2020 – Music in review

By Francelino de Azevedo

I am back to my tradition of writing about my to-listen lists from the previous year. Last year, I actually listened to a full list of 168 music releases from 2019, but in the midst of the pandemic, I didn’t have the will to write an overview of what I found. This year I managed to muster the strength to write this article. I have listened to 175 records released in 2020, the greatest amount so far, and this is what I think about them.

2020 was a year marked by the pandemic and its respective quarantine, a year of great isolation. One record that was notable for capturing this feeling was Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters. The international critical consensus is that it was the album of the year, and it indeed is a great emotional journey that, despite not having been written about the pandemic, seems to have “married” extremely well with the zeitgeist. I tend to listen to records the year after they came out, however, so the record that really marked my period of greatest isolation was from the 2019 list, God Is Not a Terrorist by Ustad Naseeruddin Saami, and we’ll return to him later. Another singer-songwriter critical darling was Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers, a beautiful, personal and talkative album, I could see why many loved it, although for me it was nothing past “good”. Popstar Taylor Swift also released two albums in this quieter, more personal style, perhaps trying to emulate the success of 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell, but both were pretty weak.

The female popstar figure was rather present in last year’s best records lists, often bringing a dance-pop sound. The worst of the batch was Sawayama, by Japanese-English Rina Sawayama, who made the horrible decision to rescue the early 00s pop sound of artists like Britney Spears and Max Martin, and I have no idea why. Modern dance-pop production is very good, which is the strong point of records like Róisín Machine by Róisín Murphy, How I’m Feeling Now by Charli XCX and *What’s Your Pleasure? * by Jessie Ware. All three of these slip up, however, by having low energy in general. My favourite of this style turned out to be Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, competent and with beautiful choruses. Grimes’ new record, Miss Anthropocene, still has some elements of what made her music very good, but it’s very aimless. Another one that lost a lot was Kali Uchis, her Sin miedo (del amor y otros demonios) ∞, which more closely resembles the bland but atmospheric sound of artists like Kelela than her great Isolation. A different Colombian woman released a better work, Lido Pimienta and her Miss Colombia brought a rich sound that vaguely reminds me of Björk, the single Nada was particularly good.

Among Brazilian records, the most critically acclaimed was Bom mesmo é estar debaixo d’água by Luedji Luna. It is MPB with jazzy leanings a la Djavan that sometimes loses the thread of the melody but never the thread of the lyrics. Luedji herself has an amazingly open and emotional vocal delivery that carries the album. A bit similar, but leaning more towards bossa nova is Ilessi’s Dama de espadas, which is very good on the more upbeat tracks, but extremely boring when doing pure bossa. Mateus Aleluia has in Olorum an evolution of the sound of his Fogueira doce; my biggest criticism of his previous record was the excessive lightness, remedied with intensity aplenty. Zé Manoel made poetic piano-based MPB in his Do meu coração nu. The sentiments may be stronger than the melodies, but those are still beautiful, especially the collaboration with Grupo Bongar in No rio das lembranças, one of the best songs of the year. Two members of Metá Metá, one of my favourite groups, released solo albums in 2020: Thiago França messes with buzzing saxes in Kd vcs, but the highlight is Rastilho by Kiko Dinucci. It’s a beautiful guitar recital, playing with textures and melodies. The melodies are catchy, it’s a great listening experience, but it lacks something more emotionally impactful to be compared to the best records of his career.

My all-time favourite musician, Paul McCartney, released McCartney III, the sequel to II from 1980. Like the previous McCartney self-titled albums, it is more charming and creative than brilliant, but it certainly fits well into his discography with its pop-folk-eclectic sound. Not bad for a man who is almost in his 80s. To put an end to this cloddish idea that musicians lose something with old age, the Sparks brothers Ron (75) and Russell (72) are as creative and energetic on A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip as they were on their classic records of the 70s. On the first few listens, I dismissed Para la espera as just Silvio Rodríguez on autopilot. But the truth is that Silvio, whether on autopilot or not, always brings a show of humanity and emotion in his vocal delivery, in simple but effective melodies. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a very Bob Dylan Bob Dylan record. 6-minute songs repeating the same melodic stanza, with different lyrics, with the focus being on how those lyrics progress. Not for me. The 17-minute song talking about Kennedy’s life is unbearable!

