Thank you, Marie Kondo! The decluttering craze has allowed me to purchase three large record collections this year, two primarily of classical music and the other focusing on jazz guitar. So while I’ve taken time off to check out Lizzo and Billie Eilish, I’ve been more concerned with decoding the subtle differences between six-eye Columbias and shaded dogs, while savouring the tonal perfection of Jim Hall, circa 1959. Still, you can’t always live in the past, and the artists listed below mostly signal a brighter future than the politics of the moment might suggest.

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS
Become Desert

Concerning itself with the passage of time—the desertification of arable land due to climate change, certainly, but also perhaps the play of light over a landscape during a single day, or the sprouting, blossoming, and dying of any green shoot—this 40-minute masterpiece is a welcome invitation to take real time off from the daily grind.

KRIS DAVIS
Diatom Ribbons

Former Vancouverite Kris Davis is thriving in Brooklyn, and on Diatom Ribbons she showcases both her occasionally effervescent and always expressive piano alongside her ruminative compositions. A who’s who of improv luminaries—including Esperanza Spalding, Nels Cline, and Terri Lyne Carrington—contribute, sometimes raucously.

RICHARD DAWSON
2020

Performed with amateur enthusiasm and sung in an undiluted Geordie accent, 2020 is folk music, but it’s folk music that’s willing to stretch as far as pop-punk, metal, and grime. It’s also folk music in that it addresses contemporary issues with unflinching passion—the key topic here being the wretched assemblage of dead-end jobs and racist violence that is life in the less-than-United Kingdom. The first great art of Boris Johnson’s ghastly reign? Probably.

LUMEN DRONES
Umbra

Would I include this Norwegian avant-folk masterpiece in this list were I compiling it in August? Yes, but there’s no doubt that Lumen Drones’ combination of eerie Hardanger fiddle, echoing cymbals, and tripped-out electric guitar is the perfect soundtrack for these grey December days.

ONLY A VISITOR
Technicolour Education

Based on family stories of displacement and isolation—pianist and songwriter Robyn Jacobs’s Cantonese great-grandfather came to Canada in 1912, but her family was not reunited until 1988—Technicolour Education is a smart and moving exploration of disapora. The tension between Jacobs’s small, intimate voice and her band’s neo-prog assurance is a thing of beauty all on its own.

PNEUMA
Who Has Seen the Wind?

Who knew that three clarinets and a single voice could produce such a gorgeous sound? Pneuma’s entirely unique blend of improvisational fearlessness and carefully layered arrangements justifies the band’s name, which derives from an ancient Greek word for the breath of life—and that’s exactly what you’ll hear here.

RAE SPOON
Mental Health

Using a combination of empathetic role-playing and soul-baring self-examination, Rae Spoon has made something beautiful and—dare I say it?—life-affirming out of dysfunction. Mental Health might not offer a cure for psychic despair, but at least it will leave you feeling like you’re not alone.

DAVID TORN/TIM BERNE/CHES SMITH
Sun of Goldfinger

Guitar, sax, and percussion virtuosos combine to create long-form improvised psychedelia. With just three tracks, each running over 20 minutes in length, don’t look for instant gratification here; instead, enjoy the slowly unfolding pleasures of floating over and through a succession of luminous, otherworldly landscapes.

NATE WOOLEY
Columbia Icefield

Nate Wooley is best known as an improvising trumpet virtuoso, and has made a number of minor masterpieces in that idiom. Here, though, he’s working with a bigger canvas and has arrived at the perfect synthesis of live ambient music, small-group improv, and contemporary composition. Pedal-steel innovator Susan Alcorn is a particularly welcome presence.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Folk Music of China, Vol. 3: Folk Songs of Yunnan

Neither the plastic glitz of Cantopop nor the filigreed elegance of State Ensemble folk, this is music from the Old Weird China, as raw and impassioned as anything you’d hear in the Tuareg Sahara or the American South. Barring a couple of electronically enhanced missteps, it’s fascinatingly unfamiliar and irresistibly lovely.