In terms of music, this year is strange. It's strange by any parameter, but now let's talk about music.

We've all been sitting at home for a whole year, so even listening to new albums is lazy. It used to be like this - you leave the house and while you're walking to the office you listen to some new release, while you're walking - you look around and think it over. And this year a huge part of listening is just random through your entire playlist, tracks you've already listened to hundreds of times.

In connection with this, it was very difficult to choose an adequate number of albums for the top, as I usually do. Maybe with the first two I decided relatively long ago, and the rest are quite equal, such a sometimes bright, sometimes boring soundtrack of this year. Well, it is what it is.

The main novelty of this year was the launch of Spotify (finally!) in Russia and my transition from Yandex Music to it, so even the classic New Year's charts turned out quite smeared into two parts.

In one line about who didn't make it to this top, this is a fantastic list: The Amity Affliction, Grey Daze, Igorrr, LSP, Ermak!, dora, Husky, kis-kis, IC3PEAK, Wlvs, Pornofilms, Poshlaya Molly, Chocolate Cake, YOUTH INSIDE, polnalyubvi, Moqumentary. All the above performers released good records, many of them immediately look like candidates for the very top, but I would be lying if I didn't make the top the way it ultimately turned out.

The process of coming up with a top for me usually goes like this - I re-listen to the release at the end of the year and it depends on how good and how complete my memories of it are how high I put it. Naturally this is a very subjective metric, which directly depends on my emotional state, and emotional state, I don't know about you, but mine this year was peculiar.

Note, almost no album entirely about death, something surprising for my tops.

Let's go.

Albums

9. Enter Shikari - Nothing is True & Everything is Possible

Very high art from Enter Shikari, so high that over the year I practically never understood all its coolness, the year was too hard. With my head I understand this perfectly. No, understand, it's not that I didn't like this album, it's wonderful, but very complex and niche. So this place in the top can be perceived as a tribute to one of my favorite bands.

Of course I'll go to the next concert and of course I'll enjoy it very much there, this doesn't even need to be discussed.

8. PVRIS - Use Me

This album is something amazing. When you listen to it the first time, the second time - you don't understand this. But returning to it time after time it reveals itself as an incredibly high-quality record at the junction of pop and rock music. Well, and Lynn Gunn has one of the most pleasant voices that currently exists on stage, personally for me. Moreover, usually when there's wonderful vocals - it's very difficult to come up with really original tracks, and not be held hostage by it. Many bands suffer from this, but here all this exists.

7. Komsomolsk - Low Beam

A very unexpected album from the most Moscow band of all. We know Komsomolsk as a band that makes very cheerful upbeat tracks with tons of references and funny verses. In Low Beam all this is in place, except that they're much more minor, slower, with minimal accompaniment. I have a theory that minor songs hit the heart much harder, but if they get there, they become the most favorite there, much more important than some popular, as it's fashionable to say now, bangers. And besides this, there's some incredible atmosphere in this record, you want to wrap yourself in a blanket in a warm cozy chair with a cup of something hot and think about life.

Streets were braiding, the moon

Was swaying, drinking puddles to the end

From night shop windows looked at me

The shadow of my evil twin

6. Alena Shvets - QUEEN OF TRASH

Russian voice of 2020 for me. The guilty-pleasure niche is entirely occupied by this album. Listened in one gulp a million times, remembered all the tracks, want to sing along.

5. Palaye Royale - The Bastards

You say top without albums about death, hold my beer, bro. This is different. An album about all the worst things that exist, but in a very beautiful and melodic wrapper.

The description of the album obviously asks for a mention of My Chemical Romance, without whose existence such a release definitely wouldn't have happened. But, speaking of this, unlike Creeper, whose album I didn't really like, Palaye Royale's album doesn't feel secondary. I love modern music for the fact that in it you can perfectly hear what certain young performers grew up on, and when their idols intersect with yours - it's generally a cannon.

The album is a hit after hit, I'll perfectly understand the one for whom it will be the first line in the top.

4. Wildways - Anna

Since I attended two Wildways concerts, where I didn't understand how to behave (and this often happens with new wave performers, I'm apparently old), every time it comes to their new release I think "it was better before", and then it turns out that no, now it's become better and I listen to the new album to the holes. With concerts this won't help me, obviously, but musically this gets to me more and more each time.

Despite their small number, most Russian-language tracks on this record can be written into the best Russian-language tracks of the year, just take yalyublyutebtya and Flowers.

The mix of languages I still don't understand, I would gladly listen to completely Russian songs too, but this doesn't prevent me from rating conditional Havana or Everest very highly.

3. Monetochka - Decorative and Applied Arts

Monetochka managed to do the impossible, release an album no worse than the debut. Crumb, Survive and America in my personal top if not at the level of Every Time with Coloring Books, then somewhere very close. Much more thoughtful and serious work. This is what pop music should be in an ideal world.

2. Bring Me The Horizon - POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR

I, like many, have some very biased opinion about Bring, but where to go, you have to listen. I listen and in half an hour I already perfectly understand that this is the album of the year, absolutely no alternative.

For some reason I'm writing this and still somehow can't believe it, it even seems to me that the top is somehow not serious if Bring Me The Horizon are standing so high here. But no, this is really the album of the year. Sempiternal in 2013 that ended up on my first line didn't evoke so many emotions then. Let's see how it will be in the long term, but POST HUMAN sounds simply excellent.

Here literally every track is wonderful. Ludens is one of the best in the band's discography, but we've already listened to it, but the cannon Dear Diary and Kingslayer with Babymetal are new unexpected discoveries.

And it's not even that heavier means better, it's just better than amo in every sense. amo had to be defended through gritted teeth, POST HUMAN doesn't need this.

Additional points for me are added by obvious references to Linkin Park's work. The interlude Itch for the Cure is a clear homage to Cure for the Itch, and Teardrops' music is almost a direct copy of Somewhere I Belong. That Oli is a LP fan we already knew, but now we have documentary evidence in tracks too.

1. Dayte Tank (!) - Man-Hours

Giving the first line to BMTH is too boring, so this album ended up here. Let's be honest, we know perfectly well even without such tops that BMTH or Enter Shikari can make good music, they'll release their albums and we'll listen to them anyway. But finding something new is always pleasant.

Absolute discovery of this year. By far the best lyrics of this year. The best thing you could hear this year in Russian. The album that simply transfers the band Dayte Tank (!) from the lineup category of the Pain festival to one of the coolest bands on our scene.

An incredibly sweet record that takes you somewhere to childhood, somewhere at least to those times. For this difficult year just an outlet, wonderful positive songs about ordinary life. I would never have thought this would hook me so much.

I'm further from hell with each floor

The final point is paradise

I'm fine, and I don't need help

The main thing is, don't interfere

One music video

An unusual section in such posts, but I can't not mention one music video that eclipses absolutely everything. The band Igorrr is the wildest strange and original band I know, listen to their last album.

But the music video... okay, why drag it out. Just watch and life will never be the same. We'll be in the same boat.

Turn off the internet, it won't get any better.

Results

Even by the most optimistic calculations, this year due to the pandemic I managed to attend only 8 concerts, of which only half are solo shows, and the rest are a seated festival, which, of course, is not right. Last year there were 40, the year before last also 40.

I couldn't even imagine such a blow to my main, and possibly even only hobby. Well, let's all together hope that 2021 will be much more positive.

And playlist...

Well, and by tradition a playlist with the best tracks of this year.

Let's be friends on Spotify.