I also noticed an interesting trend of great MPB legends teaming up with younger notable artists to make an EP. Existe amor unites Milton Nascimento and Criolo, and Gilberto Gil and BaianaSystem launched their Gil Baiana ao vivo em Salvador. Both are good, and interesting, but they don’t say anything new. Baiana’s instrumental strength makes me want an entire solo album of them live however. Gil also recorded a beautiful single with Chico Buarque, Sob pressão, as the theme song to a series about doctors dealing with the pandemic. Mixing celebration and protest, Acorda amor brings a selection of good to great songs, with good to great new performers, some versions being better than the originals. Onze – Músicas inéditas de Adoniran Barbosa is exactly what it says on the tin, and the songs are all great, as expected from Adoniran, but the interpreters are not always the most adequate. Who had the idiotic idea to invite the soporific Rubel??

Compilations of more obscure Latin American genres abounded. The weakest was Guasá, cununo y marimba, which brings the currulao genre from the Colombian Pacific coast, nice, but I’ve heard better examples of this genre. Color de trópico compiles Venezuelan music from the 60s and 70s, it is mostly instrumental and, despite being very jazz-oriented, rousing. La locura de Machuca 1975-1980 portrays the Colombian underground full of psychedelic cumbias and champetas, and some specific tracks are wonderful. Two other compilations close out my top 10 of the year, so I’ll mention them later. The single artist compilation by Peruvian cumbia group Ranil y su Conjunto Tropical is also very good, with extremely catchy guitar lines. The other Peruvian artist I listened to is of the same quality, but of an extremely different style. Pedro Mo brings in his Urku runa short and solid hip hop with excellent flow, the first two songs are particularly strong.

In Brazilian hip hop, several albums stood out. The most praised was O líder em movimento by Bk’, which to me is incomprehensible! He rhymes “nisso” with “disso”, “doido” with “soco”, his flow is bad, it is honestly the worst I’ve heard this year! Djonga’s Histórias da minha área, on the other hand, did not receive as good a reception as his previous ones, but for me it was a clear evolution, in a search for more pop sounds and less shouting. The same move was taken by Hot & Oreia in their Crianças selvagens; good hooks, weaker flow, but the striking production hides the flaws and maximizes strengths. Excellent samples. Marcelo D2’s Assim tocam os meus tambores is a very collective record, very much of the pandemic, with an atmosphere of “videoconference between friends in social isolation”, which gives it an extra charm. At the same time, the songwriting also seems weaker than his previous Amar é para os fortes. The two best records of this wave escape the RJ-SP axis. From Pará, Pelé do Manifesto’s Gueto flow, preto show has good lyrics with lots of energy, carefully-crafted hooks and the beats, if not extremely original, fulfill their purpose with merits. I loved his usage of guitar samples. Rapadura, from Ceará, took many years to make his Universo do canto falado, which attempts to take a fusional trip of hip hop and countless genres from all over Brazil, cantoria, baião, carimbó, aboio, reggae, etc. It is exactly what I feel the national hip hop scene lacks, and by itself it is a drive to innovate music that I haven’t seen in a while, as lately most people are searching for their individual sound, instead of inventing a new movement that can be built upon by others. For all of this, I hoped to enjoy this record a bit more, to actually have come to love for it, but it fell just a bit short of that, and I shall look forward to Rapadura’s future works to see if they can break this barrier in me.

Internationally, chelmico’s Maze is a very Japanese and chill hip hop with good hooks; the opener Eezy breezy is an immediate classic. In the US, surprisingly few rappers got critical commendation in 2020. I only placed three on my list, all very good old acquaintances. Alfredo, the collaboration between Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist just needed more memorable hooks to level up. clipping.’s Visions of Bodies Being Burned brings back the sound of their previous album, but more perfected. Run the Jewels released RTJ4 but they might as well have called it Ultra Super RTJ1 Turbo: The New Challengers, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I love their sound. A fresher hip hop sound came from England: Pa Salieu’s Send Them to Coventry with its Afroswing-ish production and a lot of strength on the hooks. Even more innovative was the group Onipa, of Ghanaian origin, which mixes Afro-British hip hop with a dozen different genres from all over Africa. The result, We No Be Machine, is a very long record, 1 hour long and 20 tracks, which affected me in different ways. I admire the concept, but overall, I thought the good tracks were diluted among forgettable ones, and it could greatly benefit from more focus.

