Listening to new music may not be foremost in many people’s minds during this stressful pandemic, but it can be an enriching activity. Coincidentally, Pitchfork had good things to say in a piece just today, “Why Do We Even Listen to New Music“?

The act of listening to new music in the midst of a global pandemic is hard, but it’s necessary. The world will keep spinning and culture must move with it, even if we are staid and static in our homes, even if the economy grinds to a halt, even if there are no shows, no release parties, and even artists sink even further into the precarity that defines a career as a musician. The choice to listen to new music prioritizes, if for one listen only, the artist over you. It is an emotional risk to live for a moment in the abyss of someone else’s world, but this invisible exchange powers the vanguard of art, even in times of historic inertia.

1. Cable Ties – Far Enough (Merge) Mar 27

I really dug these Melbourne punkers’ shouty, exhuberant debut in 2017, and their follow-up doesn’t disappoint. Boots up!

Cable Ties has been known for their fiery live performances since they played their first gig at Wetfest in 2015, the backyard non-binary-inclusive D.I.Y. music festival in Melbourne organized by Jenny McKenchie with her other punk band, Wet Lips. The following year they were the first opening band to earn the “Golden Boot” at the Meredith Music Festival where the crowd unanimously held their boots and shoes aloft in ecstatic approval. Their self-titled debut came out in 2017, and while it didn’t have songs as catchy as Wet Lips, there was a really promising mix of influences, from Sleater-Kinney and Team Dresch to Au Pairs and X-Ray Spex. The ambitious 9:46 “Paradise” shows hints of slashing guitar noise via Public Image Ltd. to The Fall’s more long-winded poetics. | Full Review

2. Lord Buffalo – Tohu Wa Bohu (Blues Funeral) Mar 27

For a minute it seemed like menacing garage noir with Western/Americana/blues influences had fallen out of favor, but then along came Australia’s Jack Harlon & The Dead Crows and Lord Buffalo from Austin, TX to put a heavy stoner/desert psych spin on it. Haunting violin is incorporated, bringing to mind a heavy The Dirty Three. The band cites inspiration from Chelsea Wolfe, David Eugene Edwards (Wovenhand, 16 Horsepower) and All Them Witches, but the ghost of Jeffrey Lee Pierce (Gun Club) presides imperiously above them all.

3. Slift – Ummon (Stolen Body) Feb 28

This one slipped through the cracks of the Winter Album Rundown because they were stingy about streaming it, and it took me some time to digest this 72+ minute behemoth of a space rock double album. I dug their first full-length La Planète Inexplorée (Howlin Banana, 2018), but it’s not like there’s a shortage of garage psych and space rock. But what distinguishes these French psychedelic cosmonauts from similar efforts from the likes of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is that they went for big and sprawling, and every single minute knocks you around like a loose bag of nuts in a zero gravity cabin. Their brand of space rock offers no downtime, but it is littered with abandoned, rusty ships probably haunted by alien ghosts, judging from the serrated rusty edges of their distorted guitars that reflect just as much Chrome as Hawkwind influence.

4. Puta Volcano – Amma (iota5) Mar 13

Puta Volcano have been placed in the stoner rock bucket for their past few albums, but this band from Athens, Greece is far more eclectic than the tag suggests, giving me positive flashbacks to much-missed European bands like Hypnos 69, Been Obscene and Fuzz Manta, who enthusiatically absorbed prog, grunge and psych influences. There’s a bit of Tool and Soundgarden DNA on Amma, but also the mounting tension and release mastered by contemporaries like Royal Thunder.

5. Cornershop – England Is A Garden (Ample Play) Mar 6

Is it insulting to call Cornershop’s ninth album a comback? Kinda. Sure, for a few albums starting with Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast (2009) they had some issues with consistency, but even their commercial peak When I Was Born for the 7th Time (1997) had some missteps. I’d argue that their best overall album is the underrated Handcream for a Generation (2002). It’s hard to say for sure if their latest tops it, but it definitely comes close. Cornershop have always had a complex, diverse hybrid of styles like noise pop, glam, art pop, electropop, dub, garage psych, soul/funk and South Asian music so that they manage to sound both of their time and timeless. It goes to show the brilliance of Cornershop that with England Is A Garden, their time is now.

6. Arbouretum – Let It All In (Thrill Jockey) Mar 20

Through eight albums and a bunch of collaborations, they have evolved from country folk through heavy stoner rock, always with a unique flavor of psychedelic cosmic Americana throughout. Let It All In sounds like their best so far to my ears, including a great motorik/kosmische groove on the 11:48 title track.

7. Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela – Rejoice (World Circuit)

Collaboration between two Afro pop giants, Tony Allen (architect of Nigerian Afrobeat with Fela) and Hugh Masekela (South African trumpet player who’s been a huge influence since the 60s, who passed in 2018). It was recorded in 2010, and finished by producer Nick Gold. | Buy

8. Trees Speak – Ohms (Soul Jazz) Mar 6

There’s not many trees where Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz reside in Tucson, AZ, but I appreciate the sentiment of trees being data storage centers and communications conduits of the future. They’re certainly one of the few living things on this planet that can save us. Anyway, this project has perked up hipster ears with the “Can/Neu! meets Liquid Liquid” soundbite, and fair enough, there is that. Their kosmische-infused electronic music, however, also includes some jazz fusion, Geoff Barrow’s (former Portishead) work with Beak>, and Western/noir/horror film scores. They had me at kosmische, and the rest is a avant desert dessert. | Buy

9. Horse Lords – The Common Task (Northern Spy) Mar 20

Horse Lords are a Baltimore based eclectic experimental rock band who dabble in math rock, kosmische, Afrobeat, Tishoumaren, drone and electronic. And bagpipes oh my, triggering flashbacks to the worldwide bagpipe competition held on my college campus, pipes rehearsing outside my dorm window. It now evokes the apocalyptic doom flavor of the ridiculous St. Patrick’s festivities the weekend of its release.

10. The Burning Brain Band – The Burning Brain Band (Druid) Mar 16

Druid was a great band name but goddamn if it wasn’t confusing with the band Druids that operated in similar stoner doom/psych prog territories. So, album number four also serves as a debut for the Athens, OH band not known as The Burning Brain Band. I’d remove the frst and fourth words myself, but it’s a good name, and appropriate given their increased emphasis on kosmische/space rock (Brain was an important label in the early 70s German kosmische scene). Their strongest set yet.

11. Shabaka and the Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History (Impulse!) Mar 13

The prolific Shabaka Hutchings has nearly single-handedly made London a hot spot for edgy, contemporary jazz through his projects with Melt Yourself Down, Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, and this, his second album with South African musicians the Ancestors. The results of collective improvisation are just as impresssive as Wisdon Of Elders (2016), but the spoken word poetry threatens to derail the groove. Fortunately, there’s enough passion and poignance that it fits in pretty well, along with other Mingus-like vocalizations. Definitely worthy of the iconic Impulse! logo. | Buy

12. Pretty Lightning – Jangle Bowls (Fuzz Club) Mar 20

Pretty Lightning is a German garage psych/blues duo, and their video for “Greyhound” is my favorite thing this year. These pals from Saarbrücken, Germany exuded charm and humor that set them apart since at least their third album The Rhythm Of Ooze (2017). Imagine a stoner psych hybrid of Krafterk’s “Autobahn,” Cheech & Chong and Space Balls. Hermi Flagglenack’s reaction, “Dimension shifter engaged, riding gas free on an endless groove, yeah man.”

13. Here’s five more. You decide!

Islet – Eyelet (Fire) Mar 6
https://islet.bandcamp.com/album/eyelet

Häxan – Aradia (Haxan) Mar 17
https://haxanto.bandcamp.com/album/aradia

FACS – Void Moments (Trouble In Mind) Mar 27
https://troubleinmindrecords.bandcamp.com/album/void-moments

Twin Wizard – Glacial Gods (Twin Wizard) Mar 13
https://twinwizard.bandcamp.com/album/glacial-gods

The James Hunter Six – Nick Of Time (Daptone) Mar 6
https://jameshuntersix.bandcamp.com/album/nick-of-time

