After hearing Joy as an Act of Resistance (my favourite album of 2018), Idles became one of my favourite new bands. They play an uncompromising style of punk and post-punk, with jackhammer guitars, loud, unrelenting bass and guitars, and howled vocals about the unfairness of life as a working person. Ultra Mono is just as good as JaaAoR, maybe even a bit better. It's a bit more melodic, and even a bit more noisy.
Like so much music I've grown to love, discovering Civic Center was completely by chance. Both they and their record label, American Dreams, were unknown to me before 2020. Civic Center hail from Chicago, ground zero for a great deal of American industrial music, and the band takes its cues from the more classic sound of early British industrial. Their music is full of minimalist dirges, angular drums and guitars, and howling, distorted vocals. The sound is much like early Cabaret Voltaire mixed with kraut rock bands like D.A.F. and extreme post-punk bands like The Fall and The Birthday Party. Their record label is full of fascinating industrial, post punk and electronics. Another album on the label, Evicshen's Hair Birth, ended up as an honourable mention for 2020.
From the moment Richard Butler begins singing on this album, the bands first proper album in 29 years, a wave of nostalgia and longing hit me like a truck. I had truly missed this band and their unique sound. The Furs haven't changed much in their sound. Made of Rain sounds a lot like 1984's Mirror Moves, in that their sound is the sound that made them so beloved. There are snippets of modern post punk in the album, just enough to remind you that this isn't a classic 80s album, but not enough to pull you out of the wall-of-sound melancholic new wave the band was known for. This was in rotation for much of 2020 and 2021 for me.
Over the past couple of years, Canada's Artoffact Records have built an impressive roster of industrial and post punk band, both domestic and international. Bootblacks are a band that fits right into their sound. A pulsing post punk band with swirling electronic beats and propulsive industrial rock vibes.
METZ have been a constant on my year end Top 10 lists. A fantastic noise-punk band from Toronto, their output has been consistently great. Atlas Vending is a good album, but a bit long in the tooth when it comes to noise-punk. METZ are maturing as a band, and this album sees them branching out into more melodic territory without losing the fist to the face sound of abrasive noise. The songs are longer too. Are they losing their edge? Maybe the next album will be the litmus test...
This album came out of nowhere for me. I had no idea that A Certain Ratio (ACR) were still recording. That being said, this is the first proper album in 12 years. ACR have been around since 1977 and were a seminal left-field, dance and funk fueled post-punk band. They're from the UK, but their sound always had more in common with the no-wave scene of late 70s New York. ACR LOCO feels like it was recorded in a New York loft in 1978 with James Chance or ESG lurking somewhere around the production or engineering part of the record. "Bouncy Bouncy" is classing proto-punk-funk, plumbing the nascent grooves of hipster disco and hip-hop. Lyrics echo the late 70s social problems of hippie and disco culture. This is album is a retro mindtrip that's worth digging into in our 2020s world. It sounds fresh despite being drenched in 70s nostalgia.
Yes, I'm chronically behind on my 2020 best of reviews, but I'll get them done eventually dammit!
Jehnny Beth, also known as Camille Berthomier, is best known as the vocalist for British post-punk band Savages. This album, her debut as a solo artist, is rooted in the deadly serious, emotionally and pummelling style of Savages, but is much more. A delicate album, balancing the vicious edge of post punk with spacy electronics, minimalist piano-pop, glitch electronics, industrial,poetry and dark confessional ballads, To Love is to Live is a difficult but rewarding album to listen to. An emotionally raw and draining performance, dripping with urgency and tension.
Detroit's post-punk masters Protomartyr have long been a favourite of mine. I picked Relatives in Descent for my best of in 2017. This years album, Ultimate Success Today, has the band in familiar brooding post punk territory, but also sees them pushing in new directions. Some of the punchy, blue-collar noise punk of Idles has begun creeping into their songs. And this album has a decidely freejazz feel to it, with blaring saxophone somewhere in every song. Bandleader Joe Casey's howling and obscured vocals echo Ian Curtis and Mark E. Smith most of the time. This is angry, despondent and defeated inner city post punk at it's best.
Vancouver's Crack Cloud were on my radar thanks to two stellar independent EPs, Crack Cloud in 2016 and Anchoring Point in 2017. Both EPs were full of spacy, dense post punk. Their debut full-length was, decidedly, not what I was expecting them to follow up with. It's got the post punk, but it's also mixed in and buried under with dance pop, spoken word, electronic soundscapes and noise rock. The band is a sprawling collective of musicians, performance artists and multimedia artists. The album merely captures the band's musical end: their live performances are a sight to behold, with multimedia to go along with the music and dance routines on stage while the band plays. The members are recovering or recovered drug addicts or people that struggled with mental illness, with performing and making music as a vital part of their healing. This isn't an album, it's a cathartic experience, one that takes you places you didn't think you'd be going when you started listening.
Two months late, but I'm finally getting into reviewing the best albums of 2020, starting with #10. lie, from Vancouver, play a noisy and dark form of punk. The band's name is pronounced Lee-ay. After a couple of well received indy released, lie made the move to Mint Records, the home of pretty much every great Canadian indy and post punk band on the west coast. Their sound in this album is decidedly more noisy and punky than previous efforts, which have dabbled with new wave and techno. This album chugs along quickly with pummeling guitars, half-screamed vocals and a vicious feminist edge. They have truly come into their own on this record.
Artist - Song - Album (Label) * indicates Canadian Content
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Lie - Digging in the Desert* - You Want it Real (Mint)
Crack Cloud - Bastard Basket* - Pain Olympics (Meat Machine)
Protomartyr - Michigan Hammers - Ultimate Success Today (Domino)
Jehnny Beth - The Rooms - To Love is to Live (Caroline)
A Certain Ratio - Family - ACR Loco (Mute)
METZ - Hail Taxi* - Atlas Vending (Sub Pop)
Bootblacks - The Jealous Star - Thin Skies (Artoffact)
Psychedelic Furs - You’ll Be Mine - Made of Rain (Cooking Vinyl)
Civic Center - The Prophet - The Ground Below (American Dreams)
Idles - War - Ultra Mono (Partisan)
Idles - Mr. Motivator - Ultra Mono (Partisan)
Best Albums of 2020
1) Idles - Ultra Mono (Partisan)
2) Civic Center - The Ground Below (American Dreams)
3) Psychedelic Furs - Made of Rain (Cooking Vinyl)
4) Bootblacks - Thin Skies (Artoffact)
5) METZ* - Atlas Vending (Sub Pop)
6) A Certain Ratio - ACR Loco (Mute)
7) Jehnny Beth - To Love is to Live (Caroline)
8) Protomartyr - Ultimate Success Today (Domino)
9) Crack Cloud* - Pain Olympics (Meat Machine)
10) lie* - You Want it Real (Mint)
Honourable Mentions: Bob Mould - Blue Hearts (Merge), Austra* - HiRUDiN (Pink Fizz), Spectres* - Nostalgia (Artoffact), Evishen - Hair Birth (American Dreams), Caribou* - Suddenly (Merge)
