We’ve shared the official contributor complied best albums of 2020 (so far) list on the main website, so here’s my personal favorite albums of the year so far that I submitted.
Read More “Jason Tate’s Top Albums of 2020 (So Far)” 2020 has been shit. Not good shit, not the shit; but a royal shit show. In Australia, the number of people suffering from COVID-19 have been low in comparison to the horrific amount of deaths overseas. For that, we are resoundingly lucky. That doesn’t mean we’re immune to the conspiracy theories (“the 5G towers are causing COVID-19!”), or apathy. Individualism over collectivism in western society has proven itself to be a curse. If only we all cared about the most vulnerable people in our communities some more. If we did, perhaps we wouldn’t still be in this shit.
All of that said, 2020 has had a saving grace: Music. As always, music remains my lifeline, my inspiration, and brings some excitement to everyday life. The Aussies have been on fire, with legends like Gordi, The McClymonts and Hayley Mary (of The Jezabels) proving they’re here to stay for good. Newcomers Nat Vazer and Miiesha make me miss intimate gigs so much. This year, we have also witnessed some of the most stunning comeback albums ever. There’s Fiona Apple returning after eight long years with Fetch the Bolt Cutters, an album that’s a complete outlier within her discography but still uniquely her. Hum also returned after 22 years (!) with Inlet, an epic album that delivers on the riffs and soundtracks the apocalypse.
Read More “Mary Varvaris’s Top Albums of 2020 (So Far)” I don’t need to tell anyone reading these words that 2020 has been a tough year. The last few months have, in many ways, been like living through a nightmare and slowly realizing you don’t get to wake up from it. Thank God, then, for the music. A few major artists delayed their new albums because of COVID-19, but the ones that stayed the course and released their art into this uncertain world have had an unusual opportunity to make a mark as much more than background music. In the depths of quarantine, I certainly used music as something of a life raft, looking to Fridays and new album releases as rare bright spots in weeks packed with bad news, or building huge emotional connections with the records on this list. I frankly can’t remember a year that had a stronger first half in terms of music releases. I guess someone out there knew we fucking needed something good to break the deluge of bad.
Read More “Craig Manning’s Top Albums of 2020 (So Far)” 2020 has been a rough year to get through given all of the outside factors going on in the world around us. Luckily, the music that has come shining through the speakers has been nothing short of fantastic at the mid-way point on the year. Much like the full contributor mid-year list, my personal list was dominated by female artists. From the deeply personal Petals for Armor by Hayley Williams, the pure-pop bliss of Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa, to the aptly titled Manic by Halsey, there are some incredible works of art all over the spectrum here. These are the 30 albums I have loved listening to the most at the halfway point of 2020.
Read More “Adam Grundy’s Top Albums of 2020 (So Far)” While it feels like seven years have passed since New Year’s Day 2020, we’re actually only halfway through the year somehow. As the world around us feels like it has never been more chaotic, we’ve been lucky enough to have been blessed with some great music to help all of us get through the days. We’ve had incredible and epic albums from artists like Spanish Love Songs, Phoebe Bridgers, Hayley Williams and Jeff Rosenstock. Their music has got me through many days in quarantine and they’ve filled me with hope instead of feeling down about what’s going on outside.
Hopefully the second half of the year is filled with the albums that have been pushed back or have yet to have announced release dates (Looking at you, A Day To Remember, Foo Fighters and Weezer). Even if they aren’t, the first half of the year has given us all plenty of fuel to power through the next five months.
Read More “Brett Bodner’s Top Albums of 2020 (So Far)” I mean, where do I even start with this year? I don’t. I don’t! I simply refuse. We’re all painfully aware of what kind of year this has been. Let’s just go ahead and skip the context that would typically be required for me to say something like, oh I dunno, thank fucking God-or-whoever for music this year. Seriously. In any year, this would have been an absolutely bananas six months of new tunes, but this year it has been especially appreciated. Whether it’s a newcomer or a triumphant return, defining solo career or dream collaboration — it’s 2020 and musicians are really out here Shooting. Their. Shots. So what have I been listening to and loving the most? I assume you clicked this to find out, so I’ll cut the impromptu ramble (but thanks for hanging in there). Here are my top 30 albums of the year so far.
Read More “Trevor Graham’s Top Albums of 2020 (So Far)”
I think this is a must watch. Take thirty minutes, put down any phone or distraction, and just watch.
