Nick Bollinger's favourite albums of 2020
Nick Bollinger, host of RNZ’s album review show The Sampler, reviews a collection of his favourite releases from 2020.
Playlist
Talk about dancing with tears in your eyes!
The music of SAULT’s (Untitled) Rise was a direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Kick me under the table all you want, I won't shut up
Even when Fiona Apple’s raging on Fetch The Boltcutters she can deploy a perfect melody and a razor-sharp wit.
It’s hard to forget where you first heard a voice like Moses Sumney’s
Moses Sumney explores deconstructed soul music on his second album Grae.
He’s still doing things that no one has done before, not even him; at least not quite like this
Bob Dylan’s first album of new material in eight years, Rough and Rowdy Ways, rambles through blues, jazz, country, ancient folksong and even Tin Pan Alley.
Hadreas sings, with sometimes confronting frankness, about various kinds of encounters, often sexual and palpably physical
Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas delivers an album about intimacy with Set My Heart On Fire Immediately.
I started a band with my best friends, and it was this band
Wellington veterans The Phoenix Foundation celebrate a quarter century of invention on their new album Friend Ship.
No one writes more memorable, heart-melting odes to self-doubt than Liz Stokes
Social anxiety and self-deprecation are coupled with brisk beats, sneaky guitar licks and almost defiantly bubbly melodies on The Beth’s Jump Rope Gazers.
These songs seem to record a journey where both body and spirit are put to the test
It’s a dark, mysterious music Reb Fountain makes, on this brooding, slow-burner of an album.
There’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma here
Memories and ghosts might seem like intangible things to make an album out of, and yet Troy Kingi’s The Ghost Of Freddie Cesar is a remarkably full-blooded work.
I can’t think of a local album that’s ever opened with more epic promise
Big Woman by Giantess is sonically big, conceptually big, but also big as in grown-up.
About the selector
Nick Bollinger is a writer, musician, record producer and host of RNZ’s The Sampler.