Here are my picks.
Clearly the pandemic and lockdown has affected music this year - clearly in a negative way in terms of live music, but not in a wholly negative way in terms of recorded music.
Music has felt urgent and necessary this year, and a lot of records have risen to the challenge. When you look at the end-of-year lists, it's clear that intimacy has been what people have been after, and what many of the most acclaimed albums have offered.
Not that many years are these days, but it has not been a year for the rock music. I'm not sure there'd have been a glut of great man-rock records anyway, but I'd look at a band like The Strokes, who I think released their best album for at least a decade and a half, and that if they'd had big festival shows to back it up, and have people realise the new stuff sits better with 'Is This It' than almost anything else they've done, I think we'd be seeing them higher up the year-end lists.
No matter, it's been what it's been.
I have two clear favourites, both of which I've listened to over and over throughout the year, as they both were released fairly early - Laura Marling's 'Song for our Daughter' and Waxahatchee's 'Saint Cloud'.
The former was probably my favourite for the first half, the latter for the second half, so it's only fair to make them joint Number 1s. I was pretty hooked on 'Song for our Daughter' from the moment my daughter walked into my office just as Marling was singing the line "Lately I've been thinking about our daughter growing old" in the title track, and though not overly given to sentimentalism, that was hard to resist.
It is, for me, her first classic album, after several very good albums. I think it deserves better than it's received, both critically and commercially, so far, but so be it. There's not a weak track, the second half is just entirely beautiful.
And yet, right now, I may even rate the Waxahatchee album even higher. I'd listened to Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield) a fair bit before, but always just liked, without loving, her indie-guitar sound.
'Saint Cloud' is, sonically, clearer, straighter, more like country-rock. There's no hiding, no tricks. It's 11 stunning songs. I know it's a bit invidious to compare all great female singer-songwriter albums to obvious forebears, but this album really does strike me as the perfect blend of those two landmarks recorded in the same studio at the same time, 'Blue' and 'Tapestry'. The journey is like 'Blue' - a mix of self-examination, wistfulness, sadness and then bursts of something like euphoria, while the clear, true singing, the sense of a mature song cycle, reminds me of 'Tapestry'. I don't know, I'm not sure the comparisons really do it justice. It's not derivative. It's such a great album.
Most of the headlines at the end of the year are being taken by three (indeed four) other albums by solo women - 'Fetch the Boltcutters' by Fiona Apple, 'Punisher' by Phoebe Bridgers and 'folklore' (then 'evermore') by Taylor Swift.
I really liked all of them too, I just think the Waxahatchee and Laura Marling albums hit home a bit more personally. 'Fetch the Boltcutters', although it presents as "hard work" is not actually hard work, and is catchy, funny, clever and brilliant all the way through. With Phoebe Bridgers, both this and her previous work, I can't quite pin down why I'm not completely sold. Just something ... something ... anyway, it's an album full of tunes you're surprised to remember and lines which make you stop and check what you've heard.
And, yes, there are the Taylor Swift albums, rather like Beyonce's 'Beyonce' and Lemonade' where reluctant rock men put aside their suspicions and accept they're good albums full of good songs.
Who else is near the top of my tree?
Run the Jewels, whose fourth album felt so of the moment when it came out, and Bob Dylan, of course. Just the sheer relief of there being an actual Bob Dylan album, and it being finely wrought and wide ranging. Has it been overpraised? Maybe in some quarters, not in others. It's as consistent an album as he's put out for decades.
There have been a lot of pretty decent albums by guys who, a decade or so ago, were topping lists and winning awards. People aren't that interested these days, but these genuinely were the best albums by Badly Drawn Boy and Rufus Wainwright for 15+ years, there were excellent solo albums by the lead singers of the best indie rock bands of the century (Tweedy, Leithauser, Berninger). I loved the Fleet Foxes album when I first heard it, but then began to find it quite hard work. The Khruangbin album, Mordecai, is a bit of a curiosity, but quite hypnotic.
So, here are my Top 40 albums, I think, subject to change. I'll put a list of favourite songs and a playlist underneath.
- St Cloud - Waxahatchee (1st Equal)
- Song for our Daughter - Laura Marling (1st Equal)
- Rough & Rowdy Ways - Bob Dylan
- Fetch the Boltcutters - Fiona Apple
- Punisher - Phoebe Bridgers
- RTJ4 - Run the Jewels
- folklore - Taylor Swift
- Banana Skin Shoes - Badly Drawn Boy
- The New Abnormal - The Strokes
- Love is the King - Jeff Tweedy
- Unfollow the Rules - Rufus Wainwright
- grae - Moses Sumney
- Song Machine - Gorillaz
- Shore - Fleet Foxes
- Old Flowers - Courtney Marie Andrews
- England is a Garden - Cornershop
- Women in Music Pt 3 - Haim
- April / 月音 - Emmy the Great
- Lianne La Havas - Lianne La Havas
- Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was - Bright Eyes
- evermore - Taylor Swift
- Shortly after Takeoff - BC Camplight
- Future Nostalgia - Dua Lipa
- The Universal Want - Doves
- The Loves of Your Life - Hamilton Leithauser
- Mordecai - Khruangbin
- Idiot Prayer (live from Alexandra Palace) - Nick Cave
- Dark Hearts - Annie
- Deep Down Happy - Sports Team
- Heavy Light - US Girls
- On Sunset - Paul Weller
- Letter to You - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
- Set My Heart on Fire Immediately - Perfume Genius
- Untitled (Black Is) - Sault
- To Love is To Live - Jehnny Beth
- That's How Rumours Get Started - Margo Price
- A Hero's Death - Fontaines DC
- Sawayama - Rina Sawayama
- Live Forever - Bartees Strange
- Untitled (Rise) - Sault
- Song for our Daughter - Laura Marling
- Unfollow the Rules - Rufus Wainwright
- War - Waxahatchee
- 4 American Dollars - US Girls
- Hell - Waxahatchee
- I Contain Multitudes - Bob Dylan
- Me in 20 Years - Moses Sumney
- Betty - Taylor Swift
- Bad Decisions - The Strokes
- ICU - Phoebe Bridgers
- Under the Table - Fiona Apple
- I Need Someone to Trust - Badly Drawn Boy
- Sunblind - Fleet Foxes
- Walking in the Snow - Run the Jewels
- First Class - Khruangbin
- Can't Do Much - Waxahatchee
- Fortune - Laura Marling
- Guess Again - Jeff Tweedy
- Sour Flower - Lianne La Havas
- That's How Rumors Get Started - Margo Price
- Dandelions/Liminal - Emmy the Great
- Violent Sun - Everything Everything
- Stairwell Song - Bright Eye
- Black Dog - Arlo Parks
- Don't Wanna - Haim
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