Another difficult year for everyone, but from soul and jazz, electro-pop the experimental and avant-garde, an outstanding one for music releases, perhaps in part because out of diversity comes great art.
All the items shown in our Albums section are recommendations, and making a top 50 or 100 countdown to ‘the best’ seems such a subjective and pointless exercise, but here is a selection of some of the finest of the year, with Part 2 now available to view here.
Please click on the links below, shown in no particular order, to read more about each album, and also peruse the section to discover more.
Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime
Superb new release by the Tuareg songwriter and brilliant guitarist based in Agadez, Niger, bringing new songs about the life of the Saharan region from traditional tender ballads to rocking dance numbers
Olivia Rodrigo: Sour
Brimful with anger, jealousy, and melancholy, an impressive debut LP by the 18-year-old American actress and singer-songwriter is startlingly mature, fuelled by a heartbreak, and mixes punk rage with power-ballad slow-boil spite
Billie Marten: Flora Fauna
We’ve previously highlighted her single, Garden of Eden, and the singer-songwriter from Ripon in Yorkshire’s third LP of folk-pop lives up it with its hushed, intimate vocals and an understated maturity that echoes Fiona Apple and Billie Eilish
Sons of Kemet: Black to the Future
A wonderful return by the pioneering UK-based jazz quartet after 2018’s acclaimed Your Queen is a Reptile, here with fuller compositions and arrangements, and featured vocalists including Kojey Radical, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Joshua Idehen and D Double E
St Vincent: Daddy's Home
This superb new LP by Annie Clark is inspired by the look, sounds and feel of grimy early 70s New York, creating a work of of sleazy sophistication, the sounds of electric sitar, a Steely Dan, and an edgy joke title referring to the release of her father from prison
Squid: Bright Green Field
A bold, expansive, experimental and exciting full debut by the postpunk Brighton five-piece, with songs full of musical adventure and dynamic changes, combining krautrock, prog and even a dash of jazz
Tony Allen (and various): There Is No End
Entertainingly diverse posthumous album bringing together recordings by the great drummer and Afrobeat pioneer with Femi Kuti, here matched here with guests from soul to hip hop, including Sampa The Great, Skepta, Damon Albarn, and Lava La Rue
Paul Weller: Fat Pop (Volume 1)
Woking’s finest returns with his own lockdown LP after 2020’s acclaimed On Sunset, and this 16th solo LP is a fun bag bursting full of catchy melodies and fabulous toe-tapping pop tunes
Gojira: Fortitude
Metal may not be to everyone’s taste, but there’s no denying the songwriting and musicianship of this seventh album by the French quartet which is a powerful, engaging and stormy cri de coeur about climate change
The Coral: Coral Island
Themed loosely in setting, characters and narrative around a British seaside resort, this new double album by the Liverpool band glitters with beautifully relaxed, timeless tunes that shimmer with a late-60s psychedelia
Art D'Ecco: In Standard Definition
A stylish and charismatic glam-rock electro-funk-disco pop second album, echoing everything from early 70s Bowie or Bolan’s T-Rex to 80s synth New Romantics, by the wonderful Canadian androgynous singer
Rhiannon Giddens: They're Calling Me Home (with Francesco Turrisi)
From traditional folk to original songs spanning continents and centuries, this outstandingly beautiful and emotive album by the American and Italian music and life partners was recorded in lockdown in their adopted Ireland home
Field Music: Flat White Moon
The eighth LP from Sunderland brothers Peter and David Brewis brings together a wealth influences and accessibility, cleverly marrying pop, funk and postpunk with echoes of the Beatles, XTC and Todd Rundgren
Dry Cleaning: New Long Leg
Dry by name, extra dry by delivery, the post-punk south London band’s debut LP, laced with the spoken word vocals by Florence Shaw, is darkly hilarious fusion of stark guitar and stream-of-consciousness sardonicism
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra: Promises
This transcendent, astonishingly beautiful work, from a five-year collaboration, culminates in genre-spanning exquisite music over nine continuous movements that could easily top the best of the year
For Those I Love: For Those I Love
Moving, passionate, angry, grief-stricken and tender, this mix of beats, samples and striking spoken word lyrics by the Dublin performer and producer David Balfe is a powerful tribute to a lost friend
Tune-Yards: Sketchy.
