During the new-year season of best-of-the-year lists, I find myself looking backward—even at a year as difficult as 2020. Time was dilated—I thought I had too much of it but, as usual, there was too little for all the great music.
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Eclectic siblings Nicki and Patrick Adams draw from a wealth of musical genres and training to produce an album of depth and beauty.
Ulla and Perila, two experimental producers on the vanguard of modern ambient, take their talent to new heights on LOG ET3RNAL, their first collaborative LP under the LOG moniker.
Leeds' the F Club, Ace of Clubs, and the Warehouse are just a few of the clubs that ushered in goth. Ethan Stewart talks with musicians and fans who were there.
PopMatters surveys the year in music in this month-long Best Music of 2020 series.
Elvis Costello is a complex man of dark humor and flashes of anger as he keeps fighting the good fight armed with a razor wit.
Imagination has always been the Shanghai Restoration Project's beating heart, and it has perhaps never been more timely than on Brave New World Symphony.
Maxwell Stern's debut record, The Impossible Sum, is a relaxed, honest, deeply felt exploration of what it means to be a feeling, caring human in our time of incessant gaslighting and doom scrolling.
Baltimore's wizard of the pedal steel guitar, Susan Alcorn, offers a creative blend of Americana, jazz, and ethereal improvisation on Pedernal.
Post-rock legends Jesu return after seven years, chameleonic rockers Boris collaborate once more with noise fiend Merzbow, and Dan Barrett unleashes Black Wing's sophomore record.
Fed Up and Feeling Strange: Live and in Person (1993-1998) shows the Dinosaur Jr maestro doesn't need a wall of amplifiers to make an impact.
Barry Gibb went to Nashville to make a country record of Bee Gees classics with Americana producer Dave Cobb. The result is Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, Vol. 1.
Dave Scanlon, the singer and guitarist of Brooklyn's JOBS, offers a stripped-down collection of songs that retains the unique intensity of his more complex work.
Many punk hybrids have come and gone since their heydays, but the punk-rockabilly one, psychobilly, has endured and is still thriving around the world today.
New COVID-era recordings from saxophonists Chris Potter and Ben Wendel recall pioneering work by the brilliant composer Wayne Shorter.
London neo-soul artist Kianja follows an upbeat single with more introspection on the deeply affecting "In a Different Light".
Elvis historian Eric Wolfson's 33 1/3 book, Elvis Presley's From Elvis in Memphis, examines perhaps the greatest artistic accomplishment of Elvis' career: a comeback album that reinstated his relevance.
Brooklyn folkie Ana Egge collaborated with Dick Connette and Stewart Lerman on "This Time", which was directly inspired by the murder of George Floyd.
Whole Lotta Red demonstrates Playboi Carti's commitment to dynamic growth and experimentation. However, it's painfully apparent that Carti needs more features.
Jack Name likes to make little worlds with his albums, and Magic Touch is no exception. I found myself thinking of it as a prose work.
Nine US-based musicians discuss surviving and adapting to the changing music industry in our extraordinarily challenging time of pandemic shutdown.
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