Africa, which by the way shows itself more and more electronic. Nihiloxica finally released their first LP, Kaloli, with the same nervous percussion as the previous EPs, but now with more atmosphere. Balani fou by DJ Diaki is perhaps the epitome of ultra-high bpm electronic music, highlighted in the brilliant track Show Time Mix. Tunisian artist Ammar 808 seems to have taken a step back. Instead of further refining the electronically modernized North African sound of his previous album, he left for Chennai, South India, inviting exponents of Carnatic music to make a new stew in Global Control / Invisible Invasion. My impression is that he starts too many projects and doesn’t fully finishes them. The self-titled album by South Africans Keleketla! is kind of boring, but contains a really good song, Crystallise featuring rapper Yugen Blackrok. Israeli Kutiman used recordings made in the villages of the Wachaga people of Tanzania, to make the homonymous album, fashioning them into funky songs. Msafiri Zawose, of whom I am a fan, returns on an EP with the Hispanic-British group Penya, named Penya Safari. To me it sounds a lot like a sample from Msafiri’s previous album, Uhamiaji; the same rhythms with textured percussions that produce good stimuli in the brain.

The typically British genre of grime started to get a national Brazilian production. SD9’s 40˚.40 is nothing more than ok, but CESRV, Fleezus & Febem’s Brime! showed more potential, especially the opener Raddim. Another unusual pair was of idiosyncratic “forró” records. I use the quotes because Trio Pó-de-Serra’s Forró abstrato is everything but forró: rather it is improvisation of textures and noises, a waste of time. More interesting was Forrível by Satanique Samba Trio, which combines forró and horror synth, still worth listening more due to the proposal than for the music itself. Inside Brazilian rock, Julico’s Ikê maré seeks to rescue energy of the seventies, with touches of MPB, soul and psychedelia, pleasing from beginning to end. Equally good is Rolê nas ruínas by Mateusfazenorock, quite eclectic, experimenting fusions with funk carioca on As vozes da cabeça, or with reggae in Névoa.

The last Brazilian record that I will mention before my list of favourites is Kaatayra’s Toda história pela frente, a metal album that I surprisingly enjoyed at various moments. The guitar is very atmospheric and interesting, although not enough to justify the whole record; the percussion is impressive, especially at a specific moment on the track Toda mágoa do mundo; and the vocals don’t shit everything up as usual in the genre. Which is the case of Mestarin kynsi by the Finnish group Oranssi Pazuzu, the hilarious voice sounds like a goblin henchman of a cartoon evil sorcerer, complaining that he could not kidnap the enchanted princess. And since we’re talking about trash, I must mention a trio of the year’s worst. Jacob Collier returns in Djesse Vol. 3 with his ultra-complex sound without understanding what makes a song good. It is pitiful how he seems so confident in being “funky”. The 1975’s Notes on a Conditional Form begins with a five-minute speech on climate change and then gets into a Bon Iver-ish vibe. The worst album of the year was The Microphones’ Microphones in 2020: I did my humble review on this work here.

But let’s get back to talking about good stuff, how about moving to Asia? Meni mana by the Tuvan group Alash is competent, but ended up overshadowed by another similar record that is among my favourites. Streaming, CD, Record by Gesu No Kiwami Otome is progressive pop that unfortunately has less energy than their previous Daruma ringo. Ichiko Aoba’s Adan no kaze is a musical painting of ethereal scenery. Sweet but without much substance, like a frosting without a cake below it. Underneath the Dangsan Tree Tonight by Chudahye Chagis is a very creative and innovative album that depends on you enjoying the vocals. I didn’t but I still respect the overall sound. Xuefei Yang’s Sketches of China is a selection of pieces for solo guitar by Chinese composers from the ancient dynasties to modern times. Being very long and similar-sounding, the beautiful melodies end up coming and going without leaving any strong impact. Taiwanese singer Abao theoretically brings in Kinakaian a modernization of the music of the Paiwan indigenous people of Taiwan, but in practice it is more of a modern R&B record. A record that charmed me was RAAZ by the Iranians Hooshyar Khayam and Bamdad Afshar, the first classically educated, the second an adept of electronic music and cinematographic soundtracks. The two teamed up with a group of three singers and two instrumentalists from the Balochistan region, split between Iran and Pakistan and with its own culture and language, and the result manages to be everything at the same time: traditional and modern, erudite and popular, avant-garde and restorative.

