—Clare Martin, Fans of Rolling Blackouts C.F.’s The Go-Betweens-indebted, jangle-pop-tinged guitar-rock will find themselves on familiar ground on Sideways to New Italy. The album’s clear standout (and one of the year’s best songs), “Kyoto,” features Bridgers’ crunchiest guitar riffs yet, a soaring chorus and the travails of dealing with someone who can’t quite get their shit together juxtaposed with a wander through a 7-11 and trip to the suburbs to stare at chemtrails. It’s a devastating tune about death and depression, and if it ended at the three-minute mark, it would still be a stunner. The quintet—which comprises singer-songwriter-guitarist trio Tom Russo, Joe White and Fran Keaney, plus bassist Joe Russo and drummer Marcel Tussie—arrived essentially fully formed with 2016’s Talk Tight, and have remained remarkably consistent since, from 2017 EP The French Press to their acclaimed full-length debut, 2018 standout Hope Downs. Discover the best new indie, rock & alt music in our April compilation! You’re not seeking a partner for a pleasure cruise, but rather for an intrepid, Magellan-style circumnavigation, in which sailors get scurvy or fall overboard because they mistook a manatee for a mermaid. But on Likewise, Quinlan hashed everything out with just Reinhart in the studio, giving the tracks more space to breathe than ever before. But Apple isn’t just sitting on these songs during the long gaps between albums; she’s buffing them to perfection. Shadow Talk is all about finesse and dynamics—melodies cascade with subtlety and spark with a euphoric glow. Stephen Malkmus - 'Traditional Techniques' … Visit Juno Studio. —Max Freedman, Emotions are not absolute. But rarely does an artist deconstruct and completely transform a beloved song to the extent that Frances Quinlan does with “Carry the Zero,” the Built to Spill classic that landed at number two on Paste’s best songs of 1999 list. —Ellen Johnson, © 2020 Paste Media Group. Britpop Dream Pop Grunge Indie Rock Industrial Rock Rap Rock Garage Rock Latin Alternative Post-Punk Emo Punk Rock Echoes A Life Divided 2020 $1.95 Haunted Painting Sad13 2020 $1.65 The Best Albums Of 2020, So Far by American Songwriter July 2, 2020, 4:36 pm It is now July 2, the 183rd day of 2020, and we are now officially into the back half of the calendar year. Now, though, as her star is rising, Rose has turned that critical eye inward. Saint Cloud is a whole new world. —Eric R. Danton, Let’s face it: In 2020, nobody is expecting a new Strokes album to compete with the band’s classic, essentially perfect first two albums. Hear the hot songs of the year and all important new cd releases of 2020 in one place. To say the album is derivative is to miss the point. Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One (Remastered Expanded 50th Anniversary Edition), Daniel Romano's Outfit - How Ill Thy World Is Ordered, illuminati hotties - FREE I​.​H: This Is Not The One You've Been Waiting For, Catholic Action - Celebrated By Strangers, Hamilton Leithauser - The Loves of Your Life, Young Jesus - Welcome to Conceptual Beach, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - X: The Godless Void and Other Stories, The Airborne Toxic Event - Hollywood Park, Users' Highest Rated Indie Rock Albums of 2020. Quinlan has long had one of the best voices in indie rock, so why not essentially subtract everything else and give it 100 percent of the spotlight? As … Hop Along actually began as a solo project in the mid-2000s, but by the time the band started to take off with 2012’s Get Disowned, it was a full outfit, complete with Quinlan’s brother Mark on drums, bassist Tyler Long and multi-instrumentalist Joe Reinhart, who has produced each of their records since. Her record Out in the Storm, which we named one of the best albums of that year, displayed a whole new side of the singer. —Max Freedman, “We’re gonna put you in the movies and our TV / All you’ve got to do is put on this little bikini,” indie rock chameleon Caroline Rose sang on “Bikini” off her breakout 2018 record Loner. So it’s funny that Fetch the Bolt Cutters is exactly what so many expected it to be: brilliant. There are moments of wonder and discovery, but often those are bookended by rough seas. 2020 is going to be another exciting year for the indie music scene and the beginning of a new decade. Optimism led him astray. New Releases Now - Sign up to find top new songs of 2020 and videos from the best new 2020 albums! Hinds—Carlotta Cosials, Ana Perrote, Amber Grimbergen, and Ade Martin—have a strong grip on their musical identity, and they’re not keen on a makeover. Again. The words “I’m not knocking,” even when spoken out of context, will get “Carry the Zero” stuck in one’s head for hours. “I don’t forgive you,” she sings as a horn arrangement crests over this mind-numbing scene, “but please don’t hold me to it.” Later, in “Moon Song,” Bridgers traces the blurry boundaries of a complicated relationship before laying it all out in the final