Cover Collector – August Browns

Design by Ryan Morrissey

I don’t know about you guys, but I love a good album art collage. One of the first things I do every Friday is head over to tapmusic.net and render a 4x4 chart of the albums I listened to most over the past week. At the end of each month, I do the same thing with a 5x5 that recaps my previous 30 days of listening. By the time December rolls around, I look forward to recapping the last twelve months with a gigantic 10x10 grid in an unwieldy encapsulation of the 100 albums that defined my year. 

Is it a little self-aggrandizing? Sure, but it’s also a fun way to see a quick snapshot of what my last week, month, or year has sounded like. At its best, this practice has led to fun conversations and solid recommendations going back and forth with friends as we bond over specific albums. Sometimes it’s that shared love over a deep pull from years gone by, other times it’s just noticing trends with a recent fave that seems like an unshakable presence week in and week out. At the very least, I suppose it’s satisfying to see a bunch of records that I feel an affinity toward lined up and embodying a specific stretch of my life. 

At some point near the tail end of last year, I conceived of a more communal way to bring this love of album collage to life. Because, sure, getting a live readout of your listening history is cool, but this is also about album art, an essential part of the experience and something us music nerds can fixate on just as much as the songs that sit beneath the cover. As such, I’m excited to welcome you to the seventh edition of Cover Collector: a monthly installation where the Swim Team discusses some of our favorite albums based on album color. For August, we’re writing about beautiful browns.

---

Ministry – ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ

Sire Records

Ministry’s fifth studio album, alternatively titled Psalm 69 so you don’t have to decode or pronounce the original Crowleyan scribe, is the last in the band’s foundational trilogy of industrial metalworks and miraculously granted them mainstream success. Following 1988’s The Land Of Rape And Honey and 1989’s The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste (aka the heaviest album of all time), Al Jourgensen continued to push the envelope for rock and electronic music with this 1992 release that spawned timeless genre anthems like “N.W.O.” and “Just One Fix.” The record landed just four days before the band spent the rest of the Summer on the second-ever Lollapalooza tour, where they utterly crumbled stages across America, highlighting many of the unrelenting and aurally taxing compositions they had just unleashed upon the public. Its crown jewel, “Jesus Built My Hotrod,” has always been my favorite Ministry song, from the intro featuring Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers to the real-hotrod-speed thrashing throughout. Ministry’s return for 1996’s Filth Pig was long-awaited after the mania of Psalm 69, and while I love it for its specific harshness, it was a clear departure point from the classic records that preceded it. Psalm 69 is necessary listening from the nineties, a time when even the most extreme music on the planet could end up on a major label.

— Logan Archer Mounts

Hel Toro – Gimmick

Self-released

If you’re surprised I’m not writing about Pile, don’t worry, I sort of still am. Hel Toro is Rick Maguire’s early-aughts project, released just before Pile. It’s noisy rock and roll, lyrically cutting, with pentatonic glimmers throughout that hint at the distinct style already present in Rick’s writing. Released in 2007, Gimmick is the band’s second album, coming four years after their debut, Tabula Rasa. Ragey and brash, I consider Gimmick the perfect soundtrack to watch the zenith of late summer slowly wilt and sag towards the ochre-tinged earth. The opening track “Holes Up” grabs the listener by the collar and yanks them in, screaming lyrics straight to their face: “I don’t wanna watch you draw it out, cause I’m not that good of an artist!” Brown paper album artwork and a splatter of scribbled handwriting across the front perfectly relay the grimily textural undercurrents of this sophomore release. 

– Britta Joseph

billy woods – Aethiopes

Backwoodz Studioz

Since its April 2022 release, billy woods’ Aethiopes has been a cold comfort to my summers, especially my Augusts. I can’t pinpoint why, exactly. Maybe the timbral palette of Preservation’s beats provides the right soundtrack to the month’s sense memories: the brassy, aberrant synths of “No Hard Feelings” pierce the ear like a noon sun hits the eye, the pinging rides and dusty acoustic strings of “The Doldrums” sizzle like heat haze above pavement. Or maybe the seamless, live-mix style transitions throughout the LP mimic how days blend together in the thick fog of a late-summer malaise. 

But in revisiting the record this August for Cover Collector, another possibility stands out as I run back woods’ verse on “Christine,” in particular. Here, the producer’s sparse, eerie production also lends fitting support to the MC’s lyrical vignettes, which connect a series of haunted narratives around and in cars as weird, liminal spaces. What I find to be a more fitting image than the 1957 Plymouth Fury nodded to in the track title, though, emerges with the vocal reuse of The Wailers’ “Mr. Brown.” In the source track, a Lee Perry plate that was passed over as the instrumental for “Duppy Conqueror,” Bob Marley recounts a folktale where a ghost driving a three-wheeled coffin rides around Jamaica in search of a ‘Mr. Brown,’ unnerving folks from Mandeville to Sligoville. woods repeats the borrowed line thrice, like an incantation: but is this a curse or protection charm? I can hear it both ways, and that emotional ambivalence reads like an echo of the close-cropped Rembrandt painting that serves as the album cover.

– J. P. Cupps

Bill Callahan – What a Night!

Self-Released

Outside of Yo La Tengo, Bill Callahan might be the ideal model for a career in indie rock. The dude has been making music for almost four decades, documenting phases of his life through his plainspoken baritone voice and poetic lyrics, first as Smog and then under his own name. What a Night! is a 90-minute live album that sees an artist at the peak of his powers. The lineup features just Callahan on guitar and vocals, with his compatriot Jim White on drums. Together, these two craft entire worlds, whether it’s the 11-minute odyssey of “Riding for the Feeling,” the swaggering, chunky groove of “Cowboy,” or the rendition of “Coyotes” that spills out to nine minutes. It’s like witchcraft the way these two are able to conjure massive swells of emotion from such simple ingredients. It’s modest and cosmic, but just feels like a staggering achievement to take in. The setlist is a no-miss greatest hits that shows exactly why Callahan has been able to cultivate such a long and illustrious career. He’s a craftsman, and this record is like a finely furnished piece of upholstery – an oak armchair you can sink into that doesn’t creak or shift an iota. A sturdy entity that justifies its own existence in the most self-evident way. 

– Taylor Grimes

Oso Oso – basking in the glow

Triple Crown Records

As per a Billboard interview with Oso Oso’s founder and frontman, Jade Lilitri, the thesis of basking in the glow is, “taking in the good things, just accepting what comes with life.” Operating in an unabashed laissez-faire manner has always been the Long Island unit’s cut– all while effortlessly creating the kind of music that many bands spend their entire careers chasing. basking in the glow, released two years after the acclaimed sophomore LP, the yunahon mixtape, had immense shoes to fill. Lilitri, obviously undeterred by this, managed to level up with his 2019 release, which was also the project’s first on legendary label Triple Crown Records. 

At a time when emo as a genre had entered a definitive lull, basking in the glow proved that some bands in this scene were not condemned to the lightning-in-a-bottle effect of their first or second LP releases. While Oso Oso’s music toes the line between emo, pop-punk, and indie, it blends seamlessly to create infectious hooks where every song could legitimately be a single. basking in the glow is undoubtedly a love record at its core, with what could be interpreted as religious undertones woven throughout. This is probably most evident on “a morning song,” where Lilitri flippantly admits, “living on my knees, praying blessings crashed into me.” 

Whether it’s basking in the glow of faith, a thriving relationship, or the incandescent bulbs of a busted H&R Block marquee, Oso Oso confirms there is meaning to be found in whatever life throws at you.

– Brandon Cortez

Dikembe – Chicago Bowls 

Death Protector Collective

If you don’t already know, Chicago Bowls is an emo-DIY classic. In 2011, Dikembe made their debut with a digital-only EP, featuring song titles spoofing player names from the ‘95-’96 Chicago Bulls, one of the strongest NBA Finals teams in the history of the league. The track names are “Scottie Spliffen,” “Luc Bongley,” “Michael Jordank,” and “Tony Kukush.” Making your song titles portmanteaus of weed and sports celebrities is a strong choice, but one perfectly suited for such a strong EP. It opens and closes with a conversation from the coming-of-age sitcom Freaks and Geeks in which Jason Segel’s character is showing off his ornate drum set to the show’s main character, Lindsay Weir. He ends by imploring her to “find her [own] big, gigantic drum kit.” I’m writing this about a decade and a half removed from the EP’s release, and I feel like the world is much more complicated now. The fact that two primary components of the album look backward suggests Dikembe knows that feeling too.

