What a year it has been, one in which most musicians were forced to stay at home, work and record remotely, and reflect on what upheaval is happening to all of our lives. Some recorded their albums before Covid-19 hit, but many more did so afterwards, and their work reflects it. Often crisis brings out the best in artists. From more than 500 albums that have been highlighted in this section during 2020, here is the first half of a selection of just over 50 favourites, all of which have something to say, offering strong, unique voices, originality and style. Titles are arranged alphabetically. The second selection follows and is here. Enjoy.
Fontaines D.C. – A Hero's Death
The follow-up by the Dublin indie band's 2019 acclaimed debut, Dogrel, focuses less on their city but still has a strong identity with singer Grian Chatten's accent infusing every vowel. The subject matter though is more the world at large and the great uncertainty that hangs over it like a long, remorseless shadow. This is reflected in the title track, with it's darkly humorous, creepingly horror of a video with actor Aidan Gillen playing the ageing TV chatshow host - as previously highlighted on Song of the Day. Through the gloom that marked 2020, Fontaines D.C. stayed on course with great music, and clearly have a bright future, their sound hitting a sweet spot between intimacy and authenticity and killer phrases, with songs that can also be big-audience bangers of singalong soaring emotions. Standout songs include Televised Mind, the angry I Was Not Born, Living In America and the dynamic A Lucid Dream. Out on Partisan Records.
Fontaines D.C. – A Hero's Death
Wesley Gonzalez – Appalling Human
The solo album by the former frontman of Let's Wrestle cements his place as among the ranks of Britain's best, and most eccentric and unheralded songwriters, alongside the likes of XTC's Andy Partridge, and American Anglophile BC Camplight. This is wonderfully clever pop fare with a soulful twist, expanding his musical range even beyond his appropriately titled 2017 debut Excellent Musician. The album is rich in synthesizer work, and the switch from writing by guitar to piano illustrates a whole new range with new lineup to boot – bassist Joe Chilton, singer Rose Dougal, drummer Bobby Voltaire and Callum Duffy on synths. Key tracks include Tried To Tell Me Something, Wind Your Neck In, Change, Used To Love You, and Did You Get What You Paid For? If you buy this album, then the answer to the last track is a resounding yes. Out on Moshi Moshi.
Wesley Gonzalez - Tried To Tell Me Something
Sparks – A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip
Always a welcome return from the brothers Ron and Russell, and after 2017's glorious Hippotamus this one is another heady mixture of wordplay, ironic turns on the state of the world, catchy melodious, hilarious proclamations and musical idiosyncrasy. The list of song titles is enough to tantalise – the proud garden tool owner's boast on Lawnmower, the relationship disaster on I'm Toast, mortality (Sainthood's Not In Your Future) extreme paranoia (Existential Threat); endless twists and ironies on Self-Effacing and One For The Ages, and, more topically in the Covid-19 and climate crisis – Please Don’t Fuck Up My World. Another precious work from the duo who mix irreverence with relevance and brilliance. Out on BMG.
Sparks – Self-Effacing
Wilma Archer – A Western Circular
Actually released earlier this year during Covid-19, and the song Last Sniff (featuring MF Doom) featured on our New Songs section , the full LP by record producer and multi-instrumentalist from Newcastle upon Tyne is worth some extra attention, with the variety of sounds and guest collaborations it offers. As well as the excellent MF Doom song, Archer hooks up with Sudan Archives, mixing jazz, classical and more and lovely brass on the beguilingly wonderful plod of Cheater, the off-beat gospel-ly Decades with Laura Groves and Future Islands' Samuel T Herring (also on the The Boon) the slow jazz-prog of Scarecrow, the strange Tom Waits-esque chamber orchestra track Killing Crab, the beautifully jazz sax of Ugly Feelings (Again) and more. A unique artist with a flair for the evading genre with a indefinable sound. Out now on Weird World.
