The rhythms and harmonies the group find throughout this album are consistently as intricate as they are engaging.Ģ7: Kaatayra – Só quem viu o relâmpago à sua direita sabe (acoustic black metal / Brazilian folk) This is one of the most effective demonstrations of the infective bliss of folk. Minimalistic, communal, filled with energy and joy for both the music and the ones performing it. And given how much of 2020 I’ve spent feeling like I’m just trying to keep my own body from falling apart on me, something about that whole sentiment just seemed to hit home, you know? The music of this album is delicate and brittle, implicitly asking for care, much like the human body Hadreas seems so invested in exploring. In 2020, he finally grounded that extravagance in something a lot more personally relatable, both lyrically and sonically. While I failed to quite connect with my introduction to Perfume Genius in his extroverted and extravagant 2014 album Too Bright, he has slowly been earworming his way into my ballpark. I have no idea if these are the exact scenes Land Trance meant to convey, but the fact that I could picture them so vividly on a blind listen was worth the price of admission on this tour alone.Ģ9: Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately (art pop) In another, an almost holy gathering is intruded upon by the presence of the modern day. In one instance, rain falls upon the drunken sidewalks in droplets of glass and metal. On first listen I closed my eyes and immediately found myself taken away on a tour of sorts, only communicated through the slightest percussive and electronic conveyances. The first thing that struck me when randomly coming across this album during a series of offshoot music browsing was how pronounced its sense of location was. I just wish I could understand the lyrics fully, as this album feels like it gains as much meaning from Pel-Gag’s narrative as it does from her songwriting and performance.ģ0: Land Trance – First Séance (ambient / sound collage) Even when stripped instrumentally narrow, the production ensures that a lot of emotion can be gleamed from every single note. This is an album which knows how to use its orchestration to its fullest. It is amazing that a pop album as stylistically and instrumentally diverse as this one can also be so unifying and consistent. As such I feel it goes without saying that I give them all my absolute recommendation.ģ1: Klô Pelgag – Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs (art pop) Even ranking them individually felt like a triviality at points. These are the ones I felt obligated to talk about. I’m hoping that, at the very least, there’ll be at least one album here for everyone, from the mainstream miscreants to those dirging up the depths for bands lost to the flow of time. I may not have the same mettle for metal as Matt, nor the same dedication to deathlessly digging up discoveries as Dæv, but I do hold my own brand of bloody odd tastes, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let XX XX take that from me. (At least, not in this one regard…) It was enough to bring me back from the dead, after all. While I personally would not say we had any absolute gamechangers this year, that doesn’t mean the year was an absolute waste. 2020 was a bad year, and this did have a knock-on effect with the amount of music that was released as well. A bit late to the party, but here we are, nonetheless.
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