About a year after the EP, the band released their first full-length album, Broad Shoulders. To give you an idea of what they were up against in 2012, here are a few other albums that came out that year: Floral Green by Title Fight, Sports by Modern Baseball, American Radass by Dads, Colourmeinkindness by Basement, Just Married by Glocca Morra, Colors by Sports, and Grow Up, Dude by You Blew It! In a year of heavy hitters, Dikembe not only holds their own but stands out as a band that was ahead of the curve, putting together an all-star lineup of tracks that epitomize the genre in under ten minutes.

– Braden Allmond

Janet Jackson – janet.

Virgin Records

In 1993, there was a case to be made that Janet Jackson would be the most talented Jackson from then on. This wouldn’t even have been a hot take at the time. Janet’s big brother Michael was entering a turbulent point in his career. The King of Pop was being dethroned as his personal life was brought under a fiery, scorching-hot microscope, combined with the public perception that his 1991 album Dangerous didn’t live up to the standard of his previous work. (Let me go on record that I personally love Dangerous – the New Jack Swing first half of that record still hits like Mike Tyson in his prime.) But you have to give credit where credit is due; little sis Janet proved to the entire world she’s a bona fide star, and the music she made on janet. is the exact reason why. If you said Janet is the most talented Jackson, you wouldn’t even have sounded like an ESPN talking head blowhard just saying things for clickbait. 

The early nineties were the time when Janet leaped out of the ginormous shadow left by her big brother. The music on janet. is a career-defining blend of neo-soul mixed with a touch of new jack swing, and just the right amount of house music. This was groundbreaking, superbly done, and incredibly horny. From the provocative album cover, steamy lyrics, and sensual music videos, Janet was taking the reins of her sexuality and entering adulthood. Looking past the horniness of it all, the album had mega hits: “That’s the Way Love Goes” was a chart-topping banger; “Any Time, Any Place” was an instant classic that hip-hop artists have sampled out the wazoo; “Because of Love” will have your body doing moves you didn’t even know you were capable of. This record not only set her apart from her own blood, but established Janet as the mood board for future generations of R&B artists. 

– David Williams

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Omnium Gatherum

KGLW

Omnium Gatherum is an odd bird. It's the kind of album that opens with a 20-minute sprawling environmentalist jam session before moving into… synth-pop? hip-hop? thrash metal? krautrock? bossa nova? Yeah, it's a lot to fit into one album, which is part of why this ends up being Gizz's longest album to date. Not designed as a cohesive album, it’s meant to be heard as a collection of ideas that didn't fit anywhere else. Omnium Gatherum challenges and excites by constantly taking turns that feel exciting and novel without ever slipping into being disorienting or off-putting. 

As is common for King Gizzard, the lyrics are about environmentalism, though there are some detours into less dour fare, such as in the Beastie Boys-inspired “Sadie Sorceress,” where multi-instrumentalist and singer Ambrose Kenny-Smith dons his alter ego, The Shrimpomaniac, and raps about an elderly witch. Or the easy-going “Persistence,” where frontman Stu Mackenzie uses the language of cars and motorsports to coyly talk about sex. Of course, it wouldn't be a true King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard record without at least one song about some horror with a thirst for blood, and we get that in “Predator X,” a thrash metal ripper that pays homage to Meshuggah as we see the band fully leaning into palm-muted chugging guitars in complex time signatures.

Ultimately, Omnium Gatherum comes across as a sampler platter that any newcomer to Gizz's work can approach, giving them a smorgasbord of options as they decide what flavor of Gizz they want more of. The fact that it’s also the source of many of the band’s most popular tracks is just proof of the power of Gizz.

– Noëlle Midnight

Farewell Continental – ¡Hey, Hey Pioneers!

Paper + Plastick

There’s nothing quite like the surprise and elation when you find out one of your favorite bands has a side project you knew nothing about. Whether you’re a fan of alternative side projects such as The Postal Service (Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie), The Prize Fighter Inferno (Claudio Sanchez of Coheed and Cambria), or City and Colour (Dallas Green of Alexisonfire), learning about your favorite artists’ expanded universes always felt like a reward in the fledgling days of the internet. My love for Motion City Soundtrack is deep and well-documented at this point, but I spend significantly less time singing the praises of singer Justin Courtney Pierre’s short-lived second band, Farewell Continental.

JCP put together ¡Hey, Hey Pioneers! in between the release of Motion City Soundtrack’s fourth and fifth albums, and his desire to create something different really shines across this oddball one-off. Back-to-back tracks “The Greatest of All Time (How You Feelin’ Now?)” and “Dagger, Dagger: Terror, Terror” are my go-to pulls from this album and succinctly showcase everything I love about the unfortunately standalone LP. You still get JCP’s unmistakable vocals and inherent knack for pop rock, but the addition of Kari Gray’s vocals, grittier textures, and experimental melodies creates this seductively unique quality that I love to revisit every now and again, particularly as we shift into the “-ber months.” 

– Ciara Rhiannon

Jackson Browne – For Everyman

Asylum

Taking this one literally and writing about a Brown(e) album. Widely speaking, Jackson Browne is an underrated figure in the 70s music lexicon, and one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time. Though he started by writing hit songs for others, he quickly carved himself a niche in the Laurel Canyon folk rock scene. Browne wrote the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” and Nico’s “These Days,” among others, both of which appear on his second album For Everyman.

Browne had barely graduated high school in the late 1960s when he joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, left to live and make music in Greenwich Village, and then returned to Laurel Canyon, all in the span of a few years. His youth never impeded his acumen as a songwriter, and For Everyman is perhaps his songwriter-iest. His self-titled debut album contains one of his biggest hits, and his fifth album, Running On Empty, is his most famous, but For Everyman contains his most breathtaking lyrics.

Many successful musicians get to write their own lore—to the victor go the spoils, etc. Some of it may be true, some of it may be artificially enhanced. The way Jackson Browne always tells it, he wrote “These Days” when he was 15 years old. I refuse to be skeptical of that, because it actually greatly enhances my appreciation of the song to think a 15-year-old boy wrote the lyrics “don’t confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them.”

He may not have had the flash of Don Henley, or the mystique of Nico, but Jackson Browne’s For Everyman proves he could always write any of them under the table.

– Caleb Doyle

Ms. Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Ruffhouse Records

Brown is the worn surface of a classroom desk; brown is back-to-school autumn; brown is the backdrop for a student who sits down and realizes how much they still have yet to learn. Thematically, it’s where The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill begins: the iconic album art shows Ms. Lauryn Hill’s face etched into a wooden desk, and the first track is a teacher’s roll call. What follows is a generational run of songs making melodic and emotional sense of life’s headiest lessons.

Miseducation weaves a cohesive, but far from tidy, narrative about a young woman baring her soul to lovers, navigating fame, choosing motherhood, and reconciling her roots. If any of the above sounds trite, it’s only because of the countless imitators Hill herself spawned with the release of this fundamental work. Set to timeless grooves, inimitable rap/vocal interchanges, and impossibly catchy choruses, Ms. Lauryn Hill’s songs remain the blueprint for the everywoman-philosopher journey.

Hit play on this revered record and school is in session.

– Katie Hayes

R.A.P Ferreira – bob's son: R.A.P. Ferreira in the garden level cafe of the scallops hotel

Ruby Yacht

It’s impossible to talk about Bob’s Son without specifying who the whole album was written about in the first place. The “Bob” in question is Bob Kaufman, a significant Black poet commonly associated with the Beat Generation (and, depending on who you ask, the person who came up with the name) as well as a style of art known as Afro-Surrealism. His poetry, like a lot of his Beat peers, was heavily informed by the jazz that coated the streets of the United States in the 20th century- so much so that he practiced the jazz concept of spontaneous composition for his own work, often scribbling poems on napkins and the margins of the day’s paper and leaving them there for others to discover. 

