2020. Where do you begin? No amount of pop froth can compensate for these 12 months just gone, which began with disturbing news of a flu-like virus in China and ended in dystopian misery with mutant strains, the economy in tatters, and families denied the basic tradition of being together at Christmas. I’d like to say that music has been the soothing tincture that eased the stresses and strains of COVID-dodging over this last year, but so many aspects of consuming and enjoying it have been curtailed in the process, whether it was concert going or the simple pleasure of record shop browsing. Even Record Store Day was different, postponed twice and then manifested as three ‘drops’ in as many months that were closer in form to booking an Ocado slot at the beginning of lockdown than buying music. All this doesn’t, either, take into account the releases and tours that were cancelled or postponed.
However, that gloomy assessment belies the fact that there was, as in any ‘normal’ year, plenty of new material to enjoy, a lot of it recorded defiantly, stoically, resourcefully in home studios and bedrooms, as virtual house arrest both focused creativity as well as a well-I-may-as-well-do-something work ethic. By the same token, as we took to engaging our families and colleagues alike via FaceTime, Zoom and Teams, musicians - denied live audiences - switched to home performances. Probably the ultimate example of this was the Global Citizen One World: Together At Home telethon in April, which even managed to pull together the Rolling Stones in their respective living rooms for a virtual gig which, given the technical complexities of playing instruments in time via Internet connections, worked surprisingly well.
Invention was everywhere, as those at every strata of the pop music economy eked out livings through webcams, some effectively singing for their suppers via Facebook, like Peter Bruntnell gigging from his front room in Devon, while Duran Duran’s John Taylor and Pink Floyd alumn Guy Pratt gave masterclasses in bass playing via YouTube. Arguably, Tim Burgess won the zeitgeist stakes, as his Lockdown Listening Parties on Twitter became the must-join musical commune, in lieu of gatherings like Glastonbury.
You could, however be easily fooled into thinking that 2020 was a year without light, but that wouldn’t be entirely right. Even with the relentless nature of home imprisonment, self-isolation, distancing, shielding, quarantine and all the other curtailments of social normality, music has been a constant. Rarely has there not been something new or re-released to grace the turntable or CD player, which means that there’s still plenty to pack into this year’s list of the best listens. So here goes:
Reissues
I’m opening with the heritage trail because there’s been no shortage of archived albums repackaged and reissued, especially with audiophile temptations like 180g vinyl and, increasingly, coloured vinyl to make them that much more alluring to magpies like me. Thus, Coldplay celebrated the 20th anniversary of still their best album, Parachutes, with a yellow (geddit?) edition. There were reissues of live recordings, too - one of my weaknesses - in particular, Peter Gabriel putting out four of his engrossing performance albums with new sonics and higher-definition vinyl, while Pink Floyd polished up their Delicate Sound Of Thunder double live album with additional tracks and a very noticeable upgrade to the audio. An honourable mention should be made, here, for The Blue Nile, who completed their programme of remastering and reissuing their four studio albums with 2004’s High, nicely tarted up and with four extra tracks. David Bowie posthumously commenced the process of releasing live albums from his underrated 1990s tours, demonstrating further what an untouchable music god he always was. I won’t dwell more here as January is shaping up to be Bowie Month on this blog. Likewise, the Rolling Stones’ deluxe edition of Goats Head Soup proved what a worthy follow-up to Exile On Main Street it was, despite forever being in its shadow. And the fact that one of the package options came with a double live album was an absolute bonus, albeit one which came with the now expected Stones premium.
However, the accolade for Reissue Of The Year goes by a very long chalk to Tom Petty’s Wildflowers & All The Rest, a lovingly-curated collection that includes his “incomplete” Wildflowers album, the tracks he’d originally wanted to include as a double-disc release, live versions and acoustic home demos that are like listening to a whole new album in their own right (the All The Rest elements). Put together by Petty’s widow, daughters and various associates, it’s a heartwarming tribute as much as a platform to reassess one of rock’s most understated figures.