Rhythmically complex, and restlessly clever, the latest release by California’s Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner wrestles with a variety of issues from gentrification to gender privilege and climate disaster
Gazelle Twin and NYX: Deep England
An extraordinary reworking of one of the most brilliantly evocative albums of recent times, Elizabeth Bernholz’s 2018 LP Pastoral is re-animated with electronic drone choir NYX to create equally profound and disturbing versions of seven songs and a new title track
Witch Camp (Ghana): I've Forgotten Now Who I Used To Be
A unique collection of field recordings of extraordinarily moving and evocative songs performed by African women accused of witchcraft, taken from where they have escaped to special safe-haven settlements
Valerie June - The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers
This sublime fifth album by the soul singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Memphis, Tennessee includes a guest appearance by the legendary Carla Thomas
Jane Weaver: Flock
The Liverpool and Widnes-raised artist returns with a mesmeric and uplifting 11th album that takes a variety of elements - electronica, psychedelia and acid folk morphing into fabulous alternative pop record that really takes flight
Arab Strap: As Days Get Dark
Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton’s first album together since 2005 is as brilliant as ever – a mischievous, brooding, blackly humorous, whisperingly sinister and sweary exploration of love, sex, addiction, exploitation and death wrapped in beautiful, poetic music
The Weather Station: Ignorance
This majestic LP of superb musical maturity.by the Canadian singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman has an undercurrent climate change theme, with deft piano, drums, strings, sax, guitar and a sound sometimes reminiscent of mid-80s Talk Talk
Anna B Savage: A Common Turn
The London singer-songwriter’s cleverly titled, superb debut is bird-themed, exquisitely beautiful and intimate. It exposes her rich, deep, velvety voice, one that gently warbles snd smoothly soars from a nest of various mostly acoustic strings. Utterly gorgeous
Albertine Sarges: The Sticky Fingers
Liberating, refreshing, eccentric, with a playfully light touch and flourishes of flute and feminist theory garnish this solo debut by the singer who works with Holly Herndon singer and is half of Italian synth new wave duo Itaca
Celeste: Not Your Muse – album review
She’s rightfully lauded as the next mainstream soul star, with evident echoes of Adele and Amy Winehouse, and while the 26-year-old British-Jamaican has all those attributes, there’s also an edge in this hugely powerful debut
Arlo Parks: Collapsed In Sunbeams
Timeless, classy, gorgeous, intimate soul decorates this much anticipated debut album from the astonishingly mature 20-year-old British singer-songwriter and poet who truly fulfils all her promise
Pearl Charles: Magic Mirror
An uncannily perfect reflection but very enjoyable throwback to mainstream singer-songwriter pop from the mid 1970s in the style of ABBA, Carly Simon, Carol King and more by the 29-year-old from LA
Madlib: Sound Ancestors – album review
A majestic journey into sampled and recreated classic sounds with his own original, eccentric twists, Madlib, aka American rapper, producer and multi-instrumentalist Otis Jackson Jr's newest LP is in turn produced by Four Tet
Sleaford Mods: Spare Ribs – album review
Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn return with their latest album recorded last July in lockdown, and as ever its filled with topical hard-hitting humour and brilliant bass and beats backing tracks by Fearn
James Yorkston and The Second Hand Orchestra: Wide, Wide River – album review
After his previous solo LP, 2019's The Route to the Harmonium, filled with experimental instruments, the Scottish singer-songwriter releases another beautiful LP of intimate, rich, wistful songs with new collaborators
Cassandra Jenkins: An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
The New York singer-songwriter’s second album is short, but serenely superb – with a soft sheen sound produced by Josh Kaufman, it’s perfectly composed with intelligent lyrics, and profound insights beautifully voiced
Lael Neale: Acquainted With Night
The folk-pop singer’s charming, melancholy LP has a rather beautiful ghostly, disembodied quality, lacking only old ‘78 vinyl crackles, but delicately gorgeous with her clear, distinctive voice, guitar and Omnichord accompaniment
Bell Orchestre: House Music
A wondrously absorbing and beautiful first release in a decade by the Montreal-based group of musicians with 10 tracks flow seamlessly into each other via coalescing classical and electronic instrumentation
Altin Gün: Yol
Wonderful third album by the Amsterdam-based Turkish, Dutch, Indonesian and British band who infuse traditional Turkish songbook material with elecro-pop, funk and disco sounds in a way that feels authentic and uplifting
Du Blonde: Homecoming
Beth Jeans Houghton returns, now under her label, continuing her more recent stripped back formula of great songwriting wrapped in fuzzbox guitar glam rock, this time with guests including Shirley Manson, Ezra Furman, and of Andy Bell of Ride.
Enjoying these, or want to add more? Please comment below. Also feel free to explore Part 2, which is now available to view here.
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