2020 has been a really shitty year. There is no way around that fact. 2020 has been a really shitty year for musicians. No touring. No income from gigs. 2020 has been a pretty great year for creativity. The quarantine albums. The communication in social media. 2020 has been a great year for music. As every year. At Heartworn Highways we threw ourselves head first into a series of mixtapes with the Innlandet Hestejazz Society-series. For me personally that has been a saving grace throughout the year. That and all the great albums that has been released this year. There is no this is better than this because of this and that in this review, but some holds extra special places in my heart. A couple of the albums I have even been blessed to release on my own label, Snertingdal Records. So 2020, I'm really happy we're through with you, but you weren't all bad.
Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud (Merge Records)
This album has been a constant companion throughout this year since it was released in March. From the first time I heard Fire I was completely floored. I have been equally floored by the whole album at each and every listen. A stone cold classic from Katie Crutchfield. My album of the year.
Kevin Morby - Sundowner (Dead Oceans)
I'm not really sure what they are putting in the water in Kansas where Kevin Morby and Katie Crutchfield now resides, but there must be something. Another stellar album from my favourite artist of the last years. In lack of a better word, this is real music. As real as it gets.
Cut Worms - Nobody Lives Here Anymore (Jagjaguwar)
A double album. Almost 70 minutes of music. I don't really like double albums. Wait, I totally do when they are as good as this. It plays like a perfect mix of all your obscure 60s favourites coupled with a noughties slacker mentality. Rad, indeed.
Christian Lee Hutson - Beginners (Anti-)
This one has been a grower for sure. I liked it when I first heard it, but it didn't really grip me. When I put it on again this autumn though. Damn. These songs and the double-tracked vocals by Christian Lee Hutson falls in somewhere between Elliott Smith and Sufjan Stevens. A constant companion in the November darkness. Needless to say, I love it.
Jeff Tweedy - Love is the King (dBpm)
What did you do in lockdown? Jeff Tweedy had some time on his hands when Wilco's touring schedule was cancelled and bunkered down at The Loft with his sons Spencer and Sammy. The result is some of the finest songs he has ever written. Not life-changing in any way but so good. The laid-back country-folk feel suit these songs like a glove. Excellent.
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - All the Good Times are Past and Gone (Acony Records)
To be alive at the same time as these two. Two voices. Two guitars. A set of traditionals and other people's songs. While we wait for a set of new originals, these will do and then some. Classic.
Mapache - From Liberty Street (Yep Roc Records)
Clay and Sam has picked up the glove. The next generation is here. The west-coast Everly Brothers with a touch of the Dead and traditionals from south of the border.
Bonny Light Horseman - Bonny Light Horseman (37d03d)
A folk "supergroup" with Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson and Josh Kaufman. A brilliant revision of ancient folk songs. The Roving gets me every time. Hautingly beautiful album.
Bendik Brænne - Personal Best? (Bendix)
It could very well be the best album from Bendik Brænne yet. The last one, Benedictionary, was a solitaire record with Bendik doing everything by himself. This time he has invited some friends back in and it sounds like those friends are the whole Wrecking Crew. Classic pop the way Jimmy Webb, Brian Wilson and Burt Bacherach imagined it. This album deserves a big international audience. For fans of Glen Campbell and good music. Odd Nordstoga - Fatig Ferdamann (Universal Music Norway)
n'Ødd is almost a national treasure here in Norway. Nine albums in he keeps on giving us great albums. This time the song Julinetter keeps on breaking my heart.
The Northern Belle - We Wither, We Bloom (Die With Your Boots On Records)
There has been a lot of talk about the norwegian americana-scene the last couple of years and rightly so. The Northern Belle are leading stars in the nordicana (as they call it themselves) movement with their extremely catchy and well written tunes. Just listen to album opener Gemini if you should doubt me.
Sweetheart - Sweetheart (Mother Likes It Records)
The debut from Sweetheart has the qualities of a classic album in the way that it sounds like it's always been there. You can definitely hear traces of the likes of Ryan Adams and Midnight Choir in this album and that is a compliment for sure. Soothing stuff.
Pacific Range - High Upon the Mountain (Curation Records)
This album is pure brilliance. A modern take of all the best stuff from the seventies. The Dead, The Allmans, Little Feat and all the west coast country rock that I just truly and utterly love. I love this album. Definitely one of the classics of this year. And it's their debut. Keep on truckin'. Curated California Cool.
Rose City Band - Summerlong (Thrill Jockey)
The Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo apparently weren't enough for head honcho Ripley Johnson and thank God for that. His one man band has a pretty amazing sound. I could've sweared that Jerry was here.. Perfect title to go along with this. Feelgood album of the year for me.
