You’ve seen the memes. It’s only been five months and 2020 has already been a historical shitshow of a year. Thousands and thousands died while the rest of us slowly lost our minds in lockdown. And then, just as things finally seemed to be returning to some shattered semblance of normalcy, cities all over the world erupted in justified anger over the murder of black citizens at the hands of police. Remember early January when all we had to worry about was little stuff, like impeaching our president and nuclear war with Iran? Those were the days.
It might be corny, but it’s true: Times like these are when we need music more than ever, whether to escape our feelings or to feel them as much as possible. But the music industry hasn’t been spared the pandemic either. The future of live music is very much up in the air right now. Livestreams, drive-in concerts, fan pods, N95 festival vape suits — is that what we have to look forward to for the rest of the year? At this point, no one even knows.
What we do know is that this terrible year has given us plenty of great music. We’ve gotten soothing albums and seething albums. We’ve already gotten a few quarantine albums, transmissions from artists trying to make sense of the world from within their own little fortresses of solitude. We’re almost certainly going to get a whole lot more of these in the months and years to come.
As always, your humble Stereogum staff has listened and argued, proselytized and compromised, and come up with a list of our 50 favorite albums released between 1/1 and 6/30 of this year. These are the albums that moved us. Maybe they’ll move you too. And maybe, just maybe, when we do this again in six months, the world will look a little less dark. Let’s listen to these albums and work to make that happen. —Peter Helman
50 Frail Hands – parted/departed/apart (Twelve Gauge)
Ten songs in 20 minutes, each one a minefield that explodes into violence at the slightest spark: This is how a screamo band throttles you thoroughly yet leaves you craving more. Nova Scotia’s Frail Hands have mastered the art of the cataclysmic shit fit. They know how to wield dynamics without actually pausing to be quiet that often. Their recent parted/departed/apart is all visceral force and unhinged rage — the sound of winding up so tightly that your tension becomes a weapon to be deployed like a flamethrower. —Chris DeVille
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
49 Kehlani – It Was Good Until It Wasn’t (Atlantic)
Trap&B sounds good on Kehlani. Pivoting from SweetSexySavage’s neon ’90s revivalism, It Was Good Until It Wasn’t leans into shadowy, low-slung grooves and minor-key chord progressions. It’s an album with a strong sonic identity and a narrative point of view to match, Oakland’s reigning R&B MVP processing the fallout from a romance gone sour in fluttering, conversational flourishes. She sounds incredible whether coyly flirting atop Masego’s jazzy trumpet riffs, boldly encouraging life change alongside Jhené Aiko, or grieving love lost in tandem with James Blake. —Chris
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music
48 Yaeji – WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던 (XL)
“We sit in a circle and look at each other and reminisce how we got to meet each other,” Kathy Lee chants on “Money Can’t Buy,” a hypnotic cut from her first full-length project as Yaeji. On WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, Yaeji invites us to a party with all her friends — mostly a collection of fellow New York City oddballs — and we’re along for the ride. It’s both for us and not. Yaeji’s music is insular and slow; it takes a few listens to really lock in to what she’s doing. But once you get settled in her groove, her mumblings blossom into sturdy hooks, and her songs become comforting celebrations of friendship and creation. —James Rettig
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
47 Lil Uzi Vert – Eternal Atake (Atlantic)
After a prolonged cold war with his own record label, Lil Uzi Vert swung back into the spotlight channeling the free-associative glee of peak Lil Wayne, over some cartoonishly twisted trap beats, on a spaced-out wavelength all his own. As its deluxe companion album demonstrates, Eternal Atake could have taken a lot of lesser forms, bogged down by the usual parade of guest stars. Instead, hip-hop’s devilish rockstar delivered a singular emotional and aesthetic expression, rapping his ass off for an hour and tacking a nasally Backstreet Boys tribute on the end for good measure. —Chris
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music
46 Chubby And The Gang – Speed Kills (Static Shock)
Charlie Manning-Walker, lead barker of London face-stompers Chubby And The Gang, comes from the exploding world of UK hardcore, and he’s done time with moshpit revivalists like Violent Reaction and Arms Race. But now Manning-Walker has reinvented himself as Chubby Charles, and he’s put together a band that draws on a rich historical strain of British working-class rock: glam, pub-rock, street-punk. Chubby And The Gang, in other words, make a supremely British version of bar-rock, turning knucklehead soccer-hooligan chants into poetry. And even when they’re bashing out power-pop hooks, or playing rinky-dink organs, or offering a sincere acoustic tribute to the people who died in the Grenfell Tower fire, the Gang bring the urgency of the best hardcore. —Tom
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
45 Amnesia Scanner – Tearless (PAN)
The album artwork for Amnesia Scanner’s Tearless looks like something gone horribly wrong. That’s what the world feels like right now, too. The electronic duo formerly and anagrammatically known as Renaissance Man have called the LP “a breakup album with the planet,” but it’s less an elegy for the past than an expressionistic embrace of the chaos, channeling dance music and metal and noise into a potent new strain of mutant-pop. As they say in the closing track: “You will be fine, if we can help you lose your mind.” —Peter
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
44 Ashley McBryde – Never Will (Warner Music Nashville)
Two years ago, Ashley McBryde was Nashville’s new avatar of authenticity. She’d been putting indie albums out since 2006, but McBryde made her big splash with 2018’s Girl Going Nowhere, a powerful piece of tough blue-collar country music. With her follow-up, though, McBryde shows us just how much she can do: blazing Southern-rock rippers, tenderly gospel-inflected ballads, a weirdly charming album closer about the history of styrofoam. She writes tremendous hooks and delivers them in a honeyed seen-it-all drawl. But she’s also a restless, fiery talent and a true explorer. She’s too real to be a simple symbol of realness. —Tom
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music
43 Moodymann – Taken Away (KDJ)
Last year, Highland Park police dragged the Detroit deep-house legend Moodymann from his van, which was parked outside his apartment building, and arrested him at gunpoint; someone had apparently called the police to report someone acting suspicious. Moodymann’s album Taken Away, recorded in part as an attempt to process that trauma, is about as downbeat and introspective as Detroit house gets. Taken Away is full of syncopated thumps and bluesy murmurs and echoes of sirens. If you don’t know the story behind it, it’s still a warm and gorgeous party record. But released into the world four days before George Floyd’s murder, it takes on a whole new dimension. —Tom
HEAR IT: Bandcamp
42 Destroyer – Have We Met (Merge)
Have We Met caps off an arc begun almost a decade ago, when Dan Bejar released his landmark album Kaputt and entered the most accessible, acclaimed, yet no less eccentric chapter o