New albums
10 - Bob Dylan: Rough And Rowdy Ways
9 - The 1975: Notes On A Conditional Form
If my previous entry indicated my susceptibility to mob opinion, then The 1975's fourth album merely compounds my weakness for being gradually ground down into acceptance of something. In fact, in this list is a reflection of my changing domestic life in 2020, having moved in with my partner and her teenage daughters, and then being slowly drawn into their world. Thus, I’ve succumbed in recent months to Gogglebox (my God, the show we schedule our entire Fridays around, which has proven to be the perfect tonic to this year’s nonsense), MasterChef, Bakeoff and even Selling Sunset and Tiger King. And the 1975, a band one of the teens speaks of nothing else (though her Christmas vinyl list did include Led Zeppelin II and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. She has just turned 16…). Whether it’s from a form of Stockholm Syndrome or something else, the brainwashing has worked. And the nice thing is, The 1975 strike me as old heads on relatively new shoulders. By that I mean that they are, as their name suggests, rooted in rock tradition, but as Notes On A Conditional Form explains, capable of breadth and depth, progressiveness and polished production. Musically you’ll find nods to Americana sitting side-by-side with lush strings, textures of the kind you’ll find U2 producing at their finest along with soulful 80s pop.
8 - Elvis Costello: Hey Clockface
My musical journey has always felt intertwined with Costello’s: as one of the vanguards of the New Wave, he was part of my real time introduction to music, as I reached double figures in the late 1970s. The problem with him, however, has been keeping up. Hey Clockface is, by my count, his 33rd release, and another roll of the personnel dice, having released 2010’s National Ransom under his own name, 2013’s fine Wise Up Ghost was recorded with The Roots, and 2018’s equally enjoyable Look Now brought Costello back together with The Imposters, the band only one member shy of the original Attractions. This year’s solo effort was, much like the previous 32 albums, a melange of whatever styles took his fancy. Some might find it a little scattergun (Daily Telegraph critic Neil McCormick called it, lovingly, a “hot mess”), but that’s its charm. And, hey, you don’t have to like every Quality Street in the box. This apparent rambling free spirit may be down to Costello surviving cancer before embarking on a tour that was subsequently abandoned part-way through due to COVID, confining him to home studio sessions in Vancouver and work on material recorded before the lockdown in studios as disparate as Helsinki, Paris and New York. This might also suggest a restlessness of approaches, and it’s certainly fair to say that Hey Clockface leaps about, stylewise, with punk-like anger alongside Broadway swing, ambient swashes amid jazz, and several stops in between. This might sound dilettante, but it has never bothered those who appreciate Bowie, who to the very end collected disparate styles and musical fashions like a rag and bone man collects junk. One of the reasons it works with Costello is that, regardless of the genre they’re attached to, his lyrics provide the continuity. The same pen that produced such rich words as those on Oliver’s Army, Watching The Detectives and (I Don’t Want To) Go To Chelsea is still on spleen-venting form, with highlights like the partially-spoken Revolution #49, No Flag and even the delightful piano ballad Byline.
7 - Kylie Minogue: DISCO
When I revealed, in a post about The Crown, that I was raving about DISCO (and, as memory recalls, even the new single from Steps), those around me started wondering if I was feeling all that well. After all, Kylie is, was and always has been pure pop, from her Stock Aitken Waterman arrival as the category’s tiniest princess (she is short - I once came close to treading on her in a nightclub, before realising the towering figure of Michael Hutchence glaring over me…) to the present day. She has never strayed far from the glitterball, and with this album she doesn’t so much embrace disco as cling to the sparkling orb like Miley Cyrus astride that wrecking ball. And, yes, it’s unashamed. Cast yourself (or, if you’re too young, your mind’s eye) back to a mid-70s episode of Top Of The Pops, and performances of Stayin’ Alive, Love Train, Never Can Say Goodbye or Disco Inferno, and you’ve landed yourself in the heart of what it says on the tin. Yes, it’s clichéd, but who cares? It’s done with authentic revelry and an earnest celebration - make that the emphasis - of the disco genre, which always was a lot more than the lazy trope trio of “flares, chest wigs and gold medallions”, and more about the combination of intricate jazz-funk rhythms blended with soul music and good times. So you’ll find all of that here. Why? Because Kylie, like most others in this list, wanted to enjoy themselves in lockdown. Just like Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Disco, another online hit this year, Kylie embraced the mini disco revival of late by channelling it in her home studio. “It’s difficult even for me to explain,” she said when the album came out. “But even grown-ups need some pure pop fun.” And, so, on DISCO’s 12 songs she hammers home the point with track after track of flagrant, boob tube-wearing, hot pants-clad, blister-inducing heels worth of disco fever. If I said there wasn’t a standout like Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, I’d sound penurious, because they’re all good. Not that good, but not far from, and when you add them all up, you end up with a smile on your face, the likes of which have been in short supply this year. Even if you never move from your favourite armchair to listen to DISCO, let alone actually cutting a rug to it, it’s a pure, unadulterated joy.
