2020 was different, though. For the first time, a significant number of post- bands that released some of my favorite albums of the year were either women led or prominently featured women. At the forefront have been a group of bands leading the charge in one of post-’s most promising offshoots of the past decade: doomgaze. These are bands that play slow, dark, and heavy music that shoots straight for the gut and heart. In London’s A.A. Williams and LA’s Iress you have a pair of singer/songwriters – the eponymous Williams and Michelle Malley – who simply command a room with their powerful and velvety tenor voices. Both bands released albums in 2020 that really catapulted them into the spotlight for fans of post-rock/metal, doom, shoegaze, and beyond.

Flaw, Iress’s sophomore album and first since 2015, has all the feeling of a true debut both in production and performance. It comes across as a fully-formed package that follows in the footsteps of acts like Windhand while putting their own dreamy and fluid spin on it. It’s difficult to listen to tracks like “Nest” and “Underneath” and not simply be swept under by the force of Malley’s voice and the powerful nature of their compositions. For A.A. Williams, Forever Blue is truly her first full-length, following her impressive 2019 self-titled debut EP. Williams’s music takes a somewhat more cinematic and dramatic approach, featuring plenty of piano and strings alongside heavy guitars and bass, which made her a perfect fit to collaborate with Mono for a 10” late 2019. Forever Blue mostly continues the promise of that early work and delivers in stunning fashion. Delicate passages of acoustic guitar and piano effortlessly give way to momentous bouts of energy as Williams constantly plucks at the heartstrings before occasionally going in for an emotional gut punch.