R.A.P Ferreira, formerly known as Milo and occasionally as scallops hotel, continues the tradition of Afro-Surrealism in his own music. Although he started in the nerdcore subgenre early on, Ferreira has reinvented himself artistically. Long gone are the references to niche internet communities, video games, and the feeling of being an outsider in hobbies that are predominantly white. Bob’s Son, like the man who inspired it, is instead full of knotted flows and rhymes packed with references to jazz, poetry, and the Black experience. The last song is the most direct nod to Bob one could do– it’s not a song at all, but rather a reading of one of Kaufman’s most famous poems of all time, the “Abomunist Manifesto,” a surreal, tongue-in-cheek series of declarations of a fictional belief system that mocks both capitalist and communist philosophy. 

If the admiration for Bob Kaufman doesn’t come through enough on the album, perhaps the whole reveal of the album back in 2021 will. To roll out the release, Ferreira created a virtual reality cafe (which, unfortunately, the web link has died) that is not far off from the old-school spots that Kaufman frequented in his day, shouting poetry from atop tables and scribbling spontaneous poems on whatever he had at hand. Bob’s Son plays softly in its entirety from the speakers of a boombox in the cafe. It’s a wonderful love letter not only to the man himself, but also to the affirmation in his poem “Dolorous Echo” that was true all along:

“When I die / I won’t stay / Dead.”

– Nick Sackett

Coheed and Cambria – Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow

Columbia Records

Sequels are difficult to pull off, regardless of what medium you’re talking about, but landing a great follow-up to a perfect album is absolutely a rarity in the music industry. Sequels always seem to be plagued by personnel shake-ups, unsuccessful risks, and downright bad luck, but fortunately Coheed and Cambria were still able to make something special with the sequel to their third album, No World For Tomorrow. “Sequel to the third album” sounds like a weird way to say their fourth album, but in the sci-fi opera world of Coheed, believe me, it makes sense. Despite the name consistently being shortened, No World For Tomorrow thematically and musically serves as the second volume of the band’s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV series, making for a connected pair of records.

No World For Tomorrow follows much of Coheed’s typical formula – the foreboding and melancholic intro track, the genre-hopping singles, the epic ending suite – yet feels like such a special beast even amongst their first four iconic albums. Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters filled in on drums after the original (and now current) Coheed drummer, Josh Eppard, was booted from the band, making for a unique lineup. The band really leaned into their 80s rock influences in tracks like “The Hound (of Blood and Rank)” and “The End Complete V: On The Brink” as well. Conceptually, No World For Tomorrow depicts the literal end of the world and, given the personnel changes and the band’s overall approach to the songs, that ethereal, foreign atmosphere continues to earn its place in Coheed’s discography. 

– Ciara Rhiannon

Linkin Park – Meteora

Warner Records Inc.

Linkin Park’s Meteora is the most #BionicleCore album ever. What is #BionicleCore? It’s anything I was listening to during my peak “playing with Bionicles years,” duh. This also includes bands like P.O.D., Hoobastank, and Incubus. Now that I've given you a frame of reference for what ten-year-old me was up to when Meteora came out, let’s dig in. This was a big album for me. I’m pretty sure this is the first time in my life I was ever waiting on bated breath for a new band’s second album. I had no idea what a “sophomore slump” was, and evidently neither did Linkin Park, because Meteora fucking whips. I mean, c’mon, “Faint,” “Somewhere I Belong,” “Breaking The Habit,” and “Numb” are on this thing. Most bands would kill to have four songs like that in their entire career, let alone a single record. I don’t play with Bionicles anymore, which admittedly sucks, and I still love this album, but I’ll never be able to love it the way that little boy did.

RIP Chester

– Connor Fitzpatrick

Talking Kind – It Did Bring Me Down

Lauren Records

Look, I’m gonna have to level with ya: I’ve written about It Did Bring Me Down before. The first (and so far only) solo album from Pat Graham was my favorite record of 2023, but I’ll take any excuse to extol its virtues, even if just for its brownish-yellow truck-adorned album cover. This LP came out at an absolutely pivotal time in my life, and my love affair with it started simply enough. One listen through, and a song like “Damn Shame” immediately leaps out with a melody so timeless that I often find myself humming it absentmindedly. There are fast, fun tracks like “Brand New Face” and the goofy automotive love song “My Truck,” which butt up against absolute gut-wrenchers like “Trader” and “Small.” Just masterful sequencing, incredibly funny and earnest songwriting, and the whole thing ends with a song-length ode to folk musician Greg Mendez. 

I still listen to this album a few times a month; it’s guaranteed to put me in a good mood and take me back to that important point in my life when I made a massive leap for someone I love. To have that bottled up in 27 minutes of music is nothing short of a miracle, and if you give this album a chance, I hope you find even a fraction of the spark that it's given me. 

– Taylor Grimes

Honorable Mentions

Hey, we can’t write about every album with this color, so here’s a list of some more that we feel like we should mention.

• Autopsy - Shitfun

• Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

• Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

• Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You

• Primus - Brown Album

• Shift - Spacesuit

• Bruce Springsteen - Darkness On the Edge Of Town

• Weedeater - God Luck And Good Speed

• Downhaul - How to Begin

• Pedro The Lion - Control

• Soccer Mommy - Clean

• Remember Sports - The Refrigerator

• Joyce Manor - I Used To Go To This Bar

• Wilco - Being There

• Alex G - Trick

• Sluice - Companion

• Ween - 12 Golden Country Greats

• Ethel Cain - Peacher’s Daughter

• Van Morrison - Moondance

• Oso Oso - The Yunahon Mixtape

• Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters

• Led Zeppelin - Zeppelin III 

• Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - Deja Vu

Collect some more Covers:

January Blues

February Reds

March Yellows

April Greens

May Purples

July Rainbows

The 2020 Diamond Platters: Swim Into The Sound’s Ancillary End of the Year Awards

Welp, it’s that time of the year again. Not the holidays, not Christmas, not Hanukkah, but List Season. Yes folks, it’s that wonderful time of the year where every other mainstream music publication stumbles over themselves to write compelling one-paragraph write-ups on the same 50 albums as every other blog.

Vindictive as I sound, I do have a strange affinity for List Season. I’m always curious to see what the critical consensus is and where my favorites rank among the lists (if at all), yet there’s something so off about the whole thing. A 3-page listicle of 50 different one-paragraph album write-ups has never felt indicative of the year. Sure, you can revisit the big hits, the 10 out of 10s, and the cultural touchstones, but the format itself is limited. A simple countdown doesn’t do the year justice. Where are the EPs and splits? Where are the weird headlines? Where are the cover songs? Where are the other formative musical events of the year that don’t fit into the album format? That’s why I created The Diamond Platters. 

Intentionally named to be as gaudy and opulent as possible, these awards are the highest honor that I, a music blog with impeccable taste, can possibly bestow upon an artist. Music sales, popularity, playing to swaths of adoring fans, those should all come second, because if you made it on this list, then you made it baby. 

Tongue-in-cheek sarcasm aside, this tradition began four years ago and was so well-received that I just had to do it again in 2018. That second iteration was less-well-received, but I thought ‘analytics be damned!’ and did it again in 2019 to relative success. These awards began as a way for me to circumvent publishing “just another” end of the year list. This is a look at the past 365 days in music through a unique (and sometimes hyper-specific) lens. These awards allow me to draw attention to the creations that may not get discussed on a typical publication’s end of the year list. Most importantly, it’s a way to celebrate the year in music without pitting artists against each other. Unique categories for the unique music listener, because not everything fits into a list of 50.

---

Best Acoustic Reimagining

Winner: The Wonder Years “Hoodie Weather”
Over the course of the last decade, The Wonder Years have become a stalwart of the pop-punk scene. The band has aged gracefully into each iteration of their career, gradually shifting from energetic teenage goofiness to post-college listlessness and, more recently, morbid pathos. This year, the band released the second iteration in their Burst & Decay series, allowing them to revisit their old songs and update them in a way that feels more true to where the band members are today. The group’s acoustic reimagining of 2011’s “Hoodie Weather” merges these worlds together, taking a song about the restless touring of their early 20’s and rendering it in a pensive, more idyllic light. This rendition of the track retains the sentiment at the core of the original and feels like an update that looks back on the events with reverence provided by the distance of time. It’s a revisitation, but also an update. In a way, this feels like the way the song was always meant to be heard. It’s proof that the band still has more to say, even if it’s just saying it differently.