6 - Paloma Faith: Infinite Things
Right, so what I was saying just now about Kylie - well, in your face fashion! I’ve had the same epiphany with Paloma Faith. And, I hear what you’re saying, I shouldn’t. Well, I am. In fact I’ve never had much quarrel before with Will Hodgkinson, the Marc Bolan-lookalike rock critic of The Times, who recently branded Faith’s Infinite Things “the same old boring Radio 2 fare”. On this, he’s just plain wrong. While it would never be judged in the same league of critical acclaim as Pet Sounds, Hunky Dory or What’s Going On, Faith's uplifting, infectious pop is a room-filling delight from start to finish. What’s even more remarkable is that it is another product of lockdown, Faith having taught herself how to engineer the record from home, working remotely with a variety of producers and co-songwriters including Ed Harcourt. My gateway to the album came via the promotional route: a big and brassy performance of Gold on Jonathan Ross’s chat show back in November that was infectious enough to pre-order the record for…er…’my other half’, and we, sorry, she wasn’t disappointed when we cranked up the entire thing one Sunday morning. There’s a point I’m trying to make here: musical taste is mostly bollocks. Just because you don’t, personally, like something, doesn’t make it bad. I’ve never been a fan of hip-hop, and won’t be so dumb as to make patronising remarks about it, but that doesn’t make it artistically bad. Especially if hip-hop’s your thing. But I digress. Here, across a dizzying combination of writers and producers, Faith has sat as the spider in a web of her own, pulling together ballsy songs which convey some of her own, noted personal dilemmas through a canvas of genuine soul. Clearly, her vocals are the shining beacon throughout, but the rest - the writing and the arrangement - are never bit part players. “Radio 2 fare” it may be, but it’s an album of radio-friendly tracks that you would have little issue with making the soundtrack of your day…especially if you spend it on the inside looking out at the gloomy goings on in British streets over the last year.
5 - Paul McCartney: McCartney III
There’s a danger that McCartney - like Dylan, a year older - gets on a list like this by legend default. Macca has, it should be said, produced some dodgy songs in his post-Fab career, but this should be read as individual tracks rather than entire albums. Even We All Stand Together has its whimsical value. The trouble is usually venerated acts of the classic rock era still trying to be cool (and the less said of McCartney this week being photographed sporting a 'man bun', the better). McCartney is, it must be said, somewhat beyond criticism, given his contribution to arguably the greatest pop band that ever was. But not even being a Beatle gets you a free pass. Thus, the common argument is that none of The Beatles had a 100% record as solo artists, not even John Lennon, though George Harrison came closest. And as for Ringo…well, bless him. But back to Sir Thumbs Aloft. If you’ve not been keeping up, McCartney III is clearly not his third solo album, but an attempt to reconnect with the simplicity of his 1970 post-Beatles debut (McCartney - recently re-released) and 1980’s McCartney II, which followed his split from Wings. Though III isn’t the result of any similar departure, it shares with both numerical predecessors the arch application of McCartney’s trademark songwriting ease. It’s the craft that sets him apart from just about anyone else in the last 60 years, an accolade that boggles the mind when you think about it. And then the fact that, at 78, he’s still restless enough in “Rockdown” (as the cover sticker reads) to go into his home studio and, by himself and playing every instrument, record an album as mostly good as III is, further testament to that unbelievable talent. I say “mostly” as it has its iffy moments, but to dwell on those would be mean-spirited when the overall product is such a load of Macca fun. And even if he was recording just for his own pleasure, there’s nothing self indulgent. In fact, the indulgence is all ours, as we revel in songs as good as Seize The Day, Deep Down and The Kiss Of Venus. There is also Deep Deep Feeling which, in six decades of writing, is as nailed-on McCartney as you could hope to find without being derivative of anything you’ve heard before. McCartney has never shied away from his silly side, his aforementioned collaboration with The Frog Chorus being the strongest case in point, but even when he’s at his most whimsical - and ever so slightly cheesily so - there is a purity to his writing and delivery of that writing that manifests itself so perfectly in terms of melody, rhythm and engagement. And McCartney III has it all.