Wilma Archer – Cheater featuring Sudan Archives
Billy Nomates – Billy Nomates
Brilliant debut by the solo artist Tor Maries who started in the Midlands then moved to Bristol, and whose sound is marked by unstoppable basslines, fierce, driving energy, and uncompromising lyrics delivered in a talk/sing style with the punchy air of Sleaford Mods and also a singing voice a little bit Róisín Murphy. Standout track includes No, produced by Portishead and Beak drummer Geoff Barrow, with bass by Rich Leicester and Bill Maries on drums, as well others including Hippy Elite and FNP. Out on Invada Records.
Billy Nomates
LYR – Call In The Crash Team
A superb album of lyrical beauty and musical invention by Simon Armitage, the current Poet Laureate of northern gentle voice and vivid image, here forming a new band with musicians and producers Patrick James Pearson and Richard Walters. This is spoken word fare of high quality indeed, coloured by a wide variety of soundscapes and live instruments ranging from rock-pop to ambient. Filled with stories and images of grief and humour, relationships and death, art and anxiety, Armitage's ability to juxtapose unlikely words is exquisitely funny and also moving. Standout tracks include the tribute to a lost friend, Zodiac T-Shirt, the caustic portrait of a male collector-type from a female narrator's point of view, Never Good With Horses, the symbolic feel and response to a departed bullying relative's old Great Coat, the story of a person who stalks the grassy gaps between the dual carriageway on Urban Myth #91, and the lovely array of items weighing less than 100g on The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. Transcendent, earthy yet ethereal gorgeous poetry that pulls you in, and is more than worth a listen over and over. Out on Mercury KX.
LYR – Great Coat
Moses Boyd – Dark Matter
The London jazz drummer, composer and producer releases a genre-transcending album that defies definition. Guest vocalists include Obongjayar with Dancing in the Dark, a song about the tragic fate of black youth, and keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones from Ezra Collective on the excellent 2 Far Gone, while opener Stranger Than Fiction emerges from a twinkly dawn of cymbals, guitar, and horns into an explosion of funk, bold, soaring keyboard and brass riffs keeping pace with the drums. Outstanding. Out on Exodus
Moses Boyd – Stranger Than Fiction
Tunng – Tunng Presents … Dead Club
A unique and beautifully intimate and poignant seventh LP by the British pioneers of folktronica, bursting with intellect, restrained energy, gentleness, and their oft characteristic, seamlessly interwoven vocals, and including a sequence that spells out the chords D, E, A and D again. One particular recurring musical aspect is gentle piano, a perfect sympathetic accompaniment, and to the fore, as part of the parallel podcast project, interviews of course about 2020's most enduring subject – death. Extracts of several of those voices intersperse within the songs, including Max Porter reading from his novel Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, illusionist Derren Brown, Tinariwen’s founder Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, and forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black. The tone varies from moving tributes such as The Last Day, or the upbeat A Million Colours, to some particularly dark, but also humorous moments on the songs Man, and also Woman, the highly practical, but poetic SDC (Swedish Death Cleaning) full of forensic decluttering detail of objects belonging to an elderly relative that need to be discarded – "The old toys in the shed have to go." And then there's the succinctly witty and fatalistic Death Is the New Sex, because “Death is coming to fuck us all.” Filled with lyrical and musical gems – sampled gentle breaths, unpredictable phrasing, many clever musical ideas and melodies, from all six band members, all blend into one of their best yet. Long may it live. Out on Full Time Hobby.