Vilde Græs - Vestenvind (Orpheus Records)
The Danes have always done the psychedelic rock thing pretty damn good. Vilde Græs is the band of Morten Aron Larsen from the legendary band Spids Nøgenhat. If you like Grateful Dead and Neil Young just a little more than the everyman, this is your cup of tea. Add a little Kurt Vile, Gasolin and The Soundtrack of our Lives and you are in the right neighbourhood at least. Dig it!
Jonathan Wilson - Dixie Blur (Bella Union)
Jonathan Wilson went to Nashville to record this album with the greats, and it sounds great because of it. A sort of back to my southern roots kind of thing that works pretty well. Maybe not as jawdropping as the first two albums Wilson released the last decade but then again, what is?
Alabaster de Plume - To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals vol. 1 (International Anthem)
Talk about a soothing companion to the year of quarantines. There is something really hopeful about the sound of these melodies. It was perfect in the spring and summer and it's perfect in a familiar way in the winter darkness. Catch some light with this beauty.
Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra - If You Listen Carefully the Music is Yours (Odin)
This really shouldn't work as well as it does. Norwegian drummer extraordinaire gathered all of his favourite players for a completely wild and grandiose gig when he was the artist in residence under last years Moldejazz-festival. The result. Just WOW! Mindblowing stuff. Grab a copy and listen carefully. Music is the healing force of the universe.
Nacka Forum - Så Stopper Festen (Moserobie)
This was actually released on Christmas Eve in 2019, but it deserves to be included here. Jonas Kullhammar and Goran Kajfes are setting the record straight in this playful and free-form hard bopping funhouse of an album.
Gunn-Truscinski Duo - Soundkeeper (Three Lobed Recordings)
I love Steve Gunn. I do. There is just something about those circular gliding guitar tones that just gets me everytime. It was the "regular" songwriter albums that got me first, but all of these more improvised stuff with drummer Truscinski actually are pretty similar. It couldn't be anybody else than Steve Gunn. It just is. Pyramid Merchandise is my jam. If I had to pick just one.
Fleet Foxes - Shore (Anti-)
Anotther quarantine album. At least partly so, since it was recorded during the year. This is everything that I could have hoped for in an album from Robin Pecknold and Fleet Foxes. Adventurous like The Crack-Up, but catchier and brighter. I think this one will continue to grow in the years to come. Pure pop brilliance.
Cold Mailman - Baby Wake Up We are Losing the Fire (Snertingdal Records)
I was blessed to be allowed to release this album. That said, I am such a fan of Cold Mailman and I am so proud of this black hole of an album. The sound of a break-up. You can cry, dance and just sink into this album. I am biased, but you should really check it out.
Taylor Swift - folklore (Republic)
This one took everyone with surprise. And then she did the same again with evermore just last week. The matching of Aaron Dessner and Taylor Swift is a stroke of genius. The songs, the production. Everything fits. And exile with Bon Iver is hands down one of the best songs of the year.
Kristofer Åström - Hard Times (Startracks)
Sometimes it seems like albums are released just for you, and it sort of felt like that with this one. I've been a big fan of Kristofer Åströms music since I fell for it almost 20 years ago, but I haven't been feeling the last two records the same way I did before. Well, until this one. This one hits all the right buttons. Even Britta Persson is back. It's been a year with a lot of room for melancholy. Maybe that's it. I don't know. I do know that I just can't get enough of this album.
H.C. McEntire - Eno Axis (Merge Records)
I knew that this one was going to creep under my skin as soon as I saw the album cover. My thoughts flew right to Karen Dalton and The Band and though the album doesn't really sound a lot like those two it still has a bit of the same feel. That classic rural real people country folk kind of thing.
Trummors - Dropout City (Ernest Jenning Record Co.)
Somewhere out in the Taos, NM desert there is some kind of timewarp. In that timewarp Trummors has dialed in on the cosmic american music made by Gram Parsons and Clarence White. A record made for the mixes we've been puttin' out all year. A record by heads for heads. Psychedelic country. A rural masterpiece.
Family Values - #1 EP / #2 EP (Snertingdal Records)
More from my own label. Two brilliant EPs filled with power pop inspired by the greats. Some of my favourite songs of the year are on these two EPs. I absolutely love that I get to work with these guys. Do yourself a favour and go listen.
Daniel Romano - Visions of the Higher Dream (You've Changed Records)
Talking about quarantine albums. The last I counted I think I got to 11 or 12 albums from Daniel Romano this year. That'a crazy. What's even crazier is that most of those albums could easily have been in this review of my favourite albums this year. I have a special place for this one though. A playful psychedelic pop album with tune after tune.
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