Welcome to my Substack! I’m Joshua Copperman, also known as Hannah Jocelyn, also known as Fell From The Tree, also known as “the writer who has to add ANOTHER Taylor Swift album to their What Your Favorite Album Says About You articles.” I’m calling this The Only Times I’ve Ever Known as a reference to Billy Joel’s “Summer Highland Falls” - the full line is “they say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known.” And I’m trying to make the best of these times. Follow me for interviews, reviews, and other antics. EDIT: and follow the TOTIEK Spotify playlist here!
Inexplicably, I have a bit of a platform now, and I felt like I kept writing about the same kind of music over and over - I love my slightly edgy singer-songwriter pop! I didn’t know some of these albums before asking for suggestions, so if this list is kind of scattershot and random, that’s why. But I listened to the suggested albums and added some of my personal favorites, so here they are:
Some criteria:
* Cannot be higher than 100 on this aggregated list.
* Cannot be on a major American label (big indie groups like Beggar’s and Secretly Canadian are fine.)
* I cannot have written about the full record on TOTIEK, Pitchfork or elsewhere. Will make one exception for an album I spoke about on Endless Scroll before because it’s not on any list at all. EDIT: except for Vice’s, thank you May Olvera!
* Cannot exceed 2 million plays on a song from that album.
Some ineligible ones I reviewed for Pitchfork this year, that I wanted to shout-out one more time:
Torres - Silver Tongue: Mackenzie Scott’s best songwriting to date, even if I didn’t always love the production the same way. For several reasons, I’m proud I got to work in the queer subtext of Jolene into my review. (Also, Scott is engaged to Jenna Gribbon, who painted the cover, and Scott just finished another album, so mazel tov re: all that.)
Gordi - Our Two Skins: My personal AOTY, with apologies to Fetch The Bolt Cutters and Punisher. I have not stood six feet apart from someone and tearfully looked at them while syncing up to “Aeroplane Bathroom”, so I guess even I can’t accurately say what liking it says about me.
Hannah Georgas - All That Emotion: Sandwiched between Folklore and Serpentine Prison, I felt very National’d and Dessner’d out even before Evermore did me in further, but “Habits” and “Punching Bag” are magical pop songs. I highly recommend her other music! Even if I didn’t love this album I’m now a fan of hers.
Jacknife Lee - The Jacknife Lee: A slick, purely enjoyable party with a lot of unexpected guests. 40 minutes later, I want the guy that produced Songs of Innocence to collaborate with Backxwash.
Told Slant - Point the Flashlight and Walk: I’m considering interviewing KT Pipal on here because I’m fascinated by the mix on this record. I’m just as fascinated by the lyrics, which feel so much bigger in scope than they did on Felix Walworth’s other work. Bless this album.
In no order:
There was absolutely no reason that this got past me until late in the year. Genre-bending, gender-bending, but never impressed with itself about either - it’s possible to hear Spacebomb-style easy listening revival (come back, Natalie Prass!) but there’s much more at work. A large portion of these songs are re-recorded from 2016 EPs, but in the interim between writing and officially releasing Giver Taker, Anjimile sobered up and came out as non-binary. Like other great exploration-of-identity albums, there’s a dual theme of self-acceptance and fear of rejection that runs through: “Does my body divide/Was my body denied?” Well before they came out as non-binary, they chose Anjimie (meaning “Denied” in Chichewa) as their moniker, and on centerpiece “Not Another Word.” I love this particular line that finds more meaning in the act of creation than in a creator deity: “I’m not just a boy, I’m a man/I’m not just a man, I’m a God/I’m not just a God, I’m a maker.” There’s defying a God, then there’s making your God look small.
I’m going to do the question thing again because I liked doing that in the Brooke Bentham review: How do you move on and define yourself again when you and your ex are inextricably linked on Google Autocomplete? When your brand depends on oversharing but you need privacy? The answer is channeling that oversharing into an equally vulnerable breakup record. There’s some precedent - the vocal harmonies of the opener are right out of her “I’m Yours” cover - but she seems to have followed her own advice from the gloriously silly Punch Up The Jam, direct lyrics that would be hard to nitpick even line by line. It’s not an album that’s ‘secretly sad,’ which is refreshing when everybody else is Fake Happy too. The result is somewhere between early Phoebe Bridgers and Yumi Zouma, but less self-conscious than the former and much more emotionally complex than the latter. One particular line that stuns me: “If I don’t want to be a mother, why did I treat you like a kid?” on the closer “Early Hours.” Musically, “I’ll Be Holding” also does the thing where the first verse is repeated over the last chorus, which is my favorite pop trope (see also: Pronoun’s “Temporary Tantrum”). Miel produced the record with her brother Henri Bredouw “in a fugue state”, but like the best siblings, they keep each other in check. The whole record is a balance between Henri’s polish and Miel’s raw emotion on singles - but she still writes poppy melodies, and he keeps in details like the deep breath at 1:36 into “Must Be Fine.” This is one of my favorite records of 2020, period.