Tunng – Scared To Death
Sports Team – Deep Down Happy
After a fine EP and a series of live shows over the past two years, the former Cambridge students' band, now based in West London, sees their LP finally out after another Covid-19 delay. Like contemporaries Squid from Brighton, and Mush from Leeds, this is fierce, consistent, tight guitar-based indie songwriting coming thick and fast in short and snappy, a dozen three-minute songs with a vocal delivery by Jagger-style frontman Alex Rice's half-shout and scream. Their particular angle is a parody of their own rather middle-class backgrounds, announcing it on opener Lander with “I wanna be a lawyer, or someone who hunts foxes”. The album is certainly packed with witty, self-referential exclamations, such with The Races (with wedding fight video), Kutcher, Camel Crew, Here It Comes Again, Fishing and first single Here's The Single (previously highlight on Song of the Day) among the standouts. The music is consistent high-octane, perhaps all a little too uniform in that respect, but that's no bad thing, especially when it comes to live performance. A continuing, very bright prospect, also no doubt itching to get back on tour. Out on Island Records.
Sports Team – Here’s The Thing
Holy Fuck – Deleter
Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor, Pond’s Nick Allbrook and Liars’ Angus Andrew joins the Toronto indie-electronica quartet on their fifth album in 15 years. Recorded at Jack White’s Third Man Studio in Nashville, there's a sense of a new beginning “I want to scrap all of this / And start over again,” Taylor sings on the opener Luxe, a sort of clubbing minimalism. High-class nodding material to great approval and fabulous live. Check out also Ruby and Free Gloss. Out on Holy F.
Holy Fuck – Luxe (ft Alexis Taylor)
Cornershop – England Is A Garden
The first single, No Rock: Save In Roll, a tribute to the Black Country of his childhood by frontman Tjinder Singh, was recently highlighted on our New Songs section, and the rest of his album continues in the same vein – a humorous, often sharply ironic (see the caustic but superbly catchy song Everywhere That Wog Army Roam) but always affectionate portrayal of this England, this island of sometimes uneasy, but pop-inspiring multiculturalism. Few bands fuse styles so seamlessly into catchy pop as Cornershop, from the psych and flutey folk of Slingshot or Highly Amplified, tabla on the title track, glam metal on No Rock, or sitar indie on One UnCareful Lady Owner. Timelessly charming, clever work. Out on Ample Play.
Cornershop – No Rock: Save in Roll
Porridge Radio – Every Bad
The Brighton band fronted with undoubted presence and power by singer/guitarist Dana Margolin are certainly one watch with this second album that should break them into bigger things because of the particular mix of new and old. Margolin’s guitar and voice, particular on songs such as as Born Confused, or Lilac, have definite echoes of The Cure's Robert Smith, while Sweet, a visceral song about mental health and self-harm, clearly has a Pixies influence. Nevertheless the passion on show here also make them fresh and original. There’s a particular calling card of twisted, raw, but honest emotions expressed in repeated phrases. "I don't want to get bitter. I want us to get better. I want us to be kinder to ourselves and each other." Out on Secretly Canadian.
Porridge Radio – Sweet
Fiona Apple – Fetch The Boltcutters
Identified when released as potentially the best of the year, and so it proved to be. Only her fifth LP in almost a quarter of a century, and eight years since her last, the title takes a line from The Fall TV cop series. Fiona Apple is one of those artists who lies low for years and then brings out a work of startling originality. And she’s done it again. Her voice is ever more surprising, emotional, husky, raw and animated, but it's the musical sound she produces here that makes it so different, a work recorded almost entirely in her home. On the title track there's the sound kitchen implements, dog bark and cat meow, and apparently she used the bones of her dearly missed, diseased dog Janet within the percussion – so "no half measures" as she’s said in a recent interview. The rhythms are complex and wild, with a call-and-response primal feel to it on Kick Me Under the Table, huge vocal intensity on Newspaper, and double Dutch skipping rope rhythm on For Her. It’s all very visceral and non-digital and on each listen and new experience of emotion and complexity. On I Want You to Love Me there's a heart-stopping piano and vocal performance that becomes like a twisted ecstasy of climax in her vocal delivery, throbbing and swallowing in and out of time. This is a combination of Tom Waits at his most clanking oddness and Joni Mitchell in The Jungle Line. There's simply no one like Fiona Apple out there – uncompromising, passionate, intense and always innovative. Genius is not too big a word. Out on Epic.