verse: “You are sick and you’re married and you might be dying,” she sings over a small crescendo, “but you’re holding me like water in your hands.” —Ben Salmon, Although Soccer Mommy’s 2018 debut studio album Clean transformed her into a critical favorite, indie-rock leader and tour opener for Paramore, Kacey Musgraves and Vampire Weekend, anyone who’s grappled with mental illness knows that success isn’t a salve. Their half-hearted performance brought to mind the women in the background of Robert Palmer videos, who serve as ornamentation at best. Follow our countdown of the 50 best albums of 2020 The story now has a place to sit—in a dark room, screen glowing, silence deafening, thoughts racing. Shauf’s storytelling and uncanny realism have long been the linchpin of his appeal as an artist, though his previous release, The Party, showcased his talent on a whole other level. —Andy Crump, Listening to an Andy Shauf album in full is akin to binging a particularly compelling TV show: Both pull you in with characters that feel just as real as you or me, who populate a world we’d like to escape to. Brooklyn Vegan's Indie Basement placed 40 indie-rock albums from 2020 in its cellar - it's an interesting selection, covering the best, and some unexpected albums. But it’s put to such superbly squalling ends, resulting in the breakthrough of one of the best British indie-rock bands in ages. She considered leaving music altogether. “I was in a really bad place,” she reflected in a more recent interview SPIN. It’s a moody, empathetic album, bolstered by repetition and the palpable scenes they create, whether that’s an imagined, heavenly gorge or the melancholy urban landscapes you traverse every day. It’s one of many moments on Likewise that prove not only that her solo career deserves to exist, but also that she’s able to thrive without her longtime bandmates (or at least without them in their full roles). 100% Secure Shopping. Studio equipment. As Rose embraces her craft’s most hermit-like aspects, she consolidates her longtime fascinations with change and disconnectedness into grim portraits of whom she becomes when she doesn’t maintain her closest relationships and properly tend to (the ever-marketable art of) self-care. Every aspect of the central storyline—an ex randomly showing up after moving out of town, bad jokes, drunken ramblings—feels like it could be happening at your local dive just a couple blocks from your apartment. Hinds’ usual fuzzed-up rock aesthetic bridges the gap between The Prettiest Curse and I Don’t Run nicely. Katie Crutchfield’s new sobriety led to a move away from rollicking indie and toward a calmer, Americana-informed sound that reels you in. —Lizzie Manno, Marigold is the first true collection of Pinegrove songs that addresses (or doesn’t) the events that have unfolded since lead singer Evan Stephens Hall’s admission of sexual coercion in late 2017 via a Facebook post. Written, recorded, produced and mixed in Leithauser’s cramped, DIY New York City studio The Struggle Hut, the album achieves a powerful sense of place, capturing the city and its innumerable narratives—NYC is well-trod creative territory, to say the least, and could have easily made for a mundane effort in the hands of a lesser songwriter. Married duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, better known as Tennis, have recently endured one of the most difficult stages of their life, but found solace in each other throughout. Rose’s Lavender follow-up The Caretaker is smaller in scale. The things we want and need are always changing, and trying to communicate that to other people often leads to confusion or frustration. In comparison to the expansive sound of his recent work with indie four-piece Foxwarren, the woozy woodwind, warm piano and guitar (all played by Shauf himself) come across as if they are being played in the small back room of a bar. Moore herself never learned to swim, just as most of us are not taught how to navigate the choppy waters of grief and strife. They shout repeated lines like they’re therapeutically screaming into the void, but surprisingly, listening to it is just as therapeutic. As a woman who lives mostly secluded from society and releases music so rarely, she’s frequently the object of speculation and even sexualization (see: the late ’90s). But Leithauser has spent his entire career on its wavelength, and dedicates The Loves of Your Life to the people who make the metropolis what it is, bringing all of his skills (he plays most of the instruments on the album) to bear on rendering their stories in poignant detail. Understandably, The Caretaker’s stories are often not pretty sights, even if the music always is. Facebook10LikeShareTweet With this being the year of the pandemic, many indie rock bands and artists’ 2020 releases were simply ‘missed’ as indie music fans’ lives were turned upside down. He felt like he was only going backwards, and he was left wondering why won’t they talk to him. But