrums, drudgery becomes liberation. \u2013Madison Bloom<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Staff Picks: The Year in Rock and Rap<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Lomelda: Hannah<\/em><\/h2>\n

Hannah Read can make a melody out of anything. Throughout Hannah<\/em>, her fifth album as Lomelda, her expressive warble blooms and shrinks into strange and beautiful phrasings, heightening their meaning. On the slow-burning \u201cIt\u2019s Lomelda,\u201d she croons off a list of her musical heroes and their work, from Yo La Tengo to Frank Ocean to Sufjan Stevens\u2019 devastatingly spare \u201cThe Only Thing.\u201d She turns a conversational bit of advice into a soaring mantra on \u201cWonder,\u201d repeating the phrase \u201cWhen you get it, give it all you got, you said\u201d across vocal peaks and valleys. She sings like no one else in indie rock, as though she is guided by a golden energy from within. \u2013Jillian Mapes<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Lomelda\u2019s Hannah Read Is Forever Searching for Connection<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Lucinda Williams: Good Souls Better Angels<\/em><\/h2>\n

Lucinda Williams drew on a new but all-too-familiar well of inspiration for her 14th studio album: the anger and frustration she felt over the poisonous turn of recent American politics. Her songwriting may be more openly topical than usual, but her sound hasn\u2019t changed much. She maintains her unmatched knack for ferocious marriages of country and rock, swooping from the snarls of \u201cWakin\u2019 Up\u201d and \u201cMan Without a Soul\u201d to the weary last-call shuffles of \u201cGood Souls\u201d and \u201cShadows and Doubts.\u201d Alongside her fury for oppressors, Williams offers comfort and solidarity to the dispossessed, with a set of tunes that break your heart only to glue it back together again. \u2013Allison Hussey<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Lucinda Williams on the Music That Made Her<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Magik Markers: 2020<\/em><\/h2>\n

Magik Markers distinguished themselves in the early 2000s with unfettered noise jams and a merch table so teeming with CD-Rs, tapes, and LPs as to render the idea of a coherent discography faintly obsolete. The New England trio led by singer\/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio has slowed down and tightened up considerably as of late. Their first album in seven years is their most finely honed, though it is still rumpled in all the right places. With creaking Crazy Horse guitar solos, basement-Sabbath sludge, and A Thousand Leaves<\/em>-rustling mysticism, 2020<\/em> finds clarity in controlled chaos, an eye in the year\u2019s hurricane. \u2013Marc Hogan<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Staff Picks: The Year in Rock and Rap<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Melkbelly: PITH<\/em><\/h2>\n

On PITH<\/em>, Melkbelly\u2019s second full-length, the Chicago foursome refine their knotty but melodic noise rock. Singer-guitarist Miranda Winters calls out from murky depths, conjuring memories of loss, anxiety, frustration, and occasional bliss. On standout track \u201cTHC,\u201d the band slowly cranks up the tension until it erupts into an onslaught of guitar fuzz. Melkbelly rarely stays in one place for long, whiplashing from one fractured groove to the next, always finding new ways to shift from quiet to explosive. \u2013Quinn Moreland<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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No Home: Fucking Hell<\/em><\/h2>\n

Like the modern conditions it reflects, No Home\u2019s music holds unavoidable ugliness: Each song is an anxious, staticky shudder. Charlie Valentine, who operates No Home as a one-person band, can sing powerfully, as on \u201cExile,\u201d but more often their voice is unpolished, punctuated by low moans or painful stabs of feedback. \u201cAnxiety\u2026 anxiety\u2026 post-graduate anxiety,\u201d they chant on \u201cA B- in This Economy,\u201d a wry accounting of the stress and poverty of student life. And then: \u201cYou don\u2019t get this persona for free.\u201d Fucking Hell<\/em> plays with the distorted abstraction of no wave, the destabilizing aggression of Suicide, the deadpan howl of Kim Gordon. But the album isn\u2019t just a grievance. As Valentine describes it, it\u2019s also darkly funny: a catalog of irrepressible humanity, surviving and thumbing its nose in the face of cultural judgement and capitalist enforcement. \u2013Anna Gaca<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify<\/p>\n