4 - Paul Weller: On Sunset
Speaking of Pauls, Mr. Weller. While you might question my sanity for placing him in the same bracket at Kylie or Paloma Faith, in a year that needed the feelgood factor, On Sunset shipped it by the truckload. Weller’s 15th solo studio album continued an output that has averaged one every two or three years since his 1992 self-titled solo debut. Much, I suspect has to do with a restless spirit that appears to charge Weller’s creativity, and also leads to trying something else each time. On Sunset marks another change of course, veering from the folky vibe of 2018's True Meanings, to a decidedly sunny, open-topped outing. Again, unwittingly perfect for the time. It’s an excursion into the blue skies and easy living of 1970s Los Angeles: effortlessly cool, intriguing by turns, melodically pleasing and incongruously soulful for an album crafted in deepest Surrey. While Weller guarded that this wasn’t his “West Coast record”, an affection for California comes readily through, from the woozy funk of the seven-minute opener, Mirror Ball, with its nods to the Isleys' Summer Breeze. It’s there in the wistful thoughts of Old Father Tyme and other stabs of nostalgia. On Sunset even draws on the organ talents of former fellow Style Councillor Mick Talbot, who appears on Baptiste and Village. Earth Beat, while we’re at it, swings like the Council’s Speak Like A Child, with the giddiness of pristine ’80s pop wrapped in modern sonics. Nor is Weller afraid of casting a wide net into his pool of historic reference, calling on Slade’s Jim Lea to provide a rakish violin to Equanimity, one of several Beatley tracks which include the acoustic guitar-driven melancholic beauty, Rockets. It might be tempting to think that On Sunset points to the 62-year-old Weller winding down his career, but with Album 16 already on the sketch pad, he’s showing no signs of a 28-year solo career ending any time soon. Even if, for me, On Sunset is an absolute career high. Maybe, even his best to date.
3 - Tim Bowness: Late Night Laments
By the end of August, we had started to feel freedom again. The sulphurous months since March were over, and we could get out and enjoy life again, albeit while still wearing a facemark. Some of us even got away for a change of scene, in our case, the Isle of Wight, a relatively short hop down the A3 and across the Solent. Up until that point my daily vista had been mostly the view out of our living room window, which isn’t much - mostly hedge. A week’s holiday, with sun and without need for a passport was both fortunate and much needed. Further balm arrived in August in the form of Late Night Laments, Tim Bowness’s collection of nine songs evoking the intimacy - the claustrophobia, even - of late night, atmospheric music consumption via headphones. In the process, Bowness - one of the UK’s most respected singer-songwriters, even if not that well known - delivered an album of timely reflection. While written before The Thing became a thing, it bore some prescience to the events that unfolded as the spring wore on. Bowness even worried that some of the themes it covered, such as hate crime, generational division and social exclusion, wouldn’t be relevant in the midst of the pandemic, but at its release, he realised just how Late Night Laments tapped into the dystopian gloom. That, though, doesn’t make it gloomily dystopian, however. But it is an album of reflective, stripped back consideration, written from the perspective of an individual, late at night, enclosed in a living room, listening to noirish music of the kind John Barry did so well for the Bond and Harry Palmer films. With contributions from Porcupine Tree’s Colin Edwin and Richard Barbieri, as well as production work by Bowness’s good friend and long-term collaborator Steven Wilson, Late Night Laments taps into my own love of textured, less raucous music, drawing valid parallels with the brooding of The Blue Nile, Talk Talk and even Prefab Sprout. Significantly, for me, it recalls the wooziness of One World, one of my favourite John Martyn albums, and its eight-minute Small Hours, which had hitherto been my go-to source for late night listening. With this new work by Bowness, I found a successor.
