For the top spot on his 2020 list, lead New York Times music critic Jon Pareles chose Sufjan Stevens’ Ascension, the indie artist’s eighth studio album.
Perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated contribution to Call Me By Your Name, Stevens is partial to dreamy acoustic ballads. On this record, however, he makes heavy use of synthesizers and drum machines, though the end result is still an ethereal wall of sound over which he drapes his half-whispered vocals.
It’s December already, in what seems like both the longest and shortest year in memory. And even in a calamitous year like 2020, December means year-end best-of lists.
Last week, the New York Times published the year’s best albums according to its three top music critics, Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz. I’ll use their lists as a blueprint to explore some of the most heralded albums of 2020.
It’s been awhile since I’ve given Beck’s 1999 album Midnite Vultures a thought, let alone a listen. In fact, the last time was probably when it showed up on another Random Weekend nearly four years ago.
This is one of Beck’s wildest, most inventive albums, and one of his best. It found the versatile artist channeling Prince at one minute and Kraftwerk the next, and throwing the kitchen sink into the production mix. Sandwiched between Mutations and Sea Change, two very subdued and melancholy albums, this was a blast of pure adrenaline.
Today’s SOTD is the closing track on Rufus Wainwright’s 2007 live album Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall. As this performance was a song-for-song recreation of Judy Garland’s original 1961 Judy at Carnegie Hall show, it was the final track for her as well.
‘Chicago,’ sometimes subtitled ‘That Toddlin’ Town’ is the less famous of two Chicago songs first popularized by Frank Sinatra. The other is, of course, ‘My Kind of Town.’
The last Album of the Year nominee I’ll mention is Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding. This is Malone’s second straight nod in this category, after 2019’s Beerbongs & Bentleys. I guess the Recording Academy has a soft spot for auto-tuned hip-hop inflected pop songs.
I like Malone well enough based on his media appearances, and a few of his songs have worked for me (specifically, ‘Rockstar‘ and ‘Circles‘). But a quick dive into this album didn’t impress me. It’s a lot of the same mid-tempo, moody pop you find in ‘Circles,’ but with less success.
Meet Me In Montauk 