Runner-up: Future Teens “Swiped Out”
Future teens have always straddled the line between “emo band” and something more profound. They have achieved success by using many of the same struggles and stylistic choices as your average emo group but have managed to present them in a more mature way. With their Sensitive Sessions EP, the group revisited four songs from last year’s Breakup Season and somehow managed to make them even sadder. Hell, the band even managed to make Smash Mouth sound sad, so at this point, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing they can’t do. 

Best Album Art

Winner: Vile Creature - Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
For an album that I’ve only listened to one time, the cover to Vile Creature’s Glory, Glory! Has stuck with me more than any other release this year. Capturing the heaviness and beauty at the heart of this sludgy release, this album art is simultaneously gorgeous and disturbing to look at. The cover both sticks with you and accurately indicates the exact kind of songs you’re about to take in. When flipping through vinyl at a record store, this cover is enough to stop any music fan in their tracks, and that means it’s a success on every level. 

Runner-up: Niiice. - Internet Friends
Looking at the cover for Internet Friends, you might wonder who some of these people are, but if you’re a part of the emo DIY circuit on Twitter, then you’d quickly recognize a majority of these faces. From Origami Angel to Stars Hollow and Short Fictions, this cover is a veritable Avengers Endgame of 5th wave emo. This means you can spend a majority of the album’s runtime combing over the front and back of the vinyl scanning for easter eggs while taking in songs about weed and depression, essentially the ideal way to spend an evening in 2020. 

I Miss Shows: Award For Best Live Album

Winner: Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties - Live From Asbury Park
It probably goes without saying, but concerts were fucked this year, and that meant we had to rely on livestreams and live albums to fill that void. I was fortunate enough to catch a grand total of 6 shows in the two and a half months of 2020 that things were still open. Halfway through the year, Dan Campbell (aka Aaron West) released Live From Asbury Park, a one-hour album capturing two sold-out nights of energetic, folksy, Springsteen-inspired performances from the tail end of 2019. This record is everything a live album should be. There’s crowd interaction, jaw-dropping high notes, and gorgeous brass instrumentation. On top of all this, the live rendition of “Divorce and the American South” is one of the only songs to make me cry outright this year, so this record is worth checking out for that fact alone. 

Runner-up: Bon Iver - Blood Bank (10th Anniversary Edition)
I’m a longtime Bon Iver guy and seeing Justin Vernon treat the tenth anniversary of Blood Bank with such reverence warmed my heart. It’s not exactly a sizable release in the band’s discography, but still a memorable stopgap after the breakthrough success of For Emma, Forever Ago. Even though the EP’s tenth-anniversary release is essentially just the original EP plus a collection of four live tracks, the selection of songs taken from different locations across their 2018 tour makes it feel like a lot of time and thought was put into its presentation. Having (finally) seen the group in concert back in 2019, I can say that the selections on this release do an excellent job of bottling up the raw emotional power of these songs when rendered live on-stage. 

Best Sequenced Album

Winner: Ratboys - Printer’s Devil
Longtime readers know that I’m a diehard supporter of short albums. I’m already a big believer in ‘less is more,’ but the longer an album is, the more opportunities there are for lulls and rough patches. While it may or may not end up on my album of the year list in a few weeks, there’s no denying that Ratboy’s third album is an immaculately-crafted work. It’s perfectly paced with peppy, upbeat tracks opening each side, long wistful passages right when they’re needed, and a wonderfully pensive closing track. In other words, this is a masterfully-structured release that hits all the right beats at all the right times. 

Runner-up: 100 Gecs - 100 Gecs and the Tree of Clues
Nine times out of ten, you could hand me a remix album and I’d throw it straight in the trash. Even for bands that I love, all a remix typically makes me want to do is stop listening to it and go turn on the original. There are some rare examples where a remix can elevate the original or cast it in a new light, but on 100 Gecs and the Tree of Clues, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink is included, yet somehow everything works. Essentially an album-length victory lap for the breakthrough hyperpop act, Tree of Clues sees the duo turning their eclectic 2019 album over to a host of collaborators and conspirators. These guests create ecstasy-fueled EDM bangers, hash noise rock assaults, and everything in between. Every song is different from the ones that came before it, which means there’s never a dull moment.

Remix of the Year

Winner: 100 gecs “ringtone remix featuring Charli XCX, Kero Kero Bonito, and Rico Nasty”
When 100 gecs dropped their ringtone remix at the beginning of the year, I’d never experienced anything quite like it. The mix of Charli XCX’s PC Music pop, the brash bars provided by Rico Nasty, and the kawaii interlude courtesy of Kero Kero Bonito proved to be an intoxicating mixture that felt like falling in love. This remix takes an already great track and re-infuses it with that feeling of meeting someone you’ve fallen head over heels for. A powerful emotion to have bottled up in a three-and-a-half-minute song.

Runner-up: Origami Angel - Origami Angel Broke Minecraft
Once we all collectively realized that gigs weren’t happening this year, Origami Angel did the only logical thing and released a Minecraft-themed remix of their greatest hits for a livestreamed concert taking place in the same game. Despite the complicated and meme-like origins surrounding its release, I’ll never say no to new Gami, much less Gami with Lil John drops.

Best Hiking Album

Winner: Cory Wong - Trail Songs Dusk/Dawn 
On top of releasing one album with Vulfpeck and an album with the Fearless Flyers, Cory Wong also somehow found time to release a solo album in January, a live album, a jazzy piano record, a second two-part live album, and another solo album. On top of all this, he also managed to release a conceptual double EP at the peak of summer that (literally) walks the listener through two different halves of a hiking trip. The first release focuses on the sunny hike up the trail, while the second release captures the starry night spent around the campfire. As someone who got into hiking this year, I can’t articulate how beautifully Wong manages to capture the feeling of boundless exploration and wonder that one experiences on their way up a trail, as well as the sense of satisfied triumph you feel on your way back down. It’s a beautiful breath of fresh air that I can’t wait to revisit all winter long.

Runner-up: Empty Country - Empty Country
Empty Country’s self-titled release is an arid, jangly album that walks the line between emo, indie rock, and even a touch of heartland Americana. Much like Wild Pink, this is a band that fuses all of these sounds together into something fresh and accessible. Listening to Empty Country feels comparable to a lackadaisical stroll through a field, or the view from the top of a hill. 

Best Interpolation

Winner: Dance Gavin Dance “Born To Fail” (Interpolating Tides of Man)
When I first heard “Born To Fail,” I was digging it. Then, when I heard Tilian quoting my favorite Tides of Man song a full decade after he first sang it, the song officially blew my mind. It never even occurred to me that a band was even ALLOWED to do this, but like everything else that Dance Gavin Dance does, they made it sound great.

Runner-up: Gleemer “TTX” (Interpolating Lesley Gore)
While the interpolation on “Born To Fail” is fantastic because of the reference track's mind-bending context, Gleemer's “TTX” is noteworthy for an entirely different reason. Here, the band interpolates Lesley Gore's “It’s My Party” and integrates it so seamlessly that the lyrics sound completely organic.

Best Music Video

Winner: Rico Nasty “Own It”
Every frame of this video is art. From the bikini-clad Hellraiser look to the babushka-adorned champagne tea party, “Own It” truly feels like Rico Nasty in her element. There are bright colors, triple-take costume designs, and animated in-your-face movements that come across as equal parts boisterous and calculated—a perfect, disorienting crash course into the world of Rico Nasty. 

Runner-up: Dogleg “Wartortle”
This seems like a safe place to admit that Clerks blew my mind when I first saw it in college. Not even a casual “blew my mind and liked it,” but an “I need to go sit by myself and think about that movie because it spoke to something that deep within me.” I’m a little embarrassed by that fact six-ish years down the line, but seeing Dogleg’s faithful recreation of the Kevin Smith classic in the music video for “Wartortle” made me feel a little bit better about my regrettably deep-rooted connection.

Best Music-Related Game of the Year

Winner: Dikembe: The Video Game
I’ll admit this category was not entirely my idea but came from Dikembe themselves jokingly suggesting it on Twitter. Despite the artificial creation of this award, this is precisely what the Diamond Platters were made for. After all, how many other DIY bands have the brains big enough to promote their upcoming record with a platformer? Just one, and it was Dikembe.

