Modern Southern songcraft and ancient strings shaped the 10 best albums of the year

In a year that decimated nearly every aspect of the performing arts, new music still prevailed. But it wasn’t easy.

Artists couldn’t tour to support their recordings. Then again, studios sometimes had to shut down entirely, thus delaying work on the music’s very construction. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, startling new sounds still managed to surface.

Soul music from San Francisco, three different voices of modern Southern songcraft and ancient string sounds fashioned for a new generation right here in Kentucky — all of it represented the best music of 2020. Here’s a critic’s look at 10 of the finest recordings released during one of the worst years in recent memory.

They are purposely unranked. All are of equal merit.

Arlo McKinley: “Die Midwestern”

Listen to the dimly lit imagery and narratives that pour out of these songs and you would swear McKinley hailed from the more forgotten reaches of rural America. Instead, he is a Cincinnati native. But darkness sits at the heart of these very un-metropolitan tunes, from stories of resurrected loves that turn out to be nothing more than dreams to tales of opioid infected neighborhoods that are very much a product of the real world.

Randall Bramblett: “Pine Needle Fire”

The first of three entries by Southern song stylists is by far the sunniest. Bramblett has over four decades of songwriting to his credit. The keyboardist/saxophonist’s early music was born out of the same environment that fueled the first wave of Southern rock during the 1970s. Bramblett has always avoided cliches of the genre, though. “Pine Needle Fire” continues a remarkable string of recordings that set richly literate Southern reflections to frameworks of soul, blues and jazz-informed pop.

Sarah Jarosz: “World on the Ground”

Still in her 20s, Jarosz composes with the space and poetic weariness of a scribe twice her age. With a musicality as crafty and her narrative skills, she fashions songs, as the album title suggests, grounded in an earthiness that can’t help but saddle up to a tasty groove while retaining an overlying sense of folkish whimsy. The results form a natural connection to the times. “You know the world keeps turning without you, baby, but it’s okay to yell and cry. And when the ghosts on the screen, they demand to be seen, sometimes you’ve got to pay it no mind.”

Bob Dylan: “Rough and Rowdy Ways”

On his 39th studio album, the 79 year old Dylan conjures a sense of dark vaudeville — dreamscape songs of mortality, love and broken faith. The songs are dressed in scraps of blues and vintage country ambience that curl around the contours of sagas that don’t even attempt to settle a pervasive sense of uneasiness. “You greedy old wolf, I’ll show you my heart,” he sings. “But not all of it. Only the hateful part.” How wonderful that after nearly six decades, Dylan still has the power to fascinate on such an epic scale.

California Guitar Trio: “Elegy”

The ongoing stylistic maturation of the California Guitar Trio remains a wondrous thing to witness. “Elegy” mixes original works, compositions of close associates and cover tunes from myriad sources (from the Beatles to Radiohead), all of which reach across classical, pop, surf, folk and prog boundaries. Mixing delicacy with orchestral drama and a variety of stylistic temperaments, the trio again presents an album unclassifiable and astonishing grace.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: “Reunions”

Our second Southern entry comes from one of the more reliable songwriters in or out of the Alabama region. The compositions Isbell offers on “Reunions” are like post cards that have spilled out over a tabletop. They reveal different colors of related regions, like the ways in which reminiscences of youth shift from summery insecurity (“Dreamsicle”) to more ambient adult uneasiness (“Only Children”). “Reunions” is, at heart, a country record, but the kind that is way too sobering for Nashville to wrap its corporate head around.

Tyler Childers: “Long Violent History”

In design alone, “Long Violent History” is a marvel — a set of instrumentals from various ports and eras built around regal old world string sounds. They set the stage for a lone vocal tune that lands the album squarely in a “Black Lives Matter” world. The instrumental arrangements are often ingenious (like the ancient string makeover given to “Send in the Clowns”). The title tune, though, is a point of detonation, a wake-up call that merges the record’s many worlds.

Monophonics: “It’s Only Us”

Working within the very specific confines of early ‘70s psychedelic soul, this San Francisco Bay Area ensemble creates music that is far more than a regimented retro exercise. Sure, all the components are immediately arresting — the soul falsetto of Kelly Finnigan, the light but trippy arrangements and the odd, echoing extensions of the guitar sounds. But there is also a delicate urgency to “It’s Only Us” that makes this Curtis Mayfield/Marvin Gaye-friendly music work very nicely in the here and now,

Drive-By Truckers: “The New OK”

The title of the Truckers second album of 2020, the last of our Southern picks, references a mindset guided by the times. It’s one Patterson Hood, who penned seven of the record’s nine songs, describes as a mixture of anger, depression, shame, guilt and a dash of hope. Coupling riffs that shift the musical focus from Muscle Shoals to Memphis, the band offers a rock ‘n’ time bomb. “Blood on your hands that point with skill how we lost our way,” Hood sings. “It’s the New OK.”

John Moreland: “LP5”

“LP5” is the record where Tulsa native Moreland’s sense of musical cunning catches up with his wayward wordplay. An inherent sense of roots-savvy refection still dominants the framework of songs like “A Thought is Just a Passing Train” before a clavinet-style solo worthy of Stevie Wonder and rumbling guitar distortion erupt out of the melody. But it is “East October” that puts Moreland’s restless expression in perspective: “I’m trying to keep it simple, but ain’t these Gods so damn fickle? You’re stiff and strong, then you’re scared and sober. North Carolina in East October.”