2020 has really upped the stakes in what constitutes as a rubbish year, so instead of a paragraph dedicated to it I will just jump into the focus of this issue. Following my incredibly long ‘top 50 albums of the 2010s’, I am returning to give a shorter list dedicated the albums which have soundtracked lockdowns, long meandering walks and bike rides while there was nothing else to do and the occasional solo disco. Although I have probably over the year listened to enough albums to make a top 50, nobody has time for that knowing numbers 50 to 25 would really be scraping the barrel, and we leave that sort of content for now defunct publications like Q, NME and soon to be defunct The BBC. So without further timewasting lets get into the 10.
10
BC Camplight
Shortly After Takeoff
In at ten is Lo-Fi Indie artist B.C Camplight, one of the albums released this year so fit the doom and gloom of the year, particularly some of the nihilism and self-loathing going on during the first lockdown period. With lyrics masked very heavily in self-irony, over dark synths B.C. Camplight is able to make you laugh about things which are all to familiar. Feeling useless and watching the same film for the 36th time (in his case, Die Hard 2), and questioning why he can’t be like people in the movies. The US artist has been settled in Manchester since 2015 and with some of the content like ‘I Only Drink When I’m Drunk’ and ‘I Want To Be In The Mafia’, some of the dry humour of previous music from the city has certainly rubbed off on him. Despite its serious subject matter going into self-destructive tendencies, his lyrics keep it light enough to be entertaining without completely taking out the weight of the subject matters.
Essential Tracks: ‘Ghosthunting’ ‘Back To Work’ ‘Arm Around Your Sadness’
9
Tame Impala
The Slow Rush
After two outstanding albums in ‘Lonerisms’ and ‘Currents’, Kevin Parker has seemingly taken the Arctic Monkey’s technique pre ‘Tranquillity Base, Hotel And Casino’ of keeping the basic structure of his music the same but having just enough variation in the sound to keep people interested. More interesting, Tame Impala seem to be simultaneously moving more towards electronic music yet are sounding more and more like Crowded House by the day. Having said that, this album is at its best when Kevin Parker either commits fully to his psychedelic roots like in ‘Posthumous Forgiveness’ or just goes full in on the Inverted Disco sound like on the albums standout ‘Breathe Deeper’ or ‘Glimmer’. On the album which could bring Tame Impala to headline status in 2021/2022/whenever we get to go to festivals again, there are plenty of tracks here suited for that stage.
Essential Tracks: ‘Posthumous Forgiveness’ ‘Breathe Deeper’ ‘It Might be Time’
8
The Avalanches
We Will Always Love You
A very late entry, having been released in December, little was an expect from a group who released its magnum opus all the way back in 2000 (Since I Left You), and only releasing one mediocre record since. However, this album, bursting at the seems with guest appearances, hits 72 minutes of pure optimism very much at odds to the themes of the year. Guest appearances range from Jamie XX, Johnny Marr, MGMT, Leon Bridges, Mick Jones, Kurt Vile, Tricky and Blood Orange to Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O, and each guest offers something unique to fit into The Avalanches psychedelic dance style.
Essential Tracks: ‘Oh The Sunn!’ ‘We Go On’ ‘Wherever You Go’
7
Sault
Untitled (Black Is…)
Release on Juneteenth, the mysterious British-American groups brilliant postmodern take on ‘black’ music, and with it what it means to be black, should have soundtracked the events of Black Lives Matter over the summer, unfortunately due the anonymity of the group, some outlets such Pitchfork only got round to even reviewing the album 6 months after its release. With a wide range of influences, taping into R&B, Funk, soul and spoken word, Sault manage to create a compelling story of blackness on both sides of the Atlantic not on one, but two releases (Sault’s second of the release of the year would have made the top 10 had it not been for the late release of The Avalanches). Channelling the likes of Aquemini era Outkast (on album highlight ‘Black’), Gil Scott Heron and multiple other artists over the last 50 years.
Although some members of the group have been revealed, Inflo, producer of Lil Simz ‘Grey Area’, Cleo Sol, who has also featured on Lil Simz’s record, and confirmed guest appearances from Michael Kiwanuka, the majority of the group remain anonymous. Whatever the case, they managed to make two of the 11 best albums of the year, and both could have been higher still if both were not slightly overlong.
Essential Tracks: ‘Wildfires’ ‘Sorry Ain’t Enough’ ‘Black’
6
Caribou
Suddenly
Back at the end of February 2020, just before it became blatantly clear to everyone that Covid-19 was going to ruin everything for everyone, and just as I was moving to Manchester, Caribou dropped Suddenly. This was exciting to, as I had booked tickets to see Caribou as my first Manchester gig on March 27 2020 (since its been rearranged twice and there’s a slim chance I will see him in May 2021) and although the quality of this album has strengthened my choice to buy those tickets, little did I know that I’d be talking about this album in December having not seen the guy live.