Runner-up: Get To The Gig: The Chillwavve Records Video Game
In a similar vein, Get To The Gig from Chillwavve Records is a throwback RPG that finds its hero fulfilling the title’s promise and meeting a roster of DIY emo icons along the way. If that wasn’t enough, the “leaked” song at the end of the game made the entire journey feel worth it. Eat your heart out, Travis Scott Fortnite performance. 

Best Guest Feature

Winner: Uwade Akhere on Shore
I may not have liked Fleet Foxes’ fourth studio album, but Uwade Akhere’s contributions are undeniably the record’s high points. In fact, the band places a lot of weight on her shoulders for an unknown talent. From opening and closing the album to contributing gorgeous melodies to the album’s best cut, it’s painful to imagine what Shore would have been without her.

Runner-up: Morgan Freeman on Savage Mode II
Morgan Freeman’s dulcet tones are pretty much the last thing you’d expect to hear when clicking play on the newest 21 Savage mixtape, yet on the sequel to 2017’s Savage Mode, they somehow manage to fit perfectly. From welcoming the listener to the album, giving a detailed explanation on the difference between ‘snitches’ and ‘rats,’ to closing the tape out with a reminder to “stay in savage mode,” it’s fair to say this release wouldn’t have been the same without him.

Best Cover Song

Winner: Phoebe Bridgers & Maggie Rogers “Iris”
2020 was a banner year for Phoebe Bridgers; she released her sophomore album to critical acclaim and (relative) enthusiasm from long-time fans. She earned a slew of Grammy nominations, performed at Red Rocks, released her annual Christmas song, and had a seemingly never-ending barrage of attention-grabbing interviews. The arguable peak of Phoebe-dom happened when, during a particularly bleak moment on Election Day, she tweeted, “if trump loses I will cover iris by the goo goo dolls.” Not only did Trump end up losing, but Phoebe stuck to her word, releasing the song for only 24 hours on Bandcamp with all proceeds going to Fair Fight, an organization dedicated to fighting for free and fair elections. On top of all this, both Bridgers and Rogers earned their first Billboard Hot 100 with this cover based solely off of Bandcamp Purchases alone. The song itself is an absolutely gorgeous and heartfelt rendition of the late-90s radio banger, a genre of music I’ve found myself increasingly unironically drawn to over the course of quarantine. If anything, Phoebe’s version of the song only further solidified my belief in the earnest beauty that lies at the heart of corny songs from my childhood. 

Runner-up: Pelafina “Cardigan”
I’ll be honest. I have no idea how I stumbled across Pelafina, let alone became a follower of theirs on Bandcamp, but when I got an email announcing their Taylor Swift covers, I bought them without hesitation. TS finds the band revisiting two recent Swift hits, “Cardigan” and “Cruel Summer,” both of which the band casts in a new and loving light that’s both faithful to the source material while retaining their style as a band, exactly what a good cover should be. 

Headline of the Year

Winner: “Scooby-Doo Is Going on Tour With Björk's Costume Designer”
The fact that 2020 robbed us of this experience is nothing short of a national tragedy. 

Runner-up: “Sex Pistols star Johnny Rotten bitten by a flea on his penis after rescuing squirrels”
Look, if I had to read this, y’all do too.

Porch Beer Album of the Year

Winner: Routine - And Other Things
Porch Beers, a term coined by me and popularized with my two-follower Spotify playlist, is a subgenre of music characterized by jangly guitars, lackadaisical lyricism, and relaxed rhythm sections. It’s country-tinged indie rock that pairs flawlessly with a porch and a pink sky on a summer evening, and there wasn’t a release this year that captured that feeling better than And Other Things. Surprise announced in the last quarter of the year, this 17-minute EP brings together partners Melina Duterte of Jay Som and Annie Truscott of Chastity Belt for a collection of songs that feels as fulfilling as a full-length. As you’d expect from such a short release, the two waste no time jumping straight into it with “Candy Road” which sparkles like desert sand in the midday sun. The titular “And Other Things” is a masterwork of revelatory reverb. Meanwhile, “Calm and Collected” sends things off perfectly with an extended instrumental stretch that leaves just enough room for reflection while you queue the record up again and grab another beer. 

Runner-up: Kevin Morby - Sundowner
With songs like “Valley,” “Campfire,” and of course the titular “Sundowner,” Kevin Morby’s sixth studio album feels tailor-made for porch beers or long, reflective drives home. It’s laid-back, countrified, fresh air music that practically begs you to crack open a cold one, inhale some fresh air, and appreciate your surroundings.

Best Gothic Country Album

Winner: Holy Motors - Horse
If someone were to ask me what Gothic Country is, I would simply show them the cover art for songs like Holy Motors’ “Country Church” and “Endless Night,” then I’d hit play on the band’s excellent sophomore album. 

Runner-up: BAMBARA - Stray
Swirling together a mesmerizing blend of gothic country and post-punk, Bambara’s Shadow On Everything was a dark horse entry in my 2018 Album of the Year list. Two years later, they’ve continued to develop that sound into a new release that’s haunting, unsettling, groovy, and even singable at times. 

Favorite Longform Piece I Wrote This Year

Winner: The Stark Maximalism of Sufjan Stevens
Spoiler alert: sometimes I use these awards to re-promote some of my old articles. While it may seem like insular self-promotion, what better time than the end of the year to look back on some of my favorite pieces of writing? Literally the first article I published this calendar year, my retrospective on Sufjan’s Carrie & Lowell was a long time coming. Bringing together years of listening history, a live album, and a B-sides collection, I felt like I finally said everything I’d spent five years ruminating on. Not only that, I feel like I was able to articulate myself completely and beautifully, which is one of the most satisfying experiences as a writer. 

Runner-up: An Introduction To Post-Rock
Post-rock is a genre that’s gotten me through a lot of tough times. It’s scored countless hours of reading, writing, and creating for me. It’s a pretty specific but deep genre, which means it’s infinitely rewarding to get into. In this piece, I did my best to put the wordless power of the genre into several paragraphs, a task that proved to be both rewarding and herculean. Intended to serve as an entry point for someone new to post-rock, this post takes nine of genre’s best records and explains the differences between each so someone can jump in with an album that’s up their alley stylistically then (ideally) journey in deeper from there. 

Y’all Sleep: Most Overlooked and Underappreciated Release of the Year 

Winner: Marble Teeth - Park
Do you like Slaughter Beach, Dog? What about Oso Oso? How Do you feel about Field Medic? If you responded positively to any of the above questions, then what are you waiting for? Press play on Marble Teeth’s Park immediately. While Cars weaved minute-long stories of high school football players, paranoid Pop-Tart connoisseurs, and lifelong love, Park ventures into more polished and personable territory. While Cars centered around acoustic guitar licks and simplistic electronic beats, Park favors a full(er) band approach that strikes at the heart of midwest mediocrity. Still centered around Caleb Jefson’s astute observations of the human condition, these songs sway forward in the most approachable and unexpected ways. There’s nothing quite like reveling in the world of awkward relationships, midnight dances, and Connecticut rest stops depicted in Park. This is a superb and lived-in release that is more creative, wondrous, and well-observed than almost anything I’ve listened to this year.

Runner-up: Fixer - Married
Portland, Oregon doesn't have much of a music scene because if there was any justice in this world, then Fixer’s sophomore album would have roughly one million streams by now. A lowkey indie rock release from the beginning of quarantine, this record is catchy, groovy, and immaculately produced. A literal shame that more people haven’t dug into these songs because this 25-minute release is worth its weight in gold. 

Best “Making Of” Documentary

Winner: Glass Beach - the making of the first glass beach album
Have 90 minutes to kill and don’t feel like watching a movie? Well, it’s hard to beat the making of the first glass beach album. The perfect introduction to the emo-ish prog-ish indie-ish band, this feature-length documentary is up for free on Youtube and details (as you would expect) the creation of the band’s titular first album. It’s fun, it’s funky, it’s a journey. 

