Top 15 albums of 2020.

I tried to do a longer list, but in the end couldn’t really get behind any more albums than these – which isn’t to say there were no other good albums, but there were the fifteen about which I felt the strongest. Disclosure, Working Men’s Club, King Gizzard, Bartees Strange, Freddie Gibbs, and San Cisco all put out interesting albums that just didn’t quite make the cut.

Previous years’ album rankings: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.

15. Mourn – Self Worth. Mourn appeared on the scene around the same time as another all-woman rock band, the critical darlings Hinds, who barely knew how to play their guitars but succeeded with sheer enthusiasm and a few infectious hooks. Mourn, on the other hand, was more polished out of the gate, and on this album they’ve refined their sound and produced their best, most complete record yet. Running just 34 minutes, this collection of a dozen songs finds the trio contemplating the worthlessness of men and the heartbreaks of loving them anyway, along with more nuanced guitar riffs that seem harder-edged, even to the borderline of old-school metal. Highlights include “Stay There,” “Men,” “Call You Back,” and “I’m in Trouble.”

14. LA Witch – Play With Fire. Barely long enough to call it an album, Play With Fire runs a scant 29 minutes, but packs a punch in these nine songs, recalling some of the earliest female-fronted punk bands, where that scene was more open to women who wanted to be serious rock musicians than the typical avenues of pop radio and commercial labels. L.A. Witch’s sound is probably more gothic rock than punk, though, and has more in common with Killing Joke or Siouxsie and the Banshees than, say, Blondie or even the Slits. Standout tracks include “Fire Starter,” “True Believers,” and “I Wanna Lose.”

13. Pallbearer – Forgotten Days. The best metal album of the year, without any close competition, was the fourth LP from these American doom stalwarts, quite likely the best doom metal band still active today. (While it’s not a metal album per se, Inlet, the comeback album from 1990s alt-rock band Hum, has a lot of doom elements to it.) Forgotten Days has a little something for everyone, from the practically exuberant title track to the crunching “Rite of Passage” to the twelve-minute opus “Silver Wings.” The album distills everything Pallbearer did well on their first three albums into a single 50-minute record, and pushes them from much-admired heirs to the Black Sabbath/Cathedral throne to undisputed kings of modern doom.

12. Everything Everything – RE-ANIMATOR. More consistent start to finish than their previous albums, RE-ANIMATOR works better as a cohesive whole than anything they’ve released to date, which makes up for the lack of a huge single like “Cough Cough” or “I Believe It Now.” The frenetic arrangements, falsetto vocals, rapid tempo shifts, and idiosyncratic vocals are all still here, but now they’re just a bit more under control. Standout tracks include “Planets,” “Violent Sun,” “In Birdsong,” and “Arch Enemy.”

11. The Naked & Famous – Recover. This New Zealand duo’s fourth album, and first since 2016, is their best yet – although, as with RE-ANIMATOR, it doesn’t have a single to match their all-time best (I’d argue “Young Blood,” my partner would say “Punching in a Dream,” and is either of us really wrong?). There’s a new lyrical sophistication here, and they maintain their melodic strength over the entire album, where on the last two records in particular it seemed to lag as the albums went on. Highlights include the title track, “Sunseeker,” “Death,” “Everybody Knows,” and “Monument.”

10. Bananagun – The True Story of Bananagun. I only heard about this Melbourne psychedelic rock/funk group a few weeks ago, but I’m all about this album and their strange mélange of late ’60s flower-child rock and funk guitar work from the decade afterwards. Standout tracks include “The Master,” “Freak Machine,” and “Bang Go the Bongos.”

9. The Killers – Imploding the Mirage. I was never a huge Killers fan beyond a couple of their singles, especially when they turned towards a more over-the-top, affected sound on their second album, Sam’s Town. On their sixth album, they seem to have rediscovered a lot of what made their first album successful without regressing to an earlier, less musically sophisticated style. There’s still a lot going on across Imploding the Mirage, from vibraphones to E-bows to a makeshift string section, but this time that all feels like it’s in service of the music, not the other way around. Standout tracks include “Dying Breed,” “Caution,” and “Blowback.”