The album itself is a mixture of some tracks perfect for ice cold walks like ‘Sister’, ‘Magpie’ and ‘Ravi’ punctuated by the more outstanding tracks like ‘You And I’, which other than featuring at a party in a TV show supposedly set 10 years before its release (poor from the BBC soundtrack team behind Normal People there) is excellent, the affirming ‘Home’ and the more heavily house track ‘Never Come Back’. The flow of its album is overall which gives this album such a high position on the list, hopefully I will get to see it live next year if we get out of this omninightmare.
Essential Tracks: ‘You And I’ ‘Home’ ‘Never Come Back’
5
Jay Electroinica
A Written Testimony
Despite the fact he’s been releasing mixtapes and featuring on Kendrick tracks for thirteen years, ‘A Written Testimony’ is amazingly Jay Electronica’s first album. Amazingly still, despite proclaiming to be a huge fan of hip-hop, prior to this album I had got Jay Electronica confused with Kendrick-hangeron Schoolboy Q, and not every hip-hop hipsters favourite rapper.
There was two bits of controversy combined to this album, firstly the inclusion of a speech by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in the opening track, a man who has been accused of being in a plot to assassinate Malcolm X and for numerous anti-Semitic statements. As the album does not look to use anything anti-Semitic said by Farrakhan and is just a passage that empowered Jay Electronica as a child (Jay Electronica accepted the teachings of the Elijah Muhammad in his teenage years), this on its own isn’t a problem, but it must be noted that some of Jay Electronica’s previous statements of Judaism have also been troubling, including calling an influential rabbi “a liar and the devil”. The argument over Electronica’s position and referencing his upbringing and his previous relationship to Katie Rothschild could have us in endless circles arguing about if the artist does hold truly Anti-Semitic views or not, but as this blog is just meant to be focusing on the music itself, and that I had no idea there was anything potentially anti-Semitic about this artist before I researched to write this piece, we will leave this as a flagged issue and move on. Afterall, if people can still say Elvis Presley albums or Michael Jackson albums are still the best albums ever when both have quite shady things against them, we can move on and look at this objectively with the disclaimer.
The Second bit of controversy is from Jay Electronica fans who were disappointed that half the album isn’t Electronica at all but Jay-Z. This issue I will be more equivocal on. Hip-hop has a rich history of dynamic duos, from Q-Tip and Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, to Outkast’s Andre 3000 and Big Boi, to El-P and Killer Mike of Run The Jewels, to Jay-Z himself with Kanye West on Watch The Throne. Like in these examples the tit for tat between Jay Electronica and Jay-Z really enhances the album. This has been the best Jay-Z has rapped since The Black Album, and the best project he’s featured on since Watch The Throne. It feels so right hearing Hov rapping over big band inspired production again on ‘Shiny Suit Theory’ and the refrain of ‘A.P.A.D.T.A’ about of “I have numbers on my phone that’ll never ring again” is a real modern take on grief which many people would have felt during this year.
Essential Tracks: ‘The Neverending Story’ ‘Shiny Suit Theory’ ‘A.P.A.D.T.A’
4
Jessie Ware
What’s Your Pleasure?
Prior to the release of this album, Jessie Ware said that she wanted to make a record that people could have sex to. Unfortunately for her, the album was released in the middle of a global pandemic where other than people already living with partners, no one was really having sex when it came out. On the bright side, Ware has released easily her best album which both embraces the old and the new. When the album first came out, its obvious links to Chic and Donna Summer, from the disco style to the majority to the album all the way down to the album cover, made me overlook the album on first listen. But since, both the album cover and the album itself has grown on me immensely.
Jessie Ware has had experience filling dancefloors before, with her featuring credit on Discolsure’s ‘Confess To Me’, and the channelling of energy on that track has definitely benefitted this album. At many points, the album hits the sex appeal Ware was looking for, like on “Ooh La La”, “Soul Control” and “In My Lips”. Much of the record, particularly on tracks such as “The Kill” and “Adore You”, really benefit from the consistently excellent production from James Ford, and from the thematic feel of the record. The album is at its best however, when the album acts as the soundtrack to solo disco’s which some people (me) have had during lockdowns, with songs like ‘Spotlight’, ‘What’s Your Pleasure’ and ‘Step Into My Life’, taking the magic of late 70s disco and putting a 21st century spin on it.
Essential Tracks: ‘Spotlight’ ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ ‘Read My Lips’
3
Run The Jewels
RTJ4
Through their first three albums the dynamic duo of EL-P and Killer Mike had already gone from outsiders to rap royalty, but RTJ4 really is the ‘jewel’ in the crown of their discography. Run The Jewels, in particular Killer Mike, had always been very overtly political, but the Black Lives Matter movement shoved this album front and centre straight into the top ten of both the US and UK charts for the first time, with Killer Mike’s speech to protesters in Atlanta on May 30 to not riot and to instead to “plot, plan, strategise, organise and mobilise’ was seen by tens of millions of people around the world, made this album the sudden rallying point for the ongoing protests. The lyric in ‘Walking In The Snow’, albeit written before the killing of George Floyd, of ‘and every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free, And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me, Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, “I can’t breathe”’ was both shocking and put the US political system and police brutality front and centre in the album.