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Ohmme: Fantasize Your Ghost<\/em><\/h2>\n

With their 2018 debut Parts<\/em>, Ohmme introduced a combustive art-rock style based on tightly intertwined dual vocals and improvisatory guitars, wringing sing-song catchiness from baroque complexity. On Fantasize Your Ghost<\/em>, the Chicago band further explores this craggy terrain, with detours into noisenik squalls, Krautrock grooves, and chamber-pop delicacy. Core duo Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham (who has worked for the company that produces Pitchfork Music Festival) are most impressive in their sharp-tongued songcraft, whether confronting a distant partner or conjuring up a childhood reverie that juxtaposes hot lava and hot dogs\u2014unsettlingly delectable. \u2013Marc Hogan<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Phoebe Bridgers: Punisher<\/em><\/h2>\n

Phoebe Bridgers will tweet about eating ass with one hand and crush your heart with the other. The droll, phantom-like singer writes music for faithless burnouts who still want to believe: lost souls clinging to astrology and fucked-up intimacy, striving to get by in a brutal universe with no pre-ordained meaning. Death and apocalypse lurk in every corner of Punisher<\/em>\u2014lightning flashes, sirens wail, a Giants fan gets killed at Dodger Stadium\u2014and Bridgers shuffles through this ominous fog, still alive, still growing taller. The wintry decay that initially clouds the album disintegrates on \u201cGarden Song,\u201d where the arrangement blooms and burbles, thumping steadily, like a walk home in crisp evening air. For each tart complaint (\u201cI hate your mom\u201d) or fatalist disclosure (\u201cI\u2019ve been playing dead my whole life\u201d) is a glimmering prophecy that one day things might be just fine, even if that day comes at the very end of civilization. \u2013Cat Zhang<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Phoebe Bridgers on the 10 Things That Influenced Punisher<\/em><\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Porridge Radio: Every Bad<\/em><\/h2>\n

On Every Bad<\/em>, Brighton indie rock four-piece Porridge Radio make a strong case for curative self-scrutiny. Lead vocalist and songwriter Dana Margolin is incisive in her observations, and she often points them inward. Over airy guitars on the somber \u201cPop Song,\u201d she exposes her least flattering attributes: a rotten core, a bitter disposition. But instead of corroding Margolin further, this music uplifts her, more like an exorcism of destructive thoughts than a platform for them. Her howled words and the music\u2019s occasionally sharp edges are both caustic and restorative forces. \u2013Madison Bloom<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Porridge Radio Make Indie Rock for the Angsty Antisocial in All of Us<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Se So Neon: Nonadaptation<\/em><\/h2>\n

Before Se So Neon settled on Nonadaptation<\/em> as the English title of its second EP (\ube44\uc801\uc751 in the original Korean), frontwoman Hwang So-yoon referred to it as Maladaptive.<\/em> Getting to the precise meaning in English, she explained in an interview, required \u201csome Korean etymology stuff\u201d: \u201cThere are two different ways to say [\u2018Maladaptive\u2019] in Korean. One refers to a condition where someone or something has failed, or someone is having trouble adjusting to something. But the Korean title of this album means that you’re sort of unwilling<\/em> to adjust.\u201d In a music industry dominated by world-conquering pop empires like BTS and BLACKPINK, Hwang\u2019s guitar-based songwriting is as radical as the title implies. Alongside a new backing band, after losing the other original members to mandatory military service, she questions a young, freethinking artist\u2019s place in a society that expects deference and decorum. With an androgynous voice that shifts to suit her mood, Hwang effortlessly drifts from mid-2000s O.C.-core power pop to cocktail-lounge R&B, but seems most at home crooning atop her stratocaster\u2019s airy twang, drenched in reverb. \u2013Matthew Ismael Ruiz<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Shamir: Shamir<\/em><\/h2>\n

Since his dance-pop breakthrough in 2015, Shamir has been finding his own way forward, with a series of skewed and often lo-fi indie rock albums that defy received ideas about a linear path from one release to the next. The Philly-based artist\u2019s self-titled seventh album is a culmination of sorts, bundling together every divergent thread he\u2019s followed over the last five years, from synthpop to country-tinged balladry, with bright and welcoming sonics. What stands out is Shamir\u2019s commitment to his own vision, no matter the shape. Standout track \u201cOn My Own\u201d is a huge, glittery anthem, and one of the most immediate songs in his catalog. \u201cI feel it in my bones,\u201d he proclaims. \u201cInside myself is where I belong.\u201d \u2013Quinn Moreland<\/p>\n

