Staff Picks for November 2020

For the past two years, Latin trap kingpin Bad Bunny has virtually owned a place on the singles charts. His debut LP kicks both Latin pop, urbano, and trap paradigms in the teeth with mad sonics, and crush collisions of tropical, hip-hop, electro, and militant dembow all commingle and clash while furthering the gospel of Latin trap he's been mining since his SoundCloud days. Here's to a speedy recovery from COVID-19.
- Thom Jurek

Recommending a greatest hits set from one of the biggest pop stars of the past 20 years isn't exactly going out on a limb, but it's nonetheless impressive to go back and hear these songs all in one place. This two-disc set also offers a rough outline of the trajectory of modern pop, as we follow Britney's career from her work with Max Martin and the Neptunes, and onward into the 2010s with the likes of Kesha and will.i.am.
- Chris Steffen

The Vibrators took to the fast/loud/stripped down thing like ducks to water, and the band had a genius for writing short, punchy songs with sneering melody lines and gutsy guitar breaks. If the Vibrators were into punk as a musical rather than a sociopolitical movement, it's obvious that they liked the music very much, and on that level their debut album stands the test of time quite well.
- Mark Deming

A gem hidden deep within the 4AD catalog for decades, the 1993 debut by ambient pop duo Insides has been steadily gaining a newfound audience, especially after it was reissued last year. Combining steady techno rhythms, atmospheric guitars, and sensuous vocals, the album sounds a bit like a precursor to what HTRK have been doing for the past decade. The band's first album in 20 years arrived this month.
- Paul Simpson

It was very canny of Adam Sandler to include "The Thanksgiving Song" on his first comedy album, which still ends up getting a few spins every November on rock radio. But anyone who bought the album based on that PG-rated slice of comedy was rudely awakened by crude and hilarious skits like "Toll Booth Willie," "The Longest Pee," and all of the bits featuring the Buffoon. The bulk of it is wildly problematic through 2020 eyes, so you might still have to hide this one under your bed even if you're in your 30s.
- Chris Steffen

In their original four-year run, Negative Approach were recognized as one of the Midwest's very best hardcore punk bands, with frontman John Brannon as a blisteringly compelling vocalist, a fierce blowtorch of sheer belief. Total Recall collects everything they released in their 1981-1985 lifetime along with lots of live material, and while Brannon got better in the '90s with the Laughing Hyenas, this still a marvel of bad karma framed by drums and guitars.
- Mark Deming

Phaedra is one of the most important, artistic, and exciting works in the history of electronic music, a brilliant and compelling summation of Tangerine Dream's early avant-space direction balanced with the synthesizer/sequencer technology just beginning to gain a foothold in nonacademic circles. The result is best heard on the 15-minute title track, unparalleled before or since for its depth of sound and vision.
- John Bush

Lost in the shuffle of massive pop releases in 2020, the return of Canada's other dance-pop queen demands attention from fans of Carly Rae Jepsen, Robyn, Rina Sawayama, and Betty Who. Channeling the shimmering club sounds of the '80s and '90s, this is another pleasing dose of future nostalgia for listeners who were around for Y2K or just really into that aesthetic. Check out "All of the Feelings" and "Crave" and stay for everything else.
- Neil Z. Yeung

Free jazz drummer Sunny Murray was an integral part of New York's improv scene as it reached a boiling point in the mid-'60s. Sunny's Time Now finds the drummer leading some of the top players of the time, with Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Henry Grimes and Lewis Worrell contributing to the rising and falling waves of angst and unrest. Poet/activist Amiri Baraka adds a charged spoken word element to "Black Art," the album's most overt moment of political tension.
- Fred Thomas

The follow-up to 2016's cathartic Marked for Death, On Dark Horses continues to pick at the darkness within, but with significantly more empathy than its predecessor. Rundle's singular blend of swirling post-rock and doomy gothic metal feels remarkably intimate, even when the decibels are being pushed into the stratosphere.
- James Monger