This type of mixture was a trend in Europe. Jrpjej’s Qorror reconstructs Circassian music in a different but dark and atmospheric way, although I have much more love for the more traditional dance-centered energy. The Occitan ensemble Cocanha brings in its Puput a polyphony of kaleidoscopic effect with sparse instrumentation that complements it well. Raul Refree, known for having produced Rosalía’s innovative sound, has now tackled fado together with Portuguese singer Carolina, in Lina_Raul Refree. This time the changes are smaller, more in the production and less in the structure of the songs, but everything meshes well. Hostis humani generis by Ye Banished Privateers consists in Swedish singers playing Irish sailors on a concept album with a weak plot but good music. Moving to the more erudite area, Firenze 1350: Un jardin médiéval florentin by the Sollazzo Ensemble under the director Anna Danilevskaia is exactly what the record’s name record says: songs by Italian composers from the 14th century. Beautiful, but they often go in and out of the head without much impact. Tunisian Ghalia Benali and Austrian Romina Lischka made in Call to Prayer a fusion of Arab, European and, in some tracks, Indian classical traditions where instrumental textures and vocal emotions are weaved together in a slow and thoughtful, but never boring, way. Fusions with North Africa set the tone for another two albums, both mixing jazz with Arab, Andalusian and Moroccan gnawa music. Magic Spirit Quartet by Majid Bekkas, Goran Kajfeš, Jesper Nordenstöm & Stefan Pasborg is too slow and jazzy for the gnawa energy to stand out. JISR’s too far away makes a much stronger and more nutritious stew, suprisingly homogeneous and organic.

Gnawa’s homeland also bore a good mix of the genre, this time with rock and blues: they don’t even look like separate genres in Bab L’ Bluz’s Nayda. Blues also features in Tamikrest’s Tamotaït, and I can easily say Ousmane ag Mossa is one of the greatest guitarists of the present time, although the album itself is marred by sameness and loss of strength by the ending. Tidiane Thiam is also a great guitarist, albeit in a completely different style, and his Siftorde consists of acoustic treatises on nostalgia, simple and touching, but with low energy. Still on guitar-based music, we’ve had two good bluesy records from Songhai people: Lindé by Afel Bocoum and Optimisme by Songhoy Blues. Sharhabil Ahmed’s The King of Sudanese Jazz is actually all about rock ‘n’ roll, a compilation of six vigorous tracks from an undated past, Zulum aldunya is specifically wonderful! Malian icon Oumou Sangaré’s Acoustic is a little unnecessary: it brings the same songs from her previous Mogoya with slightly different acoustic arrangements, that are always in my opinion also slightly inferior. The Dancing Devils of Djibouti by Groupe RTD brings together the biggest names in Djibouti making swinging funky music. Tinn tout by Danyel Waro features traditional maloya songs, with good vocal delivery and rhythmic pressure. The songs themselves are large and repetitive, the disc is an hour and thirteen minutes long, and not all tracks maintain the same standard as the best ones. In the world of African jazz, we had To Know Without Knowing, a forgettable collaboration between the Australians Black Jesus Experience and Ethiopian legend Mulatu Astatke. I much preferred the work of the other father of Ethio-jazz, Hailu Mergia, whose Yene mircha tales great care the melodies, with the help of Alemseged Kebede’s wonderful bass that often steals the show. Another show-stealer is Tony Allen’s drumming in his last work, Rejoice, with South African Hugh Masekela. But the best African record of the year for me was Kalan teban by Aly Keïta, Jan Galega Brönnimann & Lucas Niggli. The Malian’s name is not at the front for no reason, because although the two Cameroonians do a good job, it’s his gigantic balafon that dominates the soundscapes here.

To close Latin America, I would like to mention Rita Indiana’s eclectic Mandinga Times, a collection of Caribbean music linked by a thread of anti-capitalist stories. After paying homage to her Musas, Natalia Lafourcade now tackles traditional Mexican music in Un canto por México Vol. 1. Her voice is very beautiful, but I think the repertoire was not very good, it was a bit tacky and low energy, especially compared to the opener, folkloric song El balajú. Someone else who has recorded this same song has returned with a notable single. Chéni (Miedo) is perhaps the best song by La Bruja de Texcoco, and I eagerly await to hear what she has in store in the future. The Panamanian group Señor Loop continues in their guitar rock La leña que prende madera. They don’t reinvent the wheel, but still bring a fresh and new sound, even if it doesn’t have the same high climaxes as the previous Vikorg. Chilean Gepe also doesn’t repeat the same quality of his previous album, Folclor imaginario, in his new Ulyse. It is not the poppier sound to blame, but rather the songwriting itself which, while still good, isn’t on the same level.

