Best of 2020

10) Elder - Omens

This is a fun album. Normally my year end list begins with something somber, something instrumental or minimalist. This year was so bleak, before I proceed into the heart of darkness and spend time with the various methods of compositional violence that helped give this year context, I think it’s important to introduce Elder first so as not to scare away the fearful and traumatized among us.

For those uninitiated, Elder is a psychedelic stoner band. That simply means this is a tone-centric rock album that makes use of high gain guitar and ethereal sounds from synth keyboards. I think this might be their most psych album to date, including more dreamy synth parts, more reverb in the more common clean guitar parts. I remember past albums being louder, fuzzier, not quite as dynamic as this. Here the instrumentation takes more time describing winding paths through vibrant green forests, with the vocal being a gentle guide for when you might be feeling lost.

There are moments captured here, like on the track Halcyon that may, on the surface, seem a little directionless. My view is Elder is finding the right tone and sticking with it. When the studio space feels covered in thick moss, when the air is foggy with the smell of dew evaporating from the forest floor. These are the moments Elder wants to have the occasional rest. And after these gentle passages of quiet hypnosis, Elder continues on the path reaching for hooks with the intention of pulling you further into this other-world they’ve created.

When visiting this album in the years to come I don’t think I’ll view this as from 2020 as it's not quite congruous with the spirit of the times. It's more contemplative, more joyful, more timeless, a provocation to make sure one is enjoying life while defiantly ignoring the zeitgeist.