Jayda G's "Both of Us" ended up being a major quarantine club jam this year, and anyone who enjoyed the track (or her recent Dua Lipa remix) shouldn't overlook her excellent debut album from last year. Balancing a concern for the planet with a shameless urge to have fun, the album finds space for lost Ibiza anthems as well as tracks inspired by whales and the destruction of ecosystems (reflecting her studies on environmental toxicology). Not to mention, she also gives you a friendly reminder to stop checking your phone while you're on the dance floor.
- Paul Simpson

Arriving after the 2016 U.S. presidential election and a set of ukulele pick-me-up tunes (2017's 11 Obscenely Optimistic Songs for Ukulele), the Minnesota singer/songwriter's seventh full-length consists of bright if bittersweet tunes that draw heavily on '60s sunshine pop. Full of breezy melodies, lush chamber arrangements, and with a light touch on anxious topics, it manages to be both timely and timeless.
- Marcy Donelson

An off-putting masterwork of wrecked tape loops, subliminal vocals, and lightly-restrained chaos from the veteran Michigan noise composer.
- Timothy Monger

Deutsche Grammophon's Karajan Forever 2008 consists of 40 selections from the maestro's catalog, which amount to a generous greatest-hits package. As the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for three decades, Herbert von Karajan brought his interpretations of Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern masterpieces to a wide audience, and the sweep of this program from Bach to Prokofiev demonstrates his broad tastes and interests.
- Blair Sanderson

Although Hot August Night became his best-known live collection, this more intimate 1970 set captured with a small band at the Troubadour is Diamond at his dynamic rock and roll best.
- Timothy Monger

The Caretaker's opus Everywhere at the End of Time has unexpectedly captured the attention of TikTok teens and even the New York Times. If a six-hour conceptual work attempting to chronicle the stages of dementia and gradual memory loss seems too daunting, but the premise sounds intriguing, then start with the project's 2011 breakthrough. Looping melodies from crackly pre-World War II ballroom jazz records coated in reverb and delay effects, the album captures reoccurring memories of the distant past, veering from moments of temporary bliss to periods of solemn emptiness.
- Paul Simpson

Plenty of garage rock bands of the 1960s left behind a brilliant single or two, but Minneapolis's the Litter were one of the few that delivered fully satisfying albums, not once but three times. Their 1967 debut, Distortions, is arguably their best LP; it may be dominated by covers, but the band plays a strong set with focus and fire (especially guitarists Tom "Zippy" Caplan and Dan Rinaldi), and the opening original, "Action Woman," is a much-covered triumph.
- Mark Deming

Tommy Guerrero's A Little Bit of Something sounds like the former skate punk has been listening to a whole lot of mid-period Beastie Boys albums. It's not the in-your-face rhymes or punk-based aggression that's influenced him, but the group's canny mix of samples and new music that blends influences from all kinds of unexpected, offbeat places. These brief instrumentals -- 15 tracks in 39 minutes! -- ignore the drone and ambient schools of electronica and post-rock in favor of a magpie-like interest in variety and novelty.
- Stewart Mason

A sprawling 24-track comp of rare recordings from this enigmatic band, it includes 14 songs issued by les Fleur de Lys; singles under the Rupert's People, Chocolate Frog, and Shyster pseudonyms; and releases where they backed Sharon Tandy, John Bromley, and Waygood Ellis. With its sparkling (occasionally crazed) guitar work, solid harmonies, and unusually constructed tunes that sometimes meld soul and psychedelia, it's a boon for fans of '60s mod-psych.
- Richie Unterberger

Friend & Lover's "Reach Out of the Darkness," with its infectious opening rally cry of "I think it's so groovy now that people are finally gettin' together" provided the flower power movement -- and a late-'80s television commercial for the Freedom Rock box set -- with an unofficial anthem for the swinging '60s.
- James Monger