My beloved Animal Collective continue in their more ambient sounds in Bridge to Quiet. It’s not exactly my thing, but it’s very good at what it attempts, it doesn’t owe anything to Here Comes the Indian for example. The one who got to reinvent psychedelia was Yves Tumor in his Heaven to a Tortured Mind. It took me a while to enjoy their voice, but I’m already curious to delve into their discography, and Kerosene! is pure fire. French Canadian Klô Pelgag, in turn, rescued the ethereal pop of the Cocteau Twins in her Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs. Room for the Moon by Russian Tatar Kate NV is progressive pop with a lot of rhythmic and textural experimentation, and especially the tracks with more vocal parts are really good. In the neo-soul universe, Moses Sumney returns with græ, and I, having liked his previous Aromanticism a lot, felt that something was lost in this one, although I can’t consciously point out what. The opposite movement was made by the anonymous ensemble Sault. Untitled (Black Is) is an experimental mix between R&B and soul, with a wide variation both in song formats, but also in song quality; everything good about it was amplified, and the weaknesses removed, in the subsequent Untitled (Rise).

2020 also got the first official release of an artist whose music I have a special affection and concern for. Jerônimo is a busker who sings his music on buses in my hometown Recife as well as in Maceió, capital of Alagoas, the neighboring state to the south. His song Gatinho angora is folkloric around these parts, with unofficial recordings of it circulating since at least 2008. It and his other song, O amor do mudo e da muda, have finally been released on all official streaming platforms, and are very good melodically, in addition to the intentional and unintentional comedy they bring. I am very glad to see his art perpetuated.

Among the albums released last year, ten were the ones which stood over the others as my favourites. Of these, two don’t contain new music, they are compilations of older material, and thus, I will not list them in order. Disques Debs International Vol. 2: Cadence Revolution 1973 – 1981 does for the small French Caribbean islands what my beloved African Scream Contest did for Benin: a potent exhibition of their vibrancy. Covering the entire world, Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music is of such enormous historical value that it is difficult to assess purely musically, certainly unmissable. My eighth favourite album of 2020 is Jangar by the Mongolian band Khusugtun. It does not reinvent Mongolian music, but brings in its 55 minutes of length a great diversity of styles and emotions. In seventh place is Ustad Saami’s Pakistan Is for the Peaceful, that I have mentioned previously. It is very beautiful, but more monolithic, placid and conflict-free than the previous God Is Not a Terrorist, which makes it lose something.

It’s common practice for music fans to try and build a narrative out of an artist’s discography. Each album has a role to play: the awkward beginning; the weird experimental one that divides the fans; the celebrated masterpiece; the rawer, quieter, more personal album; etc. In the 20-year span of Sufjan Stevens’ career, basically every record of his has fallen into one of these categories… until this last one. The Ascension hasn’t fallen on critics’ graces perhaps for being Sufjan’s least “essential” album, but on the other hand it contains a bit of everything that makes his music fascinating, and I place it in sixth place on my list. On the fifth spot, Ex Silentio’s Lethe brings renaissance and medieval music originating in Spain, France and Turkey, with a golden musical unity that transports the listener to an idealised version of those times. The best Brazilian album of the year is found in fourth place in my list: Orquestra Afrosinfônica’s Orín, a língua dos anjos. The symphonising of afoxé music is a brilliant proposal, and they execute it with melodic and instrumental richness combined with delicate strength.

In third place, the Thracian ensemble Evritiki Zygia’s Ormenion. By mixing the multi-ethnic Thracian traditions with electronic touches, they unveiled a very percussive and energetic, contagious, sound. Fleet Foxes’ Shore is my number two album of the year. It is the perfect sequel to the turbulent Crack-Up, as it musically translates the feeling of having gone through a storm, the sun finally breaking through the clouds after calamitous rains. At last, my album of the year 2020 was Ella by Cuban rapper La Dame Blanche. I have been following her work for a while, and it seems that now her sound is finally fully ripe. All her strong suites, energy, vocal delivery, catchy hooks, are as fresh as mangoes in springtime.