8. Tame Impala – The Slow Rush. I’ve always been a few degrees short of the critical acclaim for Kevin Parker’s music; I’ve liked many of his tracks but he often needs an editor to rein him in, and his albums haven’t come together as well as they should. The Slow Rush still has too many tracks that go on too long – half of the twelve songs here run five minutes or more, up to 7:13 for the closer – but it’s the most coherent record he’s released to date. Standout singles include “Borderline,” “Lost in Yesterday,” and “Breathe Deeper.”

7. SAULT – Untitled (Black Is). SAULT released one of the best albums of 2019 but did so after my 2019 rankings came out – in fact, they released two albums (7 and 5) last year, and both were great, but I didn’t hear either until May of this year. Despite working to cloak their identities for over a year, they’ve gained some critical attention nonetheless for their soul/funk/spoken word sound, and with Untitled (Black Is) they’ve become overtly political with a series of anthems supporting Black Lives Matter and other causes of equality and justice. Standout tracks include “Bow,” featuring Michael Kiwanuka; “Wildfires;” “Monsters;” “Why We Cry Why We Die;” and “Black.”

6. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud. Folk-rocker Katie Crutchfield bares her soul, recounting her struggles with alcoholism and decision to get sober after her previous album, the uneven Out in the Storm (which still gave us “Never Been Wrong”), and the result is her best and most complete album to date. Standout tracks include “Lilacs,” “Can’t Do Much,” and “Hell.”

5. Grimes – Miss Anthropocene. A good example of when to separate the art from the artist. Grimes’ last album, Art Angels, was my #1 album of 2015; this record is more experimental and expansive, but still has several tracks that stand well on their own thanks to strong melodies, including “Violence,” “4ÆM,” and “Delete Forever.”

4. Khruangbin – Mordechai. I was late to the Khruangbin party, only hearing their last album, Con Todo El Mundo, a year after it came out, helped by The RFK Tapes’ podcast’s use of “Maria También” as its theme song. I think I got here just in time, though, as Mordechai is going to be their big breakout, as it has the same kind of Thai jazz/funk/rock hybrid sound as their last album, but now with extensive vocals from all three members. Standout tracks include “Pelota,” “Time (You and I),” the funky “So We Won’t Forget,” and “Connaissais de Face.”

3. Moses Boyd – Dark Matter. I don’t have any comparison for this album by percussionist Moses Boyd, one half of Binker and Moses. It’s a dark, swirling journey of modern jazz and house that has the energy of improvisational music but the tighter focus and melodic sensibility of more mainstream genres. Standout tracks include the stellar “Shades of You” (feat. Poppy Ajudha), shimmering opener “Stranger than Fiction,” and the guitar-laden “Y.O.Y.O.”

2. Creeper – Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void. Soapparently Creeper was a punk band just a few years ago on their debut album, but completely changed their sound for this sophomore release, a bombastic, showy, riveting album that recalls the earliest days of post-punk/New Wave with a very heavy dose of early Suede, especially in Will Gould’s swaggering vocals. It’s a concept album about an angel who has fallen from the heavens into a small town in California, and experiences love and heartbreak for the first time. Highlights include “Cyanide,” “Annabelle,” “Born Cold,” the country-tinged “Poisoned Heart,” and the Roxy Music-esque “Paradise.”

1. SAULT – Untitled (Rise). SAULT’s second album of 2020 and their fourth in about 14 months was their best yet, tighter than Untitled (Black Is) and more focused without losing any of their previous three albums’ strength, sense of rhythm, or lyrical indignation. “Free” is one of the best songs of the year, a timeless funk/dance song powered by an epic earworm of a bass line, while “I Just Want to Dance” deceives you with its title and rhythm when it’s actually another protest song about police killings of black men. Untitled (Black Is) earned more praise this year, topping NPR’s best albums of 2020 list and coming in at #5 on the Guardian‘s, but my argument here is that Untitled (Rise) is better start to finish, whereas its predecessor loses some steam towards the finish. They’re both tremendous albums, and any publication – looking at you, Pitchfork and Rolling Stone – that omits them from their year-end lists should at least explain their absence. Other highlight tracks include “Strong,” “Fearless,” “Little Boy,” and the spoken-word track “You Know It Ain’t.”