Runner-up: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Ratty
Have another 30 minutes to kill? Well, Ratty is a documentary from genre-agnostic Aussie rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. This mini-movie details the creation of their thrash metal masterpiece Infest The Rats Nest, which wound up on our 2019 Album of the Year List. For a band as entertaining and musically diverse as King Gizz, this doc is a great peek behind the curtain into the psych rocker’s creative process. 

Best Cover Song Part II: Electric Boogaloo

Winner: The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die “In Circles”
The World Is A Beautiful Place are emo legends. Sunny Day Real Estate are emo legends. It would only make sense that the two should meet at some point, and this cover bridges the gap between emo generations like nothing before. It shouldn’t be surprising that TWIABP does “In Circles” such justice, but they also manage to put their own spin on it that feels distinctly modern. It’s gorgeous and honestly just makes me want a full album of Sunny Day Real Estate covers. 

Runner-up: Dogleg & Worst Party Ever - go ep
It started, as many things do, with a tweet. Late November, Michigan punk band Dogleg pitted a fight against Florida emo rockers Worst Party Ever. Accusations were made, shots were fired, the gauntlet was thrown. This jokingly playful beef culminated in the two bands exchanging covers, all of which were collected in a split that warms my emo heart.

Most Triggering High School Metalcore Phase Flashbacks

Winner: Mikau - Phantoma
This year I stumbled across a vinyl copy of The Word Alive’s debut EP Empire at a local record shop. I’m pretty sure I audibly gasped and quickly threw down however much money allowed me to leave the store with the record in-hand. If that reaction makes sense to you, then Mikau’s Phantoma is likely to spark that same corner of your latent 2010’s Hot Topic brain as it did me. There are chuggy riffs, crabcore breakdowns, and synthy interludes. In short, this is the type of band who would have signed to Rise Records in 2011 and raked in money by the thousands every summer at Warped Tour. Instead, we’re lucky enough to have them in 2020, where they can be appreciated for the nostalgic, lost art form that they really are. 

Runner-up: If I Die First - My Poison Arms
When I first stumbled across If I Die First on Spotify, I didn’t even know what genre they were. When I clicked play on My Poison Arms and was greeted electronicore in the vein of This Romantic Tragedy, I was immediately smitten. This EP would have fit in perfectly on my iPod Classic circa 2009, so I am legally obligated to love it with every molecule in my latent metalcore-loving heart.

Song of the Summer

Winner: Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion “WAP”
Let’s just get it out of the way; “WAP” is a great song. The track is catchy, dirty, and sexually-liberating, which is all well and good, but what strikes me most about this cartoonishly horny hip-hop cut is the fact that it managed to be so pervasive despite a nationwide shutdown. I know there were (unfortunately) still people out partying this summer, but this song’s ability to spread through TikTok, Twitter, and various other social media is what really cemented it as an artistic achievement in the face of a distinctly non-WAP summer. 

Runner-up: Dababy & Roddy Ricch “Rockstar”
I know it was a quarantined summer, and having a hit song during this time feels like it comes with a giant asterisk. However, if your song managed to make its way to me (an uncool white guy in his late-20s), I can only assume it’s reached a level of cultural pervasiveness that is worthy of praise. 

Favorite Review I Wrote This Year

Winner: Young Jesus - Welcome To Conceptual Beach
More shameless self-promo, this time in review form! While those earlier articles were longer-form pieces, my review for Young Jesus’ phenomenal fifth album is short, pointed, and poured out of me in one writing session. Sometimes the most challenging part of writing a review is just figuring out your way in. Young Jesus provided so many different ways in on their latest record, the problem became figuring out which one to pursue. Luckily, I feel like I did the album justice and spoke articulately to the statement that it’s making. 

Runner-up: Sinai Vessel - Ground Aswim
Much like my Young Jesus review, my review for Ground Aswim poured out of me over the course of one impassioned afternoon that I spent with the record. Also, much like the Young Jesus album, Sinai Vessel’s sophomore effort is a measured, precious, and relaxing album with a statement to make coming at a prescient time. 

Best Cover Song Part III: Return of the King

Winner: Lucy Dacus “Lips of an Angel”
Apologies for three identical categories, but we got lots of great covers this year, and I want to talk about “Lips of an Angel.” Originally by the American rock band Hinder, “Lips of an Angel” arrived upon our earth in 2005 and is arguably the toxic masculinity anthem. There’s cheating, gaslighting, pleading, and everything else you’d expect to hear while listening to a shitty dude talk to his ex on the phone. Lucy Dacus takes the band’s cringy lyricism and re-frames it from a distinctly femme perspective that de-fangs the negativity and replaces it with a layer of deeply-felt beauty. 

Runner-up: SASAMI “Toxicity”
If you were to sit me down and just start connecting random artists to songs they’ve covered, I would never, ever, in a million years, have connected indie rocker SASAMI to System of A Down. I suppose given the band’s semi-ubiquitous prevalence throughout the early to mid-2000s, it’s unsurprising that an artist currently in her late-20s would have an intimate familiarity with the nu-metal group. What’s impressive is not only how incredible her cover sounds, but how drastically different it is from the original. Proof that a good song is a good song no matter what, and a good artist can always take a good song and make it sound even better. 

Greatest Addition to the Christmas Canon

Winner: 100 gecs “sympathy 4 the grinch”
Back at the beginning of December, I mindlessly liked this tweet from 100 gecs and never gave it a second thought. It had never occurred to me that the hyperpop duo even could release a Christmas song. That was simply too awesome a combination of my tastes and interests to exist in 2020. We didn’t deserve it as a society. When the gecs dropped “sympathy 4 the grinch” less than 24 hours later, I was shook to my core. The perfect Christmas song. Finally. 

Runner-up: girl in red “two queens in a king sized bed”
As a man, I feel unilaterally unqualified to speak on the queerness of “two queens in a king sized bed.” What I will speak on however, is how beautiful, soft, and caring this song is. Pairing a piano with faint jingle bells and a pulsating drum build, this song is as loving, caring, and gorgeous as you’d want your lover to be. It’s gay as hell and Christmassy as fuck; what’s not to like? 

Most Impactful Beat Drop

Winner: Beach Bunny “Rearview”
Complete candor: this song was neck-and-neck in the running for my song of the year, but just barely got overtaken in the homestretch. That said, it’s still one of my favorites of the year, and this list would have felt utterly incomplete without its inclusion. “Rearview” is a mid-album cut off Beach Bunny’s fantastic debut album. It begins simply enough; a gentle guitar paired with Lili Trifilio’s confessional vocals. As she pines for her unrequited love over the guitar, her strums gradually pick up energy, morphing into a more-pointed riff. In the last minute of the song, she lands on the track’s namesake and pauses for a moment, then proceeds to sing a simple rhyme over a cool bassline. “You love me, I love you / You don't love me anymore, I still do. I'm sorry, I'm trying / I hate it when you catch me crying” As these words emerge from her lips, a whirl of feedback tears through the track along with two drum hits that make way for the rest of the band. From there, the group introduces a towering riff that makes the listener feel like a speck of dust in their all-encompassing emotional oasis. It’s goosebump-inducing and possibly my single favorite moment in any song this entire year. 

Runner-up: Soccer Mommy “Gray Light”
Sophie Allison knows how to end an album. From the quiet “Switzerland” to the confessional and forlorn “Waiting For Cars,” this fact has been clear from the very outset of her career. But two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. Allison ends Clean with the soul-decimating “Wildflowers” which works its way up from a solitary acoustic guitar to an ascending electronic whir that feels like every emotion you’ve ever had lifting you up into the air like an alien tractor beam. “gray light” accomplishes a similar effect, winding up from a slow soul-crushing spacey electronic bed into a weird reversed electronic “snap” that commands all attention then sends the listener off on a dreamy Mazzy Star guitar slide. It’s bliss. 

Most Hypnotizing Bassline 

Winner: Seahaven “Moon”
Seahaven made us wait seven years for this record, and honestly, the bassline on “Moon” alone makes that wait worth it. Placed in the skillful hands of Mike DeBartolo, this song sounds like it was made with the express purpose of winding around his knotty basswork. It’s dark, witchy, and downright spooky yet utterly captivating. I swear I could listen to just the bass on this song for the album’s full runtime. 