Further Reading: What It\u2019s Like to Be Black in Indie Music<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Shopping: All or Nothing<\/em><\/h2>\n

Shopping crafts dancefloor bops that make railing against consumerist capitalism sound like fun. The U.K. post-punk trio\u2019s latest LP updates their DIY aesthetic, filling some of the negative space they\u2019ve so expertly wielded in the past with pulsing electronics. Album centerpiece \u201cFor Your Pleasure\u201d is a treatise on hedonism set to retrofuturist synthesizers and artificial handclaps; perhaps too frantic for the \u201970s discotechques Shopping has conjured in the past, it would sound right at home in the cocaine \u201980s. It resembles no other Shopping song before it, raising the ceiling for a promising band with plenty left to say. \u2013Matthew Ismael Ruiz<\/p>\n

Further Reading: What It\u2019s Like to Be Black in Indie Music<\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Soakie: Soakie<\/em><\/h2>\n

Soakie\u2019s members hail from Melbourne and New York City, and the opening song on their debut album is an international summit calling for frats to be nuked. Over a buzzsaw guitar, mononymous vocalist Summer screams through her disgust for entitled dudes with backward hats and hair gel. The punk quartet mocks capitalism and the patriarchy across this 13-minute self-titled release, each brief song its own fierce declaration of autonomy. \u201cI don\u2019t owe you<\/em> or you<\/em> or you<\/em>,\u201d Summer growls at one point. It\u2019s furious music that dares you to feel the same way, and unleash a few screams\u2014or bombs\u2014of your own. \u2013Evan Minsker<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify<\/p>\n

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Soccer Mommy: color theory<\/em><\/h2>\n

Sophie Allison paints with the shades of a bruise on color theory<\/em>. Her mother\u2019s terminal illness and her own struggles with depression appear in a wintry synesthesia of yellow, blue, and gray. Much like Sufjan Stevens in the songs of Carrie & Lowell<\/em>, Allison ventures into the tundra of her despair and emerges with an unsparing and unsentimental account of survival. She buoys her bleak lyrics with the bright melodies and buzzing guitars that soundtracked Beavis and Butt-Head\u2019s bickering on MTV in the \u201990s. These instrumentals lend a \u201csense of comic relief,\u201d Allison says, \u201clike when you joke with your friend about your unhealthy habits.\u201d In a year when hundreds of thousands of Americans perished, we needed friends desperately\u2014someone to make us laugh, and someone to sit with us at shiva. With this intimate hospice of a record, Allison gave us both. \u2013Peyton Thomas<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Soccer Mommy Breaks Down Every Track on color theory<\/em><\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Soul Glo: Songs to Yeet at the Sun<\/em><\/h2>\n

Soul Glo makes punk music with real stakes and a palpable sense of danger. But the Philadelphia hardcore band is hardly self-serious: they can be loose, irreverent, and downright funny. Songs to Yeet at the Sun<\/em> brings all these qualities into focus in the space of an EP, packing an album\u2019s worth of twists into 12 searing minutes. They make frequent diversions from their fast and chaotic signature sound, including the noise-rap sex jam \u201c2K,\u201d which arrives unexpectedly in the middle of the EP. Pierce Jordan\u2019s screamed vocals are often nearly unintelligible, but the lyric sheet reveals incisive observations about money, power, and race in America. Songs to Yeet at the Sun<\/em> loudly announces the arrival of a band whose perspective feels like an overdue corrective to punk\u2019s overwhelming whiteness. \u2013Mehan Jayasuriya<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify<\/p>\n

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Special Interest: The Passion Of<\/em><\/h2>\n

New Orleans electro-punks Special Interest see catharsis in demolition. Frontperson Alli Logout\u2019s jagged vocals dissect poverty, love, and commodified dissent, making The Passion Of<\/em> the rare contemporary punk album that is actually as revolutionary as it sets out to be. For all of the record\u2019s industrial squall and techno blast beats, it doesn\u2019t just inspire destruction\u2014it asks what you\u2019ll rebuild from the rubble. \u2013Madison Bloom<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Stephen Malkmus: Traditional Techniques<\/em><\/h2>\n