Best of 2020 So Far

1. Motorpsycho – The All Is One (Rune Grammofon/Stickman) | Aug 28 | Norway | Buy
2. Elder – Omens (Armageddon) | Apr 24 | USA | Bandcamp
3. The Sonic Dawn – Enter The Mirage (Heavy Psych) | May 01 | Denmark | Bandcamp
4. Molassess – Through The Hollow (Season Of Mist) | Oct 16 | Netherlands | Bandcamp
5. Colour Haze – We Are (Elektrohasch/Ripple) | Oct 09 | Germany | Bandcamp
6. Protomartyr – Ultimate Success Today (Domino) | Jul 17 | USA | Bandcamp
7. Spectres – Nostalgia (Artoffact) | Mar 13 | Canada | Bandcamp
8. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Sideways To New Italy (Sub Pop) | Jun 05 | Australia | Bandcamp
9. Custard Flux – Oxygen (Custard Flux) | Jul 03 | USA | Bandcamp
10. Spirit Adrift – Enlightened in Eternity (20 Buck Spin) | Oct 16 | USA | Bandcamp
11. Coriky – Coriky (Dischord) | Jun 12 | USA | Bandcamp
12. Elephant Stone – Hollow (Fuzz Club) | Feb 14 | Canada | Bandcamp
13. Bambara – Stray (Wharf Cat) | Feb 14 | USA | Bandcamp
14. Slift – Ummon (Stolen Body) | Feb 28 | France | Bandcamp
15. Algiers – There Is No Year (Matador) | Jan 17 | USA | Bandcamp
16. Lord Buffalo – Tohu Wa Bohu (Blues Funeral) | Mar 27 | USA | Bandcamp
17. Causa Sui – Szabodelico (El Paraiso) | Nov 13 | Denmark | Buy
18. Sweven – The Eternal Resonance (Van) | Mar 20 | Sweden | Bandcamp
19. We Here Now – The Chikipunk Years EP (Elektrohasch/Homemade Gifts) | Jan 17 | Brazil/Peru/USA | Bandcamp
20. All Them Witches – Nothing As the Ideal (New West) | Sep 04 | USA | Bandcamp
21. Gulch – Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress (Closed Casket Activities) | Jan 01 | USA | Bandcamp
22. Vincas – Phantasma (Learning Curve) | May 29 | USA | Bandcamp
23. The Blinders – Fantasies of a Stay at Home Psychopath (Modern Sky) | Jan 01 | UK
24. The Pink Moon – Cosmic Heart Attack (Crispin Glover) | Nov 06 | Norway | Bandcamp
25. The Primevals – Second Nature (Triple Wide) | Jun 26 | UK | Bandcamp
26. Pottery – Welcome To Bobby’s Motel (Partisan) | Jun 26 | Canada | Bandcamp
27. Lucifer – Lucifer III (Century Media) | Mar 20 | Sweden | Buy
28. Rose City Band – Summerlong (Thrill Jockey) | May 15 | USA | Bandcamp
29. Fassine – Forge (Trapped Animal) | Mar 27 | UK | Bandcamp
30. Katie Gately – Loom (Houndstooth) | Feb 14 | USA | Bandcamp
31. Ist Ist – Architecture (Kind Violence) | Jan 01 | UK | Bandcamp
32. Shaman Elephant – Wide Awake But Still Asleep (Karisma/Dark Essence) | May 29 | Norway | Bandcamp
33. My Dear Mycroft – Heaven’s Entertainment (My Dear Mycroft) | Oct 30 | USA | Bandcamp
34. Paul Molloy – The Fifth Dandelion (Spring Heeled) | Aug 21 | UK | Buy
35. Smalltown Tigers – Five Things EP (Area Pirata) | Apr 24 | Italy | Bandcamp
36. Kings Of The Valley – Kings Of The Valley (Wonderful & Strange) | Sep 18 | Norway | Buy
37. Kimono Drag Queens – Songs Of Worship (Copper Feast) | Nov 06 | Australia | Bandcamp
38. The White Kites – Devillusion (Deep Field) | Sep 16 | Poland | Bandcamp
39. Mother Island – Motel Rooms (Go Down) | May 22 | Italy | Bandcamp
40. The Hanging Stars – A New Kind Of Sky (CRO) | Feb 21 | UK | Bandcamp
41. Coogans Bluff – Metronopolis (Nois-o-lution) | Jan 24 | Germany | Bandcamp
42. RVG – Feral (Fire) | Apr 24 | Australia | Bandcamp
43. Turtle Skull – Monoliths (Art As Catharsis) | Aug 28 | Australia | Bandcamp
44. Dead Visions – A Sea Of Troubles (Slimer) | May 29 | Italy | Bandcamp
45. Frankie & The Witch Fingers – Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters (Reverberation Appreciation Society) | Oct 02 | USA | Bandcamp
46. Karkara – Nowhere Land (Stolen Body) | Nov 13 | France | Bandcamp
47. Crippled Black Phoenix – Ellengast (Season Of Mist) | Oct 09 | UK | Bandcamp
48. Population II – À La Ô Terre (Castle Face) | Oct 30 | Canada | Bandcamp
49. Lykantropi – Tales To Be Told (Despotz) | Nov 06 | Sweden | Bandcamp
50. Cable Ties – Far Enough (Merge) | Mar 27 | Australia | Bandcamp