Runner-up: Thank You, I’m Sorry “Follow Unfollow”
Admittedly more energetic than “Moon,” “Follow Unfollow” from midwest emo outfit Thank You, I’m Sorry features a dynamic, bouncy bass that drives the song forward. As the bass, courtesy of Bethunni Schreiner, bounces back and forth, the listener is left to watch in awe, taking the track in like a tennis match, merely trying to keep up.

Find Your Throne: Award For Most Positive Song of the Year

Winner: Cliffdiver “Gas City”
Positivity felt in short supply this year. Maybe that’s why songs like “Gas City” stuck out so much from the crowd. Cosmically affirming and infinitely singable, this single from the Oklahoma-based emo group also introduced the group’s new co-lead singer Briana Wright who brings a soaring quality to the song that makes it all the more uplifting. Also featuring the group’s usual mix of tappy emo, honest lyricism, and soulful saxophone, this song has become my go-to whenever I need a pick-me-up.

Runner-up: Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly “My Friends Are My Power (Spoiler Alert!)”
Any song that opens with a Kingdom Hearts sample and throws directly into a moshpit volley of drums is a winner in my book. I won’t give away the “spoiler” here, but it’s well worth the 1:39-second listen.

Lose Your Throne: Award For Most Self-Deprecating Song of the Year

Winner: Cheem “Smooth Brain”
I feel that “Smooth Brain” really captures the essence of this year well. Between quarantine, the election, and everything in between, I think I could have scraped my brain into a blender and turned it on high for 360 days straight, and I still would have kept it in better shape than whatever I ended up doing. Blending a Patrick Stump-like chorus with pained bars and a glittery instrumental, “Smooth Brain” is the real song of the summer. 

Runner-up: I Love Your Lifestyle “Stupid”
Sometimes everything just plain sucks. You are stupid, I am stupid, he is stupid, she is stupid, this whole thing is stupid. That’s almost literally the sentiment captured in “Stupid” by I Love Your Lifestyle. Built around a repetitive, building, earworm of a chorus, this is a song that sounds more like the things you mutter under your breath while working your retail job dealing with abject nonsense day-in, day-out. Truly an anthem for these stupid ages.

Best Posthumous Album

Winner: Pop Smoke - Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon
Posthumous albums are inherently an uphill battle. You never know how much was created before the artist’s passing and how much was studio fuckery. While Pop Smoke’s death at the beginning of 2020 was an outright tragedy, Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon is nothing short of a triumph. From star-studded features, teeth-gritting bangers, and career-affirming assists, this record does everything right. There’s a diverse wealth of sounds, and Pop Smoke rarely feels overshadowed on his own release, which is an all-too-common pratfall of the posthumous album. Shoot For The Stars is already one of the best trap albums of the decade, it’s just a shame we never got to see Pop Smoke’s career flourish the way he deserved. 

Runner-up: Mac Miller - Circles
Mac Miller’s death at the end of 2018 came as a shock to pretty much everyone. Having spent a decade developing his sound from frat rap mixtapes as a teen to the jazzy poetry he released just a week before his death, Mac was a poster boy for artistic development on top of being an all-around great dude. Circles continues the sound that Mac was fleshing out on Swimming and ends his story in a satisfying place that offered fans some semblance of closure. 

Record Label of the Year

Winner: Acrobat Unstable Records
At nearly every step of the way this year, I was amazed by the North Carolina upstart indie label Acrobat Unstable. Initially conceived as a way for labelmates Eric Smeal and Martin Hacker-Mullin to make tapes and merch for bands that they liked, this quickly ballooned from local acts to bands like Short Fictions and the Callous Daoboys. This year, the label helped release projects from the likes of Carpool, Charm, Acne, Ultimate Frisbee, and Thirty Cent Fare, none of whom I’d heard of before this year, but all of which blew me away. The label also released hundreds of vinyl records and helped bands like Hospital Bracelet, Jail Socks, Stars Hollow, and Origami Angel release merch and vinyl. If next year bears even a semblance of the label’s success in 2020, then we are in for a wild ride. 

Runner-up: Moon Physics
While Acrobat Unstable wins for turning me on to a constant stream of new music throughout 2020, Moon Physics earns their runner-up spot for positing a new way that a label can operate in this capitalist hellscape. Centered around monthly “drops,” this Tony-Hawk-inspired entity describes themselves as a “zero-profit, anti-capitalist” springboard for artists. In between dropping tapes, vinyl, and fingerboards, the label acts as an educational resource that also splits the profit of sales between the artists and local community organizations. An aspirational model that I hope sets the tone for a new decade of labels. I cannot wait to see what’s in store for the organization in 2021.

Honorable mentions to Good Luck Charm Records, Chillwavve Records, and Take This To Heart Records because each of these labels consistently dropped fire releases all throughout the year.

Came Out Swinging: Best New Band of 2020

Winner: It Doesn’t Bother Me
You can say a lot of bad things about 2020, but at least it gave us It Doesn’t Bother Me. This Midwest emo project may have had the misfortunate timing of dropping their debut EP at the height of a quarantined spring, but the way I see it, that just gives them more time to rack up fans who will soon be screaming along to these songs in a sweaty Michigan basement. Alternating between catchy Mom Jeans choruses and You, Me, And Everyone We Know-esque vocal stylings, the band is more than equipped to create a string of iconic emo songs ready for Spotify playlists, emo mixtapes, and infinitely-bigger stages. Get hip now before they blow up. 

Runner-up: Blue Deputy
Blue Deputy didn’t exist before 2020, and now they do. That alone makes this year worth it. A creative (and romantic) partnership between Andy Bunting and Brody Hamilton, Blue Deputy explores the tender spaces of relationships that can only be observed as you’re living them. Look no further than the gorgeous double New Jersey / I Hate Steven Singer for two catchy emo-flavored bedroom pop songs that sparkle and glisten like the glitter on a freshly-uncapped gel pen. These two will do amazing things, and we’re lucky that 2020 allowed such beautiful songs as these into existence. 

Biggest Come-up

Winner: Roddy Ricch
Roddy Ricch began the year with a chart-topping #1 song that fended off singles from both Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. He contributed to the (*secondary) Song of the Summer with Dababy and tossed out features to the likes of Gunna, Pop Smoke, and Ty Dolla Sign. In short, it was Roddy Ricch’s year, unfortunately, the stars just happened to align for him on a really shitty year. 

Runner-up: Redveil
Within the space of one calendar year, Maryland-based Redveil went from an unknown Twitter rapper to one of the internet’s hottest upcoming artists. A baby-faced 16, Redveil created a mixtape that single-handedly made waves all over Twitter and garnered millions of streams, all before he was legally allowed to drive.

Best Revisitation

Winner: Into It. Over It. - Canada Sessions
I respect Evan Thomas Weiss as the face of Fourth Wave emo. I respect his output, I cherish his voice, and I love his dynamic autumnal album from this year. While I love and appreciate his body of work, nothing sits quite as close to my heart as 52 Weeks. That record was formative in my emo upbringing, and it makes me sad he’s “moved on” with albums that have had bigger hit songs. Nothing speaks to me quite the way “Basto” does. Nothing gets me singing quite like “A Song About Your Party.” Nothing feels quite as bile-filled as “Bullied Becomes the Bully,” and honestly, that’s a bummer. I had these songs all but written off until 2020 when Weiss released Canada Sessions, a short EP that saw him revisiting two different decade-old tracks off his breakthrough year of music. Obviously better produced than the original tracks, both “Embracing Facts” and “22 Syllables” absolutely shine in this new context, slightly updated to reflect Weiss’ more recent artistic leanings but still tapping into the same younger soul that created them. An affirmation and a celebration. 

Runner-up: The Fearless Flyers “Adrienne and Adrianne”
The Venn diagram of members between Vulfpeck and Fearless Flyers is almost a circle, and with four iterations of one song under their belt, Vulfpeck are no stranger to revisiting a tune. While I admittedly have a propensity for the band’s earlier instrumental EPs, I have grown to love the Fearless Flyers for the very same reason as Vulf; an abundance of proficient, funky, fun instrumentals. When I heard the sounds of an eight-year-old Vulfpeck deep cut coming out of my 2020 Fearless Flyers record, I just about lost my shit. It’s like putting on an old winter coat; fits like a charm. 