From \u201cGold Soundz\u201d-era Pavement to his last two decades solo and with the Jicks, Stephen Malkmus has written songs like jokes you laugh at before you\u2019re sure you get them\u2014sometimes before you\u2019re even sure they\u2019re jokes. Traditional Techniques<\/em>, a lush folk-rock album with a title that winks at Adorno, offers a new angle on his semi-inscrutable charm. After 2018\u2019s surprisingly zeitgeist-y Sparkle Hard<\/em> and last year\u2019s synthwave lark Groove Denied<\/em>, Malkmus luxuriates in gorgeously recorded 12-string acoustic guitar, pedal steel, and non-Western instruments like the Afghani rabab and Nigerian udu\u2014only to deadpan about online conspiracy nuts or stack up non-sequiturs about modern religion. When he does allow himself some of the stereotypical earnestness of the folk-singer mode, on the moving and tender \u201cWhat Kind of Person,\u201d it\u2019s with the deft misdirection of a veteran magician. \u2013Marc Hogan<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Tame Impala: The Slow Rush<\/em><\/h2>\n

Ironically, Kevin Parker became one of today\u2019s most influential rock stars by sidelining the scruffy guitar riffs of early Tame Impala records. Since 2015\u2019s modern classic Currents<\/em>, he\u2019s favored a sound led by lush synth chords, hooky basslines, and danceable grooves. Fourth album The Slow Rush<\/em> pushes the approach even further, towards canons previously unexplored. From the choppy vocoder of \u201cOne More Year\u201d to the loping soft rock of \u201cBorderline,\u201d Parker allows myriad influences to flow through his songwriting: house, boogie, yacht rock, R&B. Within a genre now largely built upon sustained engagement with the past, Parker\u2019s one-man project continues to expand what a \u201crock band\u201d can be or do in the modern age. \u2013Noah Yoo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Touch\u00e9 Amor\u00e9: Lament<\/em><\/h2>\n

Touch\u00e9 Amor\u00e9 crafted one of the year\u2019s best punk records using unusual tools, like pedal steel guitar, and riffs that may seem more suited to post-rock. But there\u2019s something undeniably hardcore<\/em> about the energy, earnestness, and intensity with which Lament<\/em> comes roaring out of your speakers. After a decade as one of the most revered bands in their genre, the L.A. group recorded Lament<\/em> with heavy music legend Ross Robinson and an abundance of songwriting ambition. The results are consistently stunning, from the barn-burning opener \u201cCome Heroine,\u201d to the masterful heel-turn of \u201cLimelight,\u201d which lands somewhere between a Cranberries anthem and a campfire sing-along. Like all of Touch\u00e9 Amor\u00e9\u2019s best work, Lament<\/em> has a therapeutic quality, sublimating even the knottiest emotions into glorious catharsis. \u2013Mehan Jayasuriya<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Trace Mountains: Lost in the Country<\/em><\/h2>\n

There is no greater proof of the universe\u2019s cruelty than embarking on a long, clarifying hike, then receiving an email about a 20%-off sale at Macys to interrupt your peace of mind. Wi-Fi is the skulking antagonist of Lost in the Country,<\/em> Dave Benton\u2019s second full-length album of rangy indie rock as Trace Mountains; the former LVL UP singer looks down onto miles of forest and briefly grasps the world as \u201conly violence and smartphones.\u201d Benton sings with his hands in his pockets, musing folksily on black rivers and black dogs. His observations are modest and sweet (\u201cjust sing your silly song\u201d), just enough to nudge you away from doomscrolling. \u2013Cat Zhang<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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U.S. Girls: Heavy Light<\/em><\/h2>\n