Read More “Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
Even Oscar-winning auteurs have been awed by George Miller’s operatically staged spectacle. “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho said last year that the scale of the movie brought him to tears, while Steven Soderbergh put it more bluntly: “I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film,” he said in a 2017 interview, “and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.”
So how did Miller and his cast pull it off and survive to tell the tale?
Five years after “Fury Road” was released, I asked 20 of its key players what making it was like. Though its post-apocalyptic plot is deceptively simple — road warrior Max (Tom Hardy) and the fierce driver Furiosa (Charlize Theron) must race across the desert to escape the vengeful Immortan Joe and his fleet of kamikaze War Boys — filming the movie was anything but easy.
I had never read this before, but it’s fascinating.
Robert Wachter, writing on Medium:
Why is masking so difficult to maintain among the public? In Asia, face masks are now seen as a normal accessory. In the U.S., they’re still seen as awkward and stigmatizing. Historically, they have been a sign of illness or danger. This aversion, plus the fact that the benefit of masks mostly accrues to others, is why we need to make mask-wearing mandatory as long as SARS-CoV-2 is active in our communities, at least in closed spaces (as San Francisco has done).
One of the most common questions is whether it is necessary to wear a mask when walking or exercising outside. Empiric and simulation studies have shown that there is practically zero risk of viral spread when one is outdoors and keeping a distance of greater than six feet from others. I personally don’t wear a mask when walking the dog (but I do keep one with me just in case I encounter someone at close range). But I always wear a mask inside, or if an encounter within six feet is likely.
Great post from mireillecharper on Instagram.
Read More “Ten Steps of Non-Optical Allyship”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, writing at the LA Times:
Yes, protests often are used as an excuse for some to take advantage, just as when fans celebrating a hometown sports team championship burn cars and destroy storefronts. I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.
Nick Baumann on the militarization of the American police:
“You create this world where you’re not just militarizing the police — you equip the police like soldiers, you train the police like soldiers. Why are you surprised when they act like soldiers?” Rizer, a former police officer and soldier, said. “The mission of the police is to protect and serve. But the premise of the soldier is to engage the enemy in close combat and destroy them. When you blur those lines together with statements like that … It’s an absolute breakdown of civil society.”
American police officers generally believe that carrying military equipment and wearing military gear makes them feel like they can do more, and that it makes them scarier, Rizer’s research has found. Officers even acknowledge that acting and dressing like soldiers could change how the public feels about them. But “they don’t care,” he said.
From Samuel Sinyangwe, a thread about solutions to stop police violence:
More restrictive state and local policies governing police use of force are associated with significantly lower rates of police shootings/killings by police. This is backed by 30+ years of research.
Demilitarization. Police depts that get more military weapons from the federal govt kill more people. You can stop that from happening through local and state policy. Montana (Red state) has gone the furthest on this.
Police Union Contracts. Every 4-6 years your police dept’s accountability system is re-negotiated. Purging misconduct records, reinstating fired officers, dept funding- it’s in the contract. Cities with worse contracts have higher police violence rates.
Yesterday, I posted about finding and recreating all of the AbsolutePunk.net best of lists from 2005-2015. In an incredible turn of events, a reader actually had saved all of my personal best of lists and sent them to me. I didn’t have anything earlier than 2011 and I thought these were lost to time.1 I am extremely happy to be able to add them back into the Chorus.fm database for posterity.
These are a nostalgia trip. I’ll have to write more about my decision making process, from what I can remember of these eras, at some point, but for now I’m just happy to have them back on our “End of the Year” page.
The era before I was doing any kind of regular back-ups, let alone keeping everything I write in text files on my computer.↩
I’ll always remember 2019 as the year I got married; however, it ended up being a pretty incredible year for music and entertainment as well. As we finish up this decade, I reflect back on just how many of these lists I’ve made. It’s a yearly tradition that I enjoy because it allows me to no only reflect on the past year and reevaluate everything I listened to and consumed, but it creates a little snapshot in time that I can re-visit in the future and remember what I was enjoying and listening to during that moment in time. I thought it was a good year personally, wrapped around a tough year globally. Thank you to everyone that reads this website on a daily basis; I hope you enjoy my list and maybe find something new to love.
The staff compiled best of 2019 list can be found here.