Best Deployment of a Harmonica

Winner: Slow Pulp “Montana”
Essentially the end credits to Slow Pulp’s fantastic debut album, “Montana” is a laid-back and relaxing track that’s as easy as the rolling hills that the song seeks to depict. The song builds to a hypnotic repetition as lead singer Emily Massey pleads, “come on get out of my head,” and becomes fixated on the word “head,” singing it over and over until the song’s close. The deployment of harmonica midway through the track not only breaks the repetitive wave-like nature of the lyrics but feels like a stand-in for something larger than the piece itself, something spiritual I haven’t quite figured out yet. 

Runner-up: Field Medic “HEADCASE”
Kevin Patrick Sullivan (better known as Field Medic) has made his name as an outspoken and famously-mulleted poet, equal parts emo and horny. While the Bob Dylan comparisons can feel simultaneously on-the-nose and unfair, sometimes it’s a hard thing to avoid when one pairs acoustic guitar with harmonica this much. “HEADCASE” is a fast-moving Field Medic track where the harmonica comes in at just the right spot, punctuating a top-tapping chorus and capping off an array of confessional sentiments found in each verse.

Best Split of the Year 

Winner: Arcadia Grey, Oolong, Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly, dannythestreet - Fatal 4 Way Split
To some degree, many of the big bands from the 5th Wave Emo Movement have already revealed themselves to the world… However, if you were to ask me who some of the best, most promising upcoming bands in the scene are, I’d point you to this split. All harnessing the same jittery zoomer energy, this lineup features some of the best bands currently releasing music on the regular. From the moshpit-opening body dysmorphia found on Arcadia Grey’s “Braum” to the propulsive combo of tapping and screaming found on Oolong’s “Dippin Daniel,” I really believe there’s something for everything on this meeting of the emo minds. Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly kicks their contribution off with a fist-balling Mortal Kombat sample that makes me want to start swinging the same way “2nd Sucks” did way back in high school. dannythestreet closes the rumble royale off with a glimmering earworm of a melody that leaves me hopeful for the next generation of emo acts. 

Runner-up: Snarls, The Sonder Bombs - A Really Cool Split
As previously established above with the Dogleg x Worst Party Ever split, I’m a sucker for bands covering each other’s songs. It’s cute and sometimes just makes sense in some cosmic way. A Really Cool Split from Snarls and Sonder Bombs sees the two Cleveland bands swapping songs to great effect on top of an acoustic rendition and a long-awaited pre-album single. It’s a loving little pit stop for both bands, one coming hot off one of the most underrated indie pop records of the year and the other ramping up to drop one of the best of 2021. 

Best Release From 2019 That I Didn’t Give A Fair Shake

Winner: Hovvdy - Heavy Lifter
By the time fall rolled in, it was simultaneously jarring and calming. Precipitated by the changing of the leaves and sharp snaps of fall temperatures, the fall season still managed to take me by surprise, but I’ll admit that quarantine has thrown off all sense of time. As I mentally relegated myself to the frigid wintertime, I found Heavy Lifter to be a perfect reflection of my mental state. Somewhat inward, a little bit scattered, and wholly comforting, I did not give this album the time of day back in 2019. Aside from the warming blanket of comfort, what I find more artistically impressive about this record is the way that it can make banal things like falling asleep to YouTube and free parking practically romantic in melody. Never again will I sleep on Hovvdy.

Runner-up: Orville Peck - Pony
While I had seen Orville Peck back in 2019 (his half-mask, half-tassel cowboy hat is hard to miss after all), I realized I had never actually listened to him until this year. Within seconds of hitting play on “Dead of Night,” I realized I’d made a grave mistake. Pony is a dark, mysterious country record centered around Peck’s smoldering baritone, which lends an air of genre-based familiarity. Aside from the record’s immaculate production, what makes these familiar genre trappings fresh is how Peck updates the topics to feel more reflective of our society as it stands. He talks candidly about queerness, drug use, and his own emotions, three things the country of yesteryear would never touch with a ten-foot pole. In other words, Pony represents a long-needed update to an entire genre that everyone is quick to write off; I’m just glad I got here when I did. 

Song of the Year

Winner: Spanish Love Songs “Losers 2”
Seeing Spanish Love Songs live was one of the last concerts I went to this year, and (apparently) one of the last concerts I’ll go to for a while. I could focus on that lack of live music and dwell in a pit of despair, but instead, I’d rather focus on the freedom I felt that night screaming along to my favorite songs with a wall of sweaty fans. 

“Losers 2” is easily my favorite song of the year. Centered around sharp lyricism and a cathartic build, this track quickly became an outlet for me early in 2020. It represents something bigger, something I may not experience for a while, yet experience every day. 

For roughly two minutes, lead singer Dylan Slocum finds himself displaced, revisiting former homes, dead relatives, and economic inequalities. Destined to die poor and wake up forever tired, Slocum has no choice but to continue. Third jobs enter the picture, but the larger scene of mortality and capitalism never fades. It’s a life that many millennials can understand. A life where nothing bad can ever happen because a single accident, a single diagnosis, a single unplanned event can throw your entire future into disarray. Minimum wages aren’t fought for by our politicians, but by mothers, forced to rideshare to demonstrations because they don’t have vehicles of their own. The entire thing paints this richly-detailed picture of a deeply-failed country. Of a failed generation. Of the world in which we currently exist. 

About midway through, the song transitions to the bridge and here’s the part that gets me every. fucking. time. Just as Slocum self-deprecatingly describes himself as a “walking tragic ending,” something shifts inside him. The instrumental cuts out to a single warbling synth note which makes way for the most poignant sentiment of the entire record. The bridge, which I’ll paste here in-full, is a pitch-perfect depiction of this stalemate between economic and emotional devastation.

So I'm leaving the city / Maybe the country / Maybe the earth
Gonna find a place of my own

Where the fuckups aren't cops / Patrolling neighbourhoods they're afraid of / And the rest of us won't burn out / Displacing locals from neighbourhoods we're afraid of

Now if we weren't bailed out / Every time by our parents we'd be dead / What's gonna happen when they're dead?”

There’s really nothing else I can say.

Runner-up: Mandancing “Johnny Freshman”
Mandancing released one of the most underrated emo albums of 2020. The record is packed with gorgeous slice of life tales of love, loss, and friendship. There are stellar performances, jaw-dropping arrangements, and earnest emo deliveries aplenty. Amongst an album that’s so consistently great, my personal peak comes at the tail end with the closing track “Johnny Freshman.”

This enigmatic and slow-moving song is centered around a dual vocal and instrumental build that both peak in the same cathartic way before whisking the listener off on a shimmering emo outro that’s reminiscent of some of my favorite songs of all time. “Johnny Freshman” borrows the same pleading sentiment as Julien Baker’s “Go Home” as lead singer Stephen G. Kelly belts “would you please come home?” over a near-bear instrumental bed. These pleas repeat and eventually culminate in a goosebump-inducing cry of the same phrase as the instrumental grows in scope, eventually consuming the entire track. For 90 seconds the guitar reverberates, the drums roll, and the bass shakes as the band plays out the same ascending chord strum dozens of times, lending the track this meditative quality that gives the listener time to think and reflect on the entire record they had just taken in. Simple masterful. 

Most Anticipated Release of 2021

Winner: Jail Socks - Debut Album
Jail Socks had already created my 2019 Album of the Year, so it probably goes without saying that I’m feverishly anticipating the next moves from the fresh-faced No Sleep signees. Despite only having released a grand total of eight songs to the public, Jail Socks had become one of my favorite 5th Wave emo-ish bands by the end of last year. I still listen to It’s Not Forever on an (at least) weekly basis, so I cannot wait to see what the band does with their first full-length next year. 

Runner-up: Michelle Zauner - Crying In H Mart
My second most-anticipated release of 2020 isn’t an album, but a book. Crying In H Mart is the soon-to-be-released memoir by Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. The book is based on, named after, and presumably in the style of her heartbreaking New Yorker article of the same name. Zauner, who was also the winner of our 2017 Album of the Year, has a beautiful way of navigating words and emotions in a manner that cuts directly to my soul. I’m sure Crying In H Mart will be nothing short of a crushing read, but that’s exactly what I want, and exactly what I need.