51. Eternal Champion – Ravening Iron (No Remorse) | Nov 20 | USA | Bandcamp
52. Kate NV – Room For the Moon (Rvng) | Jun 12 | Russia | Bandcamp
53. Hilary Woods – Birthmarks (Sacred Bones) | Mar 13 | UK | Bandcamp
54. Witchwood – Before The Winter (Jolly Roger) | Nov 20 | Italy | Bandcamp
55. Country Westerns – Country Westerns (Fat Possum) | Jun 26 | USA | Bandcamp
56. Thiago Nassif – Mente (Gearbox) | Jul 03 | Brazil | Bandcamp
57. Witchskull – A Driftwood Cross (Rise Above) | Apr 24 | Australia | Buy
58. Maggot Heart – Mercy Machine (Rapid Eye) | Jul 10 | Germany | Bandcamp
59. High Spirits – Hard To Stop (Professor Black) | Jul 31 | USA | Bandcamp
60. Rick Hromadka – Better Days (SodaStar) | Jan 01 | USA | Buy
61. Straw Man Army – Age of Exile (D4MT Labs) | Jan 01 | USA | Bandcamp
62. Emile – The Black Spider / Det Kollektive Selvmord (Heavy Psych) | May 01 | Denmark | Bandcamp
63. The Buttertones – Jazzhound (Innovative Leisure) | Apr 10 | USA | Bandcamp
64. Sons Of Southern Ulster – Sinners And Lost Souls (HT) | Jun 15 | UK | Bandcamp
65. Figueroa – The World As We Know It (Nomark) | Jul 30 | Brazil | Bandcamp
66. The Black Watch – Fromthing Somethat (Atom) | Oct 23 | USA | Bandcamp
67. Public Practice – Gentle Grip (Wharf Cat) | May 15 | USA | Bandcamp
68. …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – X: The Godless Void And Other Stories (Dine Alone) | Jan 17 | USA | Buy
69. Garcia Peoples – Nightcap At Wit’s End (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond) | Oct 09 | USA | Bandcamp
70. White Denim – World As A Waiting Room (Radio Milk) | Apr 17 | USA | Bandcamp
71. Shadow Show – Silhouettes (Burger/Stolen Body) | Feb 14 | USA | Bandcamp
72. Shopping – All Or Nothing (Fatcat) | Feb 07 | UK | Bandcamp
73. The Homesick – The Big Exercise (Sub Pop) | Feb 07 | Netherlands | Bandcamp
74. Death Valley Girls – Under The Spell Of Joy (Suicide Squeeze) | Oct 02 | USA | Bandcamp
75. Vitskär Süden – Vitskär Süden (Vitskär Süden) | May 22 | USA | Bandcamp
76. Haunt – Flashback (Church) | Jul 03 | USA | Bandcamp
77. Idles – Ultra Mono (Partisan) | Sep 25 | UK | Bandcamp
78. Dune Sea – Moons Of Uranus (All Good Clean) | Nov 13 | Norway | Buy
79. Rattlesnake Milk – Rattlesnake Milk (Feels So Good) | Apr 28 | USA | Buy
80. The Devil’s Trade – The Call Of The Iron Peak (Season Of Mist) | Aug 28 | Hungary | Bandcamp
81. Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters (Epic) | Apr 17 | USA | Buy
82. Fuzz – III (In The Red) | Oct 23 | USA | Bandcamp
83. Fooks Nihil – Fooks Nihil (Unique) | Jan 01 | Germany | Bandcamp
84. Uffe Lorenzen – Magisk Realisme (Bad Afro) | Sep 11 | Denmark | Bandcamp
85. Acid Mess – Sangre De Otros Mundos (Spinda) | Nov 06 | Spain | Bandcamp
86. Lunatic Soul – Through Shaded Woods (Kscope) | Nov 13 | UK | Bandcamp
87. Loose Fit – Loose Fit EP (FatCat) | Apr 03 | Australia | Bandcamp
88. It’s Immaterial – House For Sale (Burning Shed) | Sep 18 | UK | Buy
89. Hollow Ship – Future Remains (PNKSLM) | Apr 01 | Sweden | Bandcamp
90. Suzie Stapleton – We Are The Plague (Negative Prophet) | Jul 31 | UK | Bandcamp
91. Blues Pills – Holy Moly! (Nuclear Blast) | Aug 21 | Sweden | Buy
92. Smalltown Tigers – Five Things EP (Area Pirata) | Apr 24 | Italy | Bandcamp
93. Valkyrie – Fear (Relapse) | Jul 24 | USA | Bandcamp
94. The Lancashire Hustlers – Four Hands, Two Voices (Steep Hill) | Jan 01 | UK | Bandcamp
95. Sheverb – Once Upon A Time In Bombay Beach (Ladies Of Reverb) | Aug 28 | USA | Bandcamp
96. The Moons – Pocket Melodies (Colorama) | Jan 01 | UK | Buy
97. Wytch Hazel – III: Pentecost (Bad Omen) | Oct 30 | UK | Bandcamp
98. Oh Sees – Metamorphosed (Castle Face) | Oct 16 | USA | Bandcamp
99. Wailin Storms – Rattle (Gilead) | May 15 | USA | Bandcamp
100. SAULT – Untitled (Rise) (Forever Living Originals) | Sep 18 | UK/USA | Bandcamp

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