New Zealand jangle pop band The Bats set the template they'd follow for the next 30 plus years on their 1987 debut Daddy's Highway. Equally bouncy, pastoral and melancholic, the album's brief, melodic songs and bright harmonies helped develop the uniquely bittersweet kiwipop subset of indie rock. Not much would change for the group on subsequent albums, but with such a fantastic and singular first step forward, the similarities from album to album were hardly a problem.
- Fred Thomas

Godzuki's debut introduces their noisy, catchy brand of "science rock" -- a mix of Erika Hoffman's sweet, whispery vocals, fuzzy guitars and whooshing synths. A pleasant blend of '80s new wave and '90s noise-pop, at its best Trail of the Lonesome Pine strikes a unique balance between pop accessibility and noisy experimentalism.
- Heather Phares

R.L. Burnside had been performing and recording for decades before he found an audience in the 1990s, and 1994's Too Bad Jim was the sound of a man happy to let the world finally catch up with him. Sounding like Mississippi Fred McDowell and John Lee Hooker jamming on the cheapest guitars in the shop, Too Bad Jim is raw and minimal, grooving with a lean intensity and no unnecessary frills, and all the more powerful for its simplicity.
- Mark Deming

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of this beloved debut, the band issued a massive box set collecting as many rarities from the era as possible. While a gift to diehards, nothing beats the original album, which introduced a group of hungry unknowns trying something new with their hybrid approach to genre and human emotion. Two decades later and it hits even harder with the passing of vocalist Chester Bennington. Well worth a revisit and critical reevaluation.
- Neil Z. Yeung

This warmly crafted sequel to the 1975 classic marks a return to the more organic composing showcased on Oldfield’s first three albums. Creating a pleasing blend of Celtic, folk, and rock, Oldfield plays a multitude of instruments in performing this dreamy fantasia solo. The album’s emotional arc is subtly instituted with the gentler peaks of "Part I" that eventually become quite majestic in the final two movements of "Part II."
- Timothy Monger

Cornelius fits right in with the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal aesthetic. He sees no difference between pop and avant-garde, high culture and lowbrow trash -- he throws it all together, coming up with completely unexpected combinations. The thrill of hearing hip-hop loops morph into sheets of My Bloody Valentine guitar noise, then into sweet Beach Boys harmonies, is what makes his American debut Fantasma such a wonder. It's easy to write Cornelius off as a Japanese Beck, particularly since his pop songcraft is as impressive as the busy, multi-layered production, but it's a little patronizing. Cornelius is operating on his own terms.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine

No matter what the genre was eventually called -- twee, indie pop, shambling, etc. -- Miaow's effortless melodies, bittersweet lyrics, and complete lack of musical pretense contributed significantly to its blueprint. When It All Comes Down is the definitive Miaow retrospective. It includes all of the trio's studio material, their two John Peel sessions, and previously unheard demos of "Fear of the Sun" and "Carnal Drag," which were recorded for the infamous, unfinished Factory release Priceless Innuendo.
- Johnny Loftus

A lesser-known gem that goes for pocket change these days, Earthlights is a nice blend of mystical drum'n'bass, chilled-out dub, and enough hard jungle and sinister laughter to balance things out and not make it all seem too hippy-dippy. Producer Steve Spon had roots in punk, goth, and industrial, and this project was on a much different wavelength, more spaced out and cosmic than dark and nihilistic.
- Paul Simpson

The violent cover photo sets the stage for the rather passionate music on this John Zorn set. With guitarist Bill Frisell, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, bassist Fred Frith, drummer Joey Baron, and guest vocalist Yamatsuka Eye making intense contributions, altoist Zorn performs his unpredictable originals, abstract versions of some movie themes, plus Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman." The stimulating music rewards repeated listenings by more open-minded listeners.
- Scott Yanow

The work of tuned-in societal satirists, the tracks compiled on this posthumous LP worked as comic relief, a catharsis of sorts, and not surprisingly some of this was the best Black Flag stuff, like the ode to drunkenness "Six Pack," the reveling-in-media babysitting "T.V. Party," and the hilarious slaughter of "Louie, Louie" that would make the Metallic KO Stooges proud.
- Jack Rabid