Fiona Apple – I Want You To Love Me
Warm Digits – Flight of Ideas
Perfect pop cleverly delivered by the Newcastle electronic duo of Andrew Hodson and Steve Jefferis on their new album Flight of Ideas, their work influenced by Can, Giorgio Moroder and Chemical Brothers, and among the outstanding tracks are The View From Nowhere with Delgados’ Emma Pollock, Feel The Panic (with The Lovely Eggs), Shake The Wheels Off (with The Orielles), and opening track Frames and Cages. Out on Memphis Industries.
Warm Digits - The View From Nowhere
Taylor Swift – Folklore
Released with little fanfare and announced only a day in advance, this 16-track album, with a 17th on the physical release, is less the full-on pop of previous, nor a return to the Nashville of her roots. The surprise comes then, as a replacement for her planned headline slot at Glastonbury, and this is an interesting, introspective, low-key affair, produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner, and reminiscent of some of this band's work, with gentle guitar, gliding piano, soft electronica. This is more like work made by Sufjan Stevens or even Bon Iver than a pop mainstreamer, and no coincidence as Justin Vernon appears on the track Exile. There's strange, otherworldly sounds here, such as on the cavernous-sounding Cardigan, or the woozy pedal steel on Mirrorball, where she sings "I can change everything about me to fit in." Presented on YouTube with a series of picturesque landscapes and lyrics, this is an oddly absorbing album of direct lyrics, heartbreak and introspection, such as on Illicit Affairs, where she yearns for someone who "showed me colours you know I can’t see with anyone else”. A very different and welcome side to this mainstream star comes out with our own new colours. Out on Republic.
Taylor Swift – Cardigan
The Nightingales – Four Against Fate
After their excellent Perish The Thought in 2018, touring with the great standout Stewart Lee, and the release of crowdfunded darkly hilarious documentary King Rocker, a welcome return for one of Britain's very finest truly independent bands. Robert Lloyd is still going strong with his distinctive delivery and quirkily brilliant lyrics, with increasing backing and shared, half-talking vocals with drummer Fliss Kitson. There's no better example than the criss-crossing, rhythm-changing track Top Shelf, previously highlighted on Song of the Day, but the whole album is laced with self-derogatory and dry humour, from Thick Rides Again to Neverender, the crazily changing rhythms and riffs of The End Began Somewhere, the electro-pop-style Everything, Everywhere, All Of The Time, the juddery glam rocker The Other Side, and the classic finale, The Desperate Quartet. Against lockdown, the music industry and financial barriers, this four-piece triumphantly fights on against all odds. Released independently and out on Bandcamp.
The Nightingales – The Top Shelf
Moses Sumney – Grae (Parts 1 and 2)
A highly confident and in many ways extraordinary double-album follow-up to 2017's Aromanticism by the American singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, coming in two parts. The first, in Februrary, mixing chamber pop, R&B, soul, art pop, jazz, digitals and spoken word in a swirling mix of soulful profundity. muscle and movement and a voice, with an impressive falsetto, something of David McAlmont voice. An artist promising, and delivering, the unexpected and indefinable, evading pigeonholes, skipping agilely between genres, as well as selling to redefine gender stereotype. As he puts it on Virile, “I insist upon my right to be multiple." He most certainly is. The second part is slightly less forceful, but that doesn't lessen its power. Highlights include the searingly heart-wrenchingly imaginative Me In 20 Years, where he wonders if he'll be alone, and Bless Me (Before You Go) and Cut Me with a telling hospital video, terrific trombones, and gorgeous overdubbed vocals. Out on Jagjaguwar.