In addition, RTJ also for the first time created proper catchy hooks, something which was missing from previous albums. The release of probably their most accessible song to date; ‘Ooh La La’, comes in with bombast over a distorted, fairground like piano loop, while Killer Mike manages to through fire at the Trump administration in the US by declaring ‘the inmates run the asylum’. In the pattern of other records like Kanye Wests My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Queen of the Stone Age’s …Like Clockwork, every cameo is not there for gloss, but as a vital component of the album. Trust Pharrell to be able to make the hip-hop hook of the year while pointing out that most figures on dollar notes were slave owner. There is even a good cameo from 2 Chainz for the first time since 2012! Away from the overtly political, the rest of the album is filled with the quick paced, quick whited wordplay you come to expect from the street fighting rap styles of El-P and Killer Mike, and this might just be them at their very peak.
Essential Tracks: ‘Ooh La La’ ‘Walking In The Snow’ ‘Ju$t’
2
Fontaines D.C.
A Heroes Death
To be honest, I never got along with Dublin boys Fontaines D.C’s debut album Dogrel, which I saw as just another unnecessary punk revival album on the coattails of the success of Idles. But their darker, more layered and melodic second album, A Heroes Death, changed my opinion overnight, from dislike to thinking they should headline Glastonbury within five years. While album one was a raw indie rock album, this second album is more of a rich album more in the ode of Joy Divisions Unknown Pleasures Arctic Monkey’s Favourite Worst Nightmare or Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights. Album opener ‘I Don’t Belong’ sets the tone, with a thematic and atmospheric instrumentals yet with lyrics you can imagine will be yelled back velociously at them if they could actually tour the album. Tracks like ‘Televised Mind’ and ‘Lucid Dream’ take energy of youth of the ilk of ‘Brianstorm’ or ‘PDA’ and channel them into the bands own distinct cresendoing style, while ‘Living In America’ even shows elements of The Dead Kennedys. The slower songs work as well, with the refrain of ‘No’ in particular to be something to behold, a truly great album closer.
The centerpiece of the album. ‘You Said’, arrives on track five, and is as grandiose, layered and atmospheric as Interpol’s ‘Untitled’, with the main riff of the song holding a jawdropping sense of wonder at times. If you miss the old Fontaines, there is stuff for you to. The lead single ‘A Heroes Death’ is as catchy as it is fast paced, while ‘I Was Not Born’ has a chorus perfect as a Friday afternoon middle finger to bosses everywhere. Lead singer Grian Chatten has something all indie greats have, a great sense of whit and a polarising vocal delivery which people either hate or will be imitating until the end of days.
Essential Tracks: ‘I Don’t Belong’ ‘You Said’ ‘No’
1
Yves Tumor
Heaven To A Tortured Mind
From the moment I heard the first stop/start slightly offkilter horns of ‘Gospel For A New Century’, and the following groove and swagger of the rest of the song, Yves Tumor’s ‘Heaven To A Tortured Mind’ was always going to be my album of the year. From previously making his first three albums under the genre of ‘noise’, Yves Tumor does what so many brilliant musicians have done before, taken the ingredients of his prior work in niche subgenres and applied it with pop sensibility. The result: a brilliant cocktail which has elements of Pink Floyd, Bowie (coincidently Yves Tumor’s real name is Sean Bowie), Prince, Frank Ocean, Childish Gambino, Radiohead, Lenny Kravitz and Tame Impala, yet sounds and feels unique and new. Track 2, ‘Medicine Burn’, takes the spiralling elements of Radiohead’s ‘Climbing Up The Walls’ and puts it against slightly RnB reflected verses, creating a thrilling loud/quiet dynamic, while songs like ‘Identity Trade’, ‘Romanticist’ and ‘Dream Palette’ take elements of funk, indie, psychedelia, jazz and RnB together and somehow make it work. Other songs like ‘Strawberry Prvierlege’ and ‘Folie Imposee’ remind one of Frank Ocean’s Blonde combined with some of the jawdropping cliff edges found in Yeezus and In Rainbows while ‘Asteroid Blues’ feels like an apocalyptic version of Tame Impala’s Currents.
Best of all, in a song which according to Apple Music I’ve listened to over 50 times this year, is ‘Kerosene’, which the only song really comparable to it, albeit in many ways a very, very, different song, is Pink Floyd’s ‘Great Gig In The Sky’. Both have chord sequences that stay in your head for days and days, have a spinetingling guitar solo, and have female guest vocals which both are used as effectively an extra instrument and leaves every single bit of skin with goosebumps. ‘Super Stars’ again shows off Tumor’s brilliance as a performer, with his vocal performance matching the sunshine tingled groove and riffs to make a jam Prince would be proud of. The album finishes with ‘A Greater Love’, a song which again takes elements from soul, r&b and glam rock, and is about how love makes Tumor completely weighed down and restless, which is also what I am as a listener as I then restart the record again and again, and then bore anybody with the misfortune of talking to me in the last 8 months about how good the record is.
Essential Tracks: ‘Gospel For A New Century’ ‘Kerosene’ ‘Super Stars’
Rudrums Ramblings 