A balance between the winking chaos of Orville Peck and the assholery Father John Misty. I’m surprised I didn’t see this on any list at all. But it’s an unexpectedly moving record with shiny production from Jonathan Schenke and some frequently funny, contemporary insights. “Claire” and “Natural Touch” depict unrequited and/or online relationships over 70s easy listening, so it might feel slight, but more psychedelia and heavier the mass gradually creep in as the album progresses. The opener is a series of anecdotes about going nowhere and “Vaping on the Job”; the closer begins with echo-heavy spoken-word before a series of first-person failures and musings on mortality. The trippier elements turned me off, the back half the first time I listened, but take it from me, being a freelancer with a lot of work and no stable ground can be exhausting. The best song here is “Buddhist For A Couple Days,” if only for the way it delivers its title like Bob Odenkirk going “my little women,” but the entire album is quotable and memorable. I’d have to quote entire verses, such is the way Poole’s music unfolds, but just check any given lyric sites for “Natural Touch” and the aforementioned “Buddhist.”
For years, Katy J Pearson was signed to a major label, working with lauded producers like David Wrench and songwriters like Sam Smith collaborator Jimmy Napes. The pressure of major-label recording stifled her creativity. The lightly psychedelic arrangements lend weight to lines about self-actualization and “taking back the radio.” Working with Ali Chant, a master at producing bright chamber pop (Too Bright for Perfume Genius, Morning Dancer for nu-folk band Matthew & The Atlas), Pearson blends Chant’s weirdness with the skills she honed to make a comforting but endearingly unique record. Pearson’s voice jumps like a more wobbly version of Stevie Nicks, but for whatever reason I keep hearing anything from Björk to Bob Dylan to Minnie Riperton over the 10 tracks and 40 minutes. I do wish the lyrics didn’t rely on “on the road again”-type idioms, but the strange details are what put this over the top: the strange feedback at the end of “Fix Me Up,” the majestic horns that close “Beautiful Soul,” the Plantasia synths on “Take Back The Radio.”
If you thought Death Grips was minimalist and unintelligible, this is even more so. “Rev” is particularly smart - I love that it attempts a complex chant of “re” words like “revolution, reputation, reparation, resolution” (think Lauryn Hill’s rare post-Unplugged release “Consumerism”) but NAPPYNAPPA stumbles over himself as if he knows how difficult carrying out those slogans can be. The centerpiece “Are You Sure” is.... a difficult listen, and the extremely lo-fi production ensures that this has no potential to reach a higher audience. If Death Grips can release music on RCA, then who knows who might like this? The record gets even more unintelligible as it goes on (“Topic” might be a reprise of “Rev” but I’m not sure underneath the distortion), and I can’t say I enjoy it, but there are a lot of moments that stick with me. I’m glad I listened, and you might be too.
Yes, the cover is black, this is not a placeholder.
I still want to call them Japanese Hop Along, but if that band chased down the intensity of “Tibetan Pop Stars” instead of switching to chamber pop. I hear a lot of other random bands in this one, too: “みてて” (Watch) sounds like a hard rock version of Stereolab, “Himitsu” sounds a bit like “Sometimes a Place” once again. But what really strikes me is the live energy of the band - everything is polished but the snare still rings, the guitar’s low-end isn’t smoothed out. I love the unexpected time signature changes and unpredictable struggles. My brother, a fan of the Shogi anime March comes in like a lion, got into contemporaries of Tricot like Bump of Chicken (as well as jazz-rock trio Fox Capture Plan)over 2020. Japanese math rock became our music for cooking dinner, but Tricot is just as suited for headphone listening - see: the back-to-back ballads “ワンシーズン” (One Season) and “危なくなく無い街へ” (Abunakunakunaimachie). One of my resolutions for next year is to get into more non-English music; not to write about it - not my place - but to keep my ear to the ground in more places and to just understand. Tricot even released an entire new album in October that, as of this writing, I haven’t heard. What else am I missing out on?
I wasn’t going to include this because Open Mike Eagle is a fairly well-known name, and “Ziggy Starfish” has well over 6 million Spotify streams. After his Comedy Central show flopped and his life plunged into the eponymous trauma and divorce, the album on the other side has less than a million plays per song. The album is virtually about having your momentum stalled when you felt like you were about to conquer the world, so it makes sense. (I designate Eagle as an honorary Class of 2020 member.)
What I saw of the Comedy Central show felt like a too-polished version of Open Mike Eagle as a personality, even though as a rapper he shines on more intricate production. The album is worth listening to straight through, but if anyone reading this listens to one song, make it “I’m a Joestar (Black Power Fantasy)” -- I didn’t get most of the anime references in that particular song, but that’s nothing Genius and a Google search can’t solve. For me, the song works because he can’t believe he’s processing things like this, pretending he’s in his own anime in order to survive. On an album of self-loathing and inability to practice self-care, hearing Eagle go “It’s my turn, it’s my saga” is a turning point, and an acceptance that he is once again an underdog. The album is often uncomfortable (like when Eagle complains that an episode of Black Mirror ruined his marriage), but it’s still an engaging listen because of Jacknife Lee’s crisp, spacious mix. Yet Lee’s mix just emphasizes the beautiful thing about this record: Open Mike Eagle’s music deals a lot with relatability and respectability, but he’s at his best at his most specific and uncompromising.
That’s it for the year! It’s hard to keep this up on a biweekly schedule, but I’ll try to be a bit more consistent in 2021. A lot of really exciting interviews in the works, as well as some announcements on the horizon in my own life, so be on the lookout :)