Moses Sumney - Virile
Bill Callahan – Gold Record
Brilliantly dry, wry, humorous and emotionally poignant, the man of Smog returns with a suitably ironic, if hopeful, title and songs that are as good as any his career, featuring mostly just his golden voice and guitar, and this one marked by a theme of climbing into the first-person narration of characters in different situations. In Pigeons (see also our New Songs section) a reticent limo chauffeur is asked marriage advice by newlyweds, and their are humorous references to Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen. In The Mackenzies, a man fixing his car who has his own family is welcomed in by elderly neighbours who decide he is their dead son, and he tenderly plays along with the situation in a painfully touching dilemma of politeness. And there is also a tribute to another musician within the song titled Ry Cooder – "so laid-back and exact in his attack". You could say the same of Bill too. Out on Drag City.
Bill Callahan – The Mackenzies
Julianna Barwick – Healing Is a Miracle
This fourth album by the American artist who builds her music around electronic loops is perhaps her richest, fullest and most powerful to date, even though it is perhaps slightly less varied in sounds that 2016's Will. Inspirit sounds like an out-of-space sci-fi track with a vast choir. Overall this feels like a modern form of church music. Wishing Well is a ghostly apparition of a song. In Light, featuring Sigur Rós’s Jónsi, lulls like waves. Guest harpist Mary Lattimore on Oh, Memory is beautifully celestial, as is Safe, like the sound of sunlight, if that can be imagined. Late-night, lie-down-in-the-dark music, calmingly transcendent, ethereal, a little Enya-esque at times, but not as contrived, and undoubtedly gorgeous. Out on Ninja Tune.
Julianna Barwick – Inspirit
Yves Tumor – Heaven To A Tortured Mind
American artist Sean Bowie’s fourth album, under the name Yves Tumor, following 2018’s Safe In The Hands of Love, is in short, a strutting, bold, funk-soul, brass-rich genre-spanning, androgynous work of masterful invention. Outstanding basslines underpin songs such as Romanticist / Dream Palette, or Gospel For A New Century, while Kerosene! burns out guitar riffs worthy of Prince, with backing vocals recalling Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser or Claire Torry on Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky. On Medicine Burn the guitar writhes into an unnerving level of creative electronic distortion. Are there any echoes of his namesake? There's something of Robert Fripp, but not much more than that. Bu the influence of Throbbing Gristle is always there. This Bowie is certainly innovative in spades, from the gooey ghostliness of Strawberry Privilege, to the unstoppable stomp, echo and crashing of Asteroid Blues. A true star. Out on Warp.
Yves Tumor – Gospel For A New Century
U.S. Girls – Heavy Light
Seventh album of experimental pop from the artist also known as Meghan Remy from Toronto, is another form of seamlessly created collaged art in musical form. Overtime, for example, mixes soul, Abba and Bruce Springsteen with heavy saxophone, is about drinking oneself today. 4 American Dollars is a late-seventies disco-pop, Denise, Don’t Wait has a sixties girl-group sound. Bossa Nova? A dash of Patti Smith? It's all here in an eclectic mix by a performer who seems to have a endless palette of styles. Out on 4AD.
U.S. Girls – 4 American Dollars
Elvis Costello – Hey Clockface
Musically innovative, and of course caustically clever in lyrics, Costello returns with an album on which, due to Covid restrictions, he has played many of the instruments and the record is given an extra twist by Argentine-born American producer Sebastian Krys. There is a dynamic range here, from the musical hall ragtime of the title track Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me?, to the brilliantly rhythmic Hetty O'Hara Confidential, the atmospherically smoky Newspaper Pane, standout political track No Flag, which recalls some of his finest postpunk material of the early 80s, the slower, but just as powerful We Are All Cowards Now, and the talky opener Revolution #49. One of his very best for years. Out on Concord.
Elvis Costello – Hetty O'Hara Confidential
Wire – Hive Mind
Frontman Colin Newman and co returned with a high quality new album that maintains classic postpunk status and sound, now with added electronics, though the guitar noise and minimalism still dominate, particularly with single chord on the long track, Hung. Primed & Ready and Cactused are also distinctive and uncompromising and outstanding among the new work. As the album title suggests, the lyrics aren't exactly lacking in political or social conscience, and the restless anger of these veterans remains, particularly on the Humming, with references to the rise of political populism, and suggested Russian interference in elections. Still a pioneering band. Out on Pink Flag.