Shadow Talk, the second album from Chicago experimental five-piece Cafe Racer, reaches heady emotional and sonic heights, not by leaning on overused effects or sprinkling meaningless, abstract imagery, but by expecting more out of a song and its lyrics. —Ellen Johnson, Fiona Apple engages our minds like no one else. Scott tumbled into self-doubt. Now, Shauf is following up his 2016 effort with The Neon Skyline, another concept album about a couple of friends on a night out at the pub. Each time we publish a list of indie rock albums, we’re once again met with the question of what actually defines an indie rock album. Also grant that the tone baked into every Hinds record, from 2016’s Leave Me Alone to 2018’s I Don’t Run, pairs perfectly with warm, sunny days spent driving on beachside highways with the windows rolled down, even when they’re singing about loneliness, breakups and the neverending quest for hugs and cuddles. 59 votes, 42 comments. The 30 best country and Americana albums of 2020, including records by Ashley McBryde, Elizabeth Cook, Jason Isbell, and Hailey Whitters. On 2014’s KOTEKAN and 2016’s Probable Depths, Rose’s strings, pianos and powerful mezzo-soprano provided an appropriately plaintive background for her ruminations on distance and personal growth. Over the last 25 years, she has made five albums that have all—in due time—ascended to holy text status, even if it took some longer than others to come around to her genius. The album often resembles a reversion to her sparser early work and away from the cavernous jolts of her more recent output. The intimacy of the story is bolstered by the album’s production and Shauf’s deft instrumentation. Best Rock And Indie Albums Of 2020. Indie rock is an ever-evolving genre spanning bedroom recordings and Jack Antonoff-produced powerhouses. ... self-titled album is more indie-rock than anything else, it could be safely argued. It’s no wonder he titled his now classic sophomore record Lonerism: Those 12 songs document the internal anger, anxiety and social self-sabotage of a man who so badly wanted to be personable and in love, but was legitimately unable to even muster up the courage to talk to a woman he was interested in. It’s an astute pivot for Rose, and an indicator that she is anything but your typical ascendant artist. Following the commercial success of Yours Conditionally in 2017, Moore wound up in the hospital with a bad bout of the flu, Riley’s father Edward died of cancer and his mother Karen was hospitalized “on the brink of a stroke,” Moore recalls. Some of these albums could easily find a home on other lists—pop, punk, or perhaps folk—but they also all fit here, under the indie rock umbrella. Eight years later, things are wildly different. It’s not unusual for musicians to try updating their sound with outside influences and unexpected genres, but too often the experiment falls apart; the unfamiliar elements clang against the details that give the group character, like eating chocolate cake baked with carob. She doesn’t like to do what is expected of her. Brighton, U.K. quartet Porridge Radio grapple with these questions on their new album Every Bad. From the culture-shaking event that was Fetch the Bolt Cutters to the lesser-known records we’ve fallen in love with this year, here are the best indie rock albums of 2020 so far. Effervescence is a key ingredient in all their music, but The Prettiest Curse’s bubbliness is more pronounced, the froth that shapes the band’s rising to the surface in a slightly broader coating. Gone are the cathartic, fist-pumping moments from “Cadmium,” the louder, capital-R Rock aesthetics from “Then Again” or the bruising solos à la “Aphasia.” Hall & co. respond with a more refined batch of songs on Marigold. He’s now wondering aloud about getting a home in Miami, going and getting married and tattooing her name on his arm (“Instant Destiny”) and thinking back on how he was feeling a year prior when he had no cares in the world (“One More Year”). It’s quite incredible that Quinlan managed to make the song so unrecognizable that I listened to the whole thing without even realizing it was a cover of the legendary Boise, Idaho indie band’s biggest hit. An ’80s-style noir flick, maybe, set in some retro-futuristic cityscape where wet pavement glistens with the reflection of neon lights, and the juxtaposition of idiosyncratic lyrics, Bejar’s plummy voice and the squelch of synthesizers makes perfect sense according to some obscure internal logic. How do we make things better and dig ourselves out of a hole—especially if we don’t see the hole or if that hole has become comfortable? July … Success neither curing mental illness nor reversing a parent’s medical death sentence is a lot for a 22-year-old to face, but Allison is more than up to the task. In a surprise to probably no one, Fiona Apple is now five for five. Yet, it’s different from anything she’s ever released before. 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