From the opening disco swagger of \u201c4 American Dollars,\u201d U.S. Girls\u2019 Heavy Light<\/em> crackles with kinetic energy. Songwriter and bandleader Meg Remy reckons with alienation and injustice, drawing on a palette of pop, rock, and experimental sounds to convey the anxiety of the era. Poignant collages of interviews split the album into sections; the speakers\u2019 recollections of hurtful memories and childhood bedrooms suffuse the music with empathy. Heavy Light<\/em> is filled with existential dread, but it aspires to a gentler world, one where the burden of being isn\u2019t so leaden. \u2013Allison Hussey<\/p>\n

Further Reading: U.S. Girls on the Absurdist Meme, Anti-Colonial History, and Soul Records That Inspired Heavy Light<\/em><\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud<\/em><\/h2>\n

From her early punk recordings alongside sister Allison to her quietly devastating solo albums, Katie Crutchfield is always steadfast in her truth. With Saint Cloud<\/em>, Crutchfield\u2019s fifth album as Waxahatchee, she climbs to solid ground, emerging from the storm self-assured. The album reflects her newfound ease, all big skies, wide open spaces, and Americana twang. It\u2019s both the country album she was destined to make and an acknowledgment that self-acceptance is hard-won; Saint Cloud<\/em> reckons with addiction, sobriety, imperfect romance, trauma, and trying to navigate it all. Now, Crutchfield gazes into the mirror and doesn\u2019t shy away from the reflection. \u201cI have a gift, I\u2019ve been told, for seeing what\u2019s there,\u201d she sings on \u201cThe Eye,\u201d and her perspective has never sounded so clear. \u2013Quinn Moreland<\/p>\n

Further Reading: Waxahatchee Breaks Down Every Song on Saint Cloud<\/em><\/div>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Yves Jarvis: Sundry Rock Song Stock<\/em><\/h2>\n

Jean-Sebastian Audet understands that drifting is sometimes the best way forward. Since scratching out rickety post-punk on his 2015 debut Tenet<\/em> (released as Un Blonde, a previous alias), the Montreal-based singer-songwriter and producer has eased toward fluid, soul-inflected folk\u2014like if Toro y Moi produced early Iron and Wine. Sundry Rock Song Stock<\/em>, either the second or third album under the Yves Jarvis name (it\u2019s complicated), is also the project\u2019s first set of 10 conventional-length tracks. With shifting layers of don\u2019t-wake-the-baby vocals over glinting acoustic guitar and honeyed Rhodes, these are ambling tone poems, their free-flowing wordplay and intermittent societal commentary more about evoking feelings than drawing conclusions. \u201cHardly linear like narratives read,\u201d Audet sings. This year, it felt like a serenity prayer. \u2013Marc Hogan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Yves Tumor: Heaven to a Tortured Mind<\/em><\/h2>\n

If 2018\u2019s soul-affirming Safe in the Hands of Love<\/em> established Yves Tumor as a preeminent experimentalist, then the pleasure-seeking and approachable Heaven to a Tortured Mind<\/em> is the sound of them strutting into the role of a rock god. On their fourth album, Tumor is smoldering and romantic, expressing their appetite through squalling guitar solos, slinky basslines, and an ensemble of guest singers who match their lusty fervor beat for beat. Heaven<\/em> flirts with familiar rock motifs as often as it subverts them, morphing into something unrecognizable. Traditional structures melt into long vamps, as on the tormented psychedelic ballad \u201cKerosene!,\u201d which distills the album\u2019s beguiling agony. Led by a keening riff lifted from Uriah Heep\u2019s \u201cWeep in Silence,\u201d Tumor and singer-songwriter Diana Gordon supplicate to a lover over walls of electric guitar and pummeling drums. Gordon\u2019s howls are hell-bent and infatuated, with Tumor\u2019s raspy pleas pushing them both closer to the edge of oblivion. Heaven to a Tortured Mind<\/em> balances listeners on that knife point, declaring Tumor\u2019s rock-star bona fides with roguish style. \u2013Eric Torres<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/features\/lists-and-guides\/best-rock-albums-2020\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lists & Guides The 35 Best Rock Albums of 2020 From Chubby and the Gang\u2019s debut to Bob Dylan\u2019s comeback, Bartees Strange\u2019s genre-bending to Country Westerns\u2019 classicism, these were the rock albums we loved most this year. By Pitchfork December 15, 2020 Yves Tumor, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, Haim, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1253300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1253300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1253300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1253300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1253300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}