Wire – Cactused
Thundercat – It Is What It Is
A sophisticated, rich jazz-funk return for the brilliant, eccentric 35-year-old Los Angeles star bassist Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, who has variously worked with Kendrick Lamar and written songs for his cat, Thon. This album includes quality musical contributions from friends Flying Lotus, Ty Dolla $ign, Childish Gambino, Lil B, Kamasi Washington, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, BadBadNotGood, Louis Cole and Zack Fox. While there are echoes also of Steely Dan, clearly the Afro-space-funk of George Clinton remains a big influence, given appreciation as a man who “may be covered in cat hair”, as he sings on Dragonball Durag, but “still smells good”. The focus of the album though is the mourning of of Mac Miller, Aria Grande’s ex and Bruner’s close friend. But as for the music, the bass is wildly funky, and the voice is pretty good too. Other outstanding tracks include the more anxious Black Qualls, and the rather beautiful Fair Chance. Out on Brainfeeder.
Thundercat – Dragonball Durag
Lavinia Blackwall – Muggington Lane End
The former singer from the Glasgow psych-folk band Trembling Bells proves she's no slouch with songwriting either between life as a teacher, with a wonderful debut solo LP. Initially she recorded two of the songs, Waiting For Tomorrow and All Seems Better with former bandmates Mike Hastings and Simon Shaw but then got a fresh band together with her partner and collaborator Marco Rea. There's an often cited 60s vibe to her voice and music, particularly Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention, but her modern reference points, from milk from Asda in the brilliantly droll but jaunty, Beatles-esque John's Gone mark out her distinctive talent, also on, for example, the sublime folk-pop of Troublemakers, typifying Blackwall's ability to marry catchy melodies with lyrical detail of local troubles such as broken windows and human insecurity. A fabulous mixture of folk past and present. Out on Bandcamp.
Lavinia Blackwall – Waiting For Tomorrow
Nadine Shah – Kitchen Sink
Welcome return for the British singer with a Norwegian and Pakistani heritage, three years on from her acclaimed album Holiday Destination, one that pulled no punches on the refugee crisis. Her latest centres on the feminist position in 2020, and how things haven't really progressed. It's a powerful portrayal of sexism and backwardness in society. The cover and title track is inspired by the 1970s TV play Abigail's Party, using domestic chore imagery. Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love_ is a caustic commentary on the male choice of partner. Shah is never going to make an album without a serious message, and this stripped back music and her deep, powerful voice leave no ambiguity. Opener Club Cougar for example, talks about dating a younger man (she's 34, and her boyfriend is 33), and more of the album talks about the flouting the pressures and expectations of womanhood. With styles ranging from jazz to pop to bossa nova, her producer again is longtime collaborator Ben HillIer. Out on Infectious.
Nadine Shah – Ladies for Babies
Lianne La Havas – Lianne La Havas
A superb place to end part one, being another the best albums of the year, the British soul singer's voice and performance skills are given the full exposure in this wonderful self-titled third studio LP, the first since 2015's Blood. Tenderness, heartbreak and more is captured with remarkable beauty and fragility by an extraordinary, ever maturing voice that reverberates and extends exquisitely across restrained music. These studio tracks that feel very much like live performances. Standouts include Bittersweet, previously highlighted on our New Songs section, Paper Thin, Can't Fight, the gentle driving drums and soft keyboards and vocal harmonies of Sour Flower, Radiohead cover Weird Fishes which builds into a song reminiscent of that band’s album In Rainbows. Mature, sensitive, and astonishingly beautiful work. Dive deep and soak it in. Out on Nonesuch.
Lianne La Havas – Weird Fishes
This is part 1 of our roundup of favourite albums of 2020. Part 2 has also appeared on the Albums page.
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