2 - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Letter To You
Another album recorded just in time is one made as they used to be - effectively as a live performance and over five days. Letter To You came together at the end of 2019 at The Boss’s Colts Neck ranch, a twenty-minute drive the Jersey Shore so steeped in Springsteen mythology, and reunited him with the E Street Band for their first collaboration since 2014’s High Hopes. That’s not a particularly wide gap, but then such is Springsteen’s industry that it was his fourth release in eight years, having made the wonderful Western Stars as a solo artist, along with writing his Born To Run autobiography, and the unexpectedly extended Springsteen On Broadway residency that ran for five shows a week from October 2017 until December 2018. That Letter To You was completed in a week might suggest a man in a hurry but, unlike the 14 complicated months he took to make the Born To Run album in 1975, this one came with ease. Perhaps because it was one that he didn’t overthink. Instead, with a combination of new songs and a few that had been left on the shelf for decades, Springsteen and his trusted posse rattled through the album’s 12 songs. The immediacy of them, too, is not necessarily the record’s appeal: while dealing with personal themes like ageing, the album addresses itself with the joy and liveliness that is so much part of any Springsteen live show. There’s a contentment to the 71-year-old’s songs, but also celebration, such as the brassy Ghosts and its acknowledgement of the simple pleasures of being in the company of the E Street Band itself. Even when addressing mortality on I’ll See You In My Dreams, there is an uplift to even a song about friends who’ve passed on, lifted even further by a stirring guitar solo. Some have argued that Letter To You is Springsteen’s best album. That for me is like picking a favourite child, but it’s certainly up there. And it is certainly at the very top of all the music that has brightened up this shitshow of a year.
2020 Album Of The Year - Doves: The Universal Want
Of the events that stood out in 2019, the one that stood out the most was seeing Doves headline the Teenage Cancer Trust show at the Royal Albert Hall. While it didn’t hint at a new album from the Cheshire trio, it certainly whetted the appetite, a desire sated more than a year later when, after an 11-year recording hiatus, brothers Jez and Andy Williams and vocalist Jimi Goodwin released The Universal Want. Now, absence does make the heart grow fonder, it’s true, but then a gap will only increase expectation levels and, so, the risk of disappointment. Thankfully, nothing would be the case. The Universal Want was just the Doves album I wanted, building brilliantly on its predecessors - Lost Souls, The Last Broadcast, Some Cities and Kingdom Of Rust. All contained a compelling cocktail of industrial energy, club roots and even jazz, coated in a somewhat northern bleakness, much the result of Goodwin’s languorous vocals, Andy Williams’ crisp rhythms and his brother’s jangling, reverb-dripping guitars. The Universal Want, recorded following freewheeling writing sessions in the Peak District, and healthily infused with new avenues of exploration developed during the band’s extended break, is, according to the trio, a “shapeshifting album”, tapping into influences as disparate as Bowie and 1970s soul. With more years under their belts, Goodwin and the Williams bring reflection to the deal, looking back wistfully over the acid house era with the title track, personal tragedies on Broken Eyes, and time’s own passage on Cathedrals Of The Mind. But rather than presenting a bleak picture, there’s a libertarian freshness from the outset, with opener Carousels, and its allusions to seaside amusements and a more innocent time, underpinned by a sampled loop of the late Nigerian drummer Tony Allen. Indeed, Allen’s rhythms provided something of a starting point for the album itself with the Afrobeat-flavoured Mother Silverlake amongst the first songs to emerge from the jams up on t'moors. I Will Not Hide - not the statement on the band’s absence that it might suggest - adds a brightness, with an uplifting poppiness, a carefree simplicity and a notable absence of the guitars of previous Doves songs, and more sonic experimentation in its canvas as a whole. Thinking back for this post, I realised that there are probably few other bands whose albums I’ve listened to as often and as comprehensively as Doves’. Remarkable, really, when you consider they’d only released four until this year. Not wishing to dwell on it, but let’s face it, 2020 has been ugly, and one we’re all happy to see the last of. I have plenty to feel happily rid of. But this album, like so much else over the last 12 months unexpected at their outset, has been a glorious highlight. And my undisputed Album Of The Year.
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