Ciarán Fowler

Ciarán’s Top 10 Albums of 2020

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Great Music. Miserable Year.

10. Punisher – Phoebe Bridgers

Earlier this year I ignored a phone call from a family member just so I could keep listening to “Chinese Satellite.” This is Phoebe Bridger’s much-awaited sophomore album comes packed with a much louder sound than her previous outing. The production feels turned up and it all pays off in the final track’s screaming climax.

My favorite track might be “Graceland Too,” which is best summed up as a love letter to Bridger’s friend and band-mate Julien Baker. “Ate a sleeve of saltines on my floor and I knew then/ I would do anything you want me to,” sums up how I often find myself falling in love with my friends, too.

9. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? – Dominic Fike

The first time I heard “3 Nights” I knew Dominic Fike would go on to put out a great debut album. I listened to the EP regularly, just waiting for the album drop. It was worth the wait.

What we got was songs like “Cancel Me“, the video to which is directed by his child sister, a playful cry to please end his career before it takes off so he can go back to taking care of his mom and little sister. Fike’s practiced guitar playing removes him from the genre he seems to be often pegged in, although that genre should just be called “Shazam-ed at a PacSun”.

This album makes me feel like I should be on a cross-country road trip with my friends. Maybe in 2021.

8. TIE: Whatever, Man – BLACKSTARKIDS and SURF – BLACKSTARKIDS

“Yo, BLACKSTARKIDS is having a show tonight. It’s free if you wanna go.”
“Ah, they fucking suck.”
“I used to like them, though”
“I mean… we should still go, though.”
– skit at the end of “TANGERINE LOVE”

Oh, how I’d love to go see some DIY band I don’t even really like right about now.

BLACKSTARKIDS, however, do not fall under that criteria. Accidentally discovering them on Spotify this year was a blessing. SURF got me through some of the toughest depression I have felt that coincided with the beginning of COVID-19. “SOUNDS LIKE FUN” had me wishing I COULD spend my life with someone in the middle of a pandemic.

How many times do I have to plead with you to please listen to BLACKSTARKIDS. They put out TWO albums of bops this year. “BEATRIX KIDDO” on Whatever, Man SLAPS. All of SURF makes me want to stick my hand out the window of a moving car like in a coming-of-age film produced by A24. SURF’S “TOO DEPRESSED 4 SEX” follows the protagonist’s inability to put out because of mental illness, something affecting what seems like every late-Millennial and old Zoomers.

7. Getting Into Knives – The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats are my favorite band so I’m just going to focus on one song to prevent myself from gushing too much. “Picture of My Dress” is a song about a story-idea that the poet Maggie Smith tweeted:

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What you get is this Waylon Jennings-esque song about Gone Girl-ing yourself and taking your wedding dress on a cross-country road trip where you meet truckers and have messy sandwiches from Burger King. I have always been a lyrics-first listener of The Mountain Goats and this is a perfect reason why. “I’m going to have to chase down the remnants/ of something special that you stole from me/ It may be hiding in the sunset, or in distant corners of the dawn/ or maybe it’s gone,” never fails to make me shed a tear.

6. SHAMIR – Shamir

I’ll say it: I’m mad that I’m not seeing this on a lot of people’s end of the year lists.

From their angelic tone on “On My Own” to sounding like the THX logo on “In This Hole,” Shamir’s re-branding sticks the landing. “Otherside” is the kind of country-pop turn I have been looking for since The Chicks began being boycotted (sorry Kacey Musgraves). Shamir is one of the few artists writing about their queer experience in a way I so easily recognize in my own life. “Done giving up my light/ just to stay in the dark/ Can’t navigate unless I/ lose my religion, lose my sight/ Running with you through the night” makes me feel like this.

5. Set My Heart on Fire Immediately – Perfume Genius

I’m so glad Mike Hadreas can dance now. When I saw him on tour back in 2014, clad only in a pair of fishnets and a Betty Boop slip dress, he apologized for only having “about two moves” which both included swaying side-to-side. I’m white; I get it. But his newest music demands to be danced to, whether you have the moves or not. Having the moves definitely helps.

While rolling around in my hospital bed earlier this year, not with COVID-19 but instead with E.Coli and colitis, I tweeted “Mike Hadreas is the only motherfucker who understands me.” I meant that about his often disparaging lyrics about his rotten body and the still-possibility that I also have crohns but I also mean it when he crafts song about joy. As I have been slowly finding my footing in life, and in gender, euphoria has been just as present as the depths of my depression. “On the Floor” really nails that euphoria for me more than any actual song on the show Euphoria could.

4. As Long As You Are – Future Islands

Yes, the last band that made it big because of a Letterman performance. I talk about this performance a lot because I adore how into it, Samuel Herring is. I, too, am inclined to beat my chest while listening to the sounds of his gravelly voice.

Future Islands remain wildly talented, Herring digging into the uncomfortable folds in our brain only to re-imagine those thoughts into poetry. “Spent a lifetime in the mirror/ picking apart, what I couldn’t change/ but I saw my mother, my father, my brother/ in my face”. You might as well spit in my face and just tell me to go to therapy, dude.

3. SAWAYAMA – Rina Sawayama

Doing what the other girls WON’T. Rina Sawayama is my pop girl and I will not apologize for it. How could I, when she has songs about consumerism, being a bad friend, and Japanese love hotels? Sawayama is exactly what I want from a pop artist: smart, clever, a talented dancer, and a genuine freak. Even the interlude “Fuck This World” makes me scream at such a high frequency that I am downing all drones flying in a 20-mile radius. Here is my favorite music video featuring a shopping channel network.

2. Making a Door Less Open – Car Seat Headrest

Haters to the left, this album is one of my most played albums of the year. A departure from the last two records, this installation of Will Toledo’s Depression is well-timed and electric. The other band members can be felt the strongest here, drummer Andrew Katz even getting to howl his displeasure of “Hollywood” on one of my favorite tracks. All this results in an album that feels like it was probably fun to record and thus fun to listen to. Toledo is also here with a new costume that, hilariously, doesn’t look like a costume anymore. “Toledo said the mask was intended to be “an exotic alternative to reality.” The New York Times writes. When I bought the record off Bandcamp, I received it from an apartment in Washington that I hope isn’t Will Toledo’s personal home because that just seems like a dangerous place to ship records from.

1. Fetch the Bolt Cutters – Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple… I love you, alive girl. Apple has been kicked under the table one too many times, by lovers past and by the music industry for speaking the truth. The tides are starting to turn from seeing her as insane to a visionary who cannot be silenced.

Shameika is the second song on the album and it has no brakes from there on as this album tackles annoying gear dudes, depression, and the election of Brett Kavanaugh.

It’s not that Fiona Apple is reinventing the wheel with this album. It’s that she’s continuing to give us her best at whatever schedule she dictates. And I thank you for that, Ms. Apple.


Honorable Mentions: