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Twenty from Twenty Twenty.

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Well what a pile of crap this year has been. A glimmer of hope as we approach its end but I think we are still a way off normality. Music has been my escape this year more than ever. Below are twenty discs that have made my days brighter than they otherwise would have been. They are not in order but all have done well to get into the twenty as there are plenty more lurking outside:

Elvis Costello – Hey Clockface
Bright Eyes – Down in the weeds where the World once was
Brigid Dawson and the mothers Network – Ballet of Apes
Jess Williamson – Sorceress
Bonny Light Horseman – Bonny Light Horseman
Lucinda Williams – Good Souls better angels
Cornershop – England is a Garden
Flaming Lips – American Head
Rose City Band – Summerlong
Three Queens in the Mourning and Bonnie Prince Billy- Hello Sorrow, Hello Joy
Jarvis Cocker – Jarv Is
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
Drive by Truckers – The Unravelling
Lost Brothers – After the fire, After the rain
Waterboys Good Luck seeker
Olafur Arnalds – Some kind of Peace
Mary Chapin Carpenter – The dirt and the Stars
Dawes – Good luck whatever
Eels – Earth to Dora
Jason Isbell – Reunions

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Comments

  1. I would ask The Mods to remove this thread immediately. If not, what’s the point of our Year End Poll?
    Honestly, I don’t know why I bother.
    ps Steve, that’s not a bad list apart from your curious omission of Taylor Swift

    • It’s not just me then? I bought the new Sparks (v good) album and the new Psychedelic Furs album (dull if I’m honest, all too mid paced) and that’s it I think. Oh, It’s Immaterial’s third. Also good.

  6. My listeninghas been a mixture of old and new. It`s quite odd that at times I will be listening to nothing and feel OK but as soon as I play music I feel invigorated.

    Here`s some of the stuff that`s kept me invigorated:

    Bob Dylan `Rough And Rowdy Ways`
    Arlo Guthrie `Hobo`s Lullaby
    Big Star `Third/Sister Lovers`
    Melody Gardot `Currency Of Man`
    Tom Petty `Wildflowers & All The Rest`
    Terry Reid `River`
    Real Estate `The Main Thing`
    Fred Neil `Bleeker & Macdougal`
    Various `Surf City ~ The California Sound`
    Pines `Sparrows In The Bell`
    Waterboys `Fisherman`s Blues`
    Pearls Before Swine `The Use Of Ashes`
    J.S. Ondra `Tales Of America`
    Herbie Mann `Stone Flute`
    Rose City Band `Summer Long`
    Hey Negrita `The Buzz Above`
    Love `Forever Changes`
    Lee Hazlewood `The Cowboy And The Lady`
    Manu Chao `Proxima Estacion Esperanza`
    Jacob Collier `Djesse Vol.2`

  7. A snapshot of some of the music that that guy what paints has found diverting and/or thought provoking during 2020 when he stops painting long enough to drink tea and think about what that guy what paints may or may not paint next when that guy what paints stops drinking tea and starts painting once again what that guy what paints paints.

    In no particular order…
    Kelly Lee Owens – Inner Song.
    Joshua Redman – Round Again.
    Gilroy Mere – Adlestrop.
    Bruce Brubaker – Glassforms.
    Agnes Obel – Myopia.
    Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl – Artlessly Falling.
    Richard Skelton – These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound.
    Nubya Garcia – Source.
    Andrew Wasylyk – Fugitive Light And Themes Of Consolation.
    Moses Boyd – Black Matter.
    Carla Bley – Life Goes On.
    Bohren & Der Club Of Gore – Patchouli Blue.
    Vic Mars – I Am Dead.
    Sault – Untitled (Black Is).
    Sault – Untitled (Rise).
    Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters.
    Ben Lucas Boysen – Mirage.
    Julianna Barwick – Healing Is A Miracle.
    J. D. Allen – Toys/Die Dreaming.
    Jef Neve – Mysterium.

  8. Add Swifto’s not-really-folky Folklore and Dua Lipa’s banger-fest Future Nostalgia.

    As for reissues, the delue Sound O’ The Times is a stonking release. There’s a few tracks on Discs 3 and 4 that could have easily made it to the original release.

  10. Yes, 2020 has been a fine Year for music. Is it that they are better albums than previously, laboured over in adverse times. Or is that we have had more time to listen to them?
    Don’t know, and to be honest who cares. There’s some good ‘uns in your list, but here’s a few you seem to have forgotten:

    Humdrum Express – Ultrcrepidarian Soup
    Green Day – Father of All Motherfuckers
    Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott – Manchester Calling
    Block 33 – 6:36 To Liverpool Street
    Duncan Reid & The Big Heads – Don’t Blame Yourself
    Paul Weller – On Sunset
    Sparks – A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip
    Sports Team – Deep Down Happy
    Massive Wagons – House Of Noise
    Fontaines DC – A Heroes Death
    Kate Rusby – Hand Me Down
    Bob Mould – Blue Hearts
    The Damned – The Rockfield Files

    and still AC/DC, The Sensible Grey Cells and McCartney III to come

    I read the Mojo list yesterday – they’ve got it wrong too
    (again!)

    • I have the Paul Heaton/Jacqui Abbott and it should have fund a place on my list.
      I also have the Kate Rusby but I wouldn’t place it in my top 20.
      I like the Bruce album too but that doesn’t fit in my top 20.

      • I was initially non-plussed with Manchester Calling – it felt a bit overlong, and didn’t have the immediate thrill of previous albums. But I preserved (6 listens aka The Tigger Rule), and yes it is as good as anything they’ve done.

  12. Some good stuff on Steve’s list – there’s four there I’d have on mine. I’ve enjoyed more new albums this year than I have for a number of years though a fair proportion are from old favourites including Sir Bob who is surely going to top the Afterword poll this year isn’t he (as long as Lodes allows all votes to be counted). Rather alarmingly a lot of Mojo’s top 20 or so are contenders for my list; and there I was thinking I was unique and individual in my tastes.

    • @SteveT – I won’t list those records which I am certain will make my top ten, but some I have enjoyed that may just miss the cut include

      Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever (possibly the worst band name ever but a nice record)
      Kandace Springs
      Margo Price
      Diana Jones
      A Girl Called Eddy
      Bruce Springsteen (haven’t listened enough to be fair, but so far strikes me as solid but not special. Opinion could change in the coming weeks of course)
      Arborist
      Blue Rose Code
      Robert Vincent

      The last three are from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Liverpool respectively and are lovely things – thanks to the Afterword for alerting me to Blue Rose Code. Rob Vincent is a terrific singer/songwriter in the (dread word) Americana mould- he’s really delivered with this one I think and it deserves a bigger audience than it is probably getting. It’s yet another record produced by Ethan Johns. How does he find the time?

      • Blue Rose Code is very good – saw him live with @retropath2 a couple of years back
        Margo Price I love.
        Bruce I tend to agree with you – ok but not brilliant
        I have the brcf album and enjoyed it on release but havent played it recently.

  16. I’ve accumulated a lot more music than usual this year, it seems. Mostly, but not exclusively, of the jazzward persuasion.
    About 50:50 new and old/new to me. Mostly downloaded this year. Whittling it down to just 20 albums is going to be difficult. I shall have a go.

    • My twenty from 2020. In alphabetical order.

      Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard & Steve Swallow – Life Goes On
      Eivind Aarset & Jan Bang – Snow Catches On Her Eyelashes
      Gary Bartz & Maisha – Night Dreamer Direct-To-Disc Sessions
      GoGo Penguin – GoGo Penguin
      Huw Marc Bennett – Tresilian Bay
      Jaga Jazzist – Pyramid
      James Copus – Dusk
      Jas Kayser – Unforced Rhythm Of Grace
      Jeff Parker – Suite For Max Brown
      Kansas Smitty’s – Things Happened Here
      Moses Boyd – Dark Matter
      Mulatu Astatke & Black Jesus Experience – To Know Without Knowing (UK Release)
      Nubya Garcia – Source
      Oscar Jerome – Breathe Deep
      Rob Luft – Life Is The Dancer
      SAULT – Untitled (Rise)
      SAULT – Untitled (Black Is)
      Shabaka & The Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History
      Surprise Chef – All News Is Good News (UK Release)
      Various Artists – Blue Note Re:Imagined 2020

      Two of these are from Australian artists and were released the previous year locally but only appeared outside Australia in 2020.

      Another list of 2020 discoveries from previous years on it’s way.

      • Some crackers there Mike.
        I’ve been playing the Elvind Aarset & Jan Bang album a fair bit this month and the Rob Luft album with Elina Duni is lovely. Her album Partir from a few years ago is similarly beautiful.

        • My jazz immersion this year has resulted in (and benefited from) listening to all the jazz shows on BBC Radio. That’s where a lot of the above list came from. Particularly good for that are Jamie Cullum’s Radio 2 Show, Linley Hamilton’s Radio Ulster show and Seonaid Aitken’s Radio Scotland show.

  17. I have rediscovered solo Paul Weller this year. “On Sunset” is rapidly climbing my Weller career charts. It’s really, really good. Not much else to report I’m afraid….

  18. Well, personally speaking, I reckon 2020 has been the worst year for new music since 2009. Of course, we’ve had the pandemic, which may have delayed some albums, but we also have the pandemic to thank for at least 2 Joe Pernice albums and a forthcoming Macca one. I am basing this opinion on wholly subjective reasons of course, i.e. my albums ranking project, but it does continue a downward trend over the past few years. 2017 was an absolutely fantastic year for albums, so 2018 had a hard job to match it, but it was a pretty good year. 2019 continued the downward trend, but I had Norman Fucking Rockwell at 19, so what do I know, although there may be someone who has just got excited that there might be 18 great albums they missed! Maybe not.

    But 2020 has been a bit of a disappointment. A couple of old troopers have turned in great albums, and there have been some very good album ones, just not many great ones. Having a couple of blokes in their 60s and 70s at the top of my list gives me a flashback to 5 or 6 years ago when I would have said that there’s not many new artists worth bothering about (I was very wrong) and was just buying albums by my old favourites, even if some of them hadn’t released a good one for yonks.

    What’s been particularly disappointing this year is the world of rap. I wouldn’t have thought the lockdown would have impacted rap music as much as many other genres, as so much of it is recorded in the comfort of their own home…sorry, crib. But again, whilst there have been some good ones, there’s been nothing that’s totally wowed me. I’ve had a rap album at number one for the past four years, but that’s not going to happen this year.

    There are a few albums that are growing on me, so maybe I’ll feel different by the end of the year, but as it stands 7, maybe 8, of my top 10 for this year wouldn’t have got into my top 10 for any of the past four years. But having dived into jazz in a big way I have hundreds of ‘new’ favourite old albums that more than makes up for it. Maybe as a result of this I haven’t given this years albums as many spins as I usually do?

        • Jeeziz Waddster, I was counting on you to be full of ideas after my negative nelly post above. All I can offer, by way of apology is this playlist with loads of rather good singles..

          • Ah, I hadn’t noticed your comment and made pretty much the same point.

            Looking at my list, about half of it is either ‘meh’, disappointing or ‘really? people think this is a great album?’ But there are about 70 good or very good albums. It’s just there aren’t many great albums. That said, at the top is a bloke who I think has released his best album 40 years into his career. But for one reason or another I haven’t given this year’s albums as many listens as I would normally have, so maybe there’s a few growers.

              • I’m afraid I’ve never quite taken to the RTJ albums as much as everybody else. They’re good, but they’re not ones I give repeated spins to. But the great HipHopGoldenAge blog has them as the album of the year again, and they don’t get much wrong.

                I’m favouring Elaquent, Kid Abstrakt & Emapea, the ever reliable Apollo Brown & Che’ Noir and, from over here, The Four Owls. But there are a load of good rap albums without any real standouts – Dope KNife, Jamo Gang, Wiley (his Boasty Gang album, rather than Godfather 3), Third Root, Ka, Eleven & Jason D, Rhys Langston, R.A.P. Ferreira, Moar and Charlie Smarts have all turned in good albums. A new one that is growing on me is The Sharecropper’s Daughter by Sa-Roc, so that could well end up topping my list.

                A couple of older campaigners, Common and NaS have released their best albums for some time, but I was disappointed with the Public Enemy album.

                I’m finding contemporary R&B a bit more interesting this year, particularly Jhené Akko and the two Sault albums, but I haven‘t hear the Megan Thee Stallion album and there are a few others on my list to listen to, so you never know, I might not have heard my favourite album yet.

  19. Needless to say, Afterworders, in about 4 weeks’ time I’ll be presenting the two most essential end-of-year lists that you’ll see for this bizarre, benighted year. I refer, of course, to:

    The duco01 Favourite 40 New Albums of 2020
    and
    The duco01 Favourite 20 Reissues, Compilations and Archive Recordings of 2020

    A splendid list is guaranteed for all. Probably.

  21. That Taylor Swift album…I like it, and it’ll be comfortably in my top ten, but it is far far too long, isn’t it? No album needs to have 17 tracks*. There’s songs down there in the bottom third where I look at the title and have no idea what the song is (Betty at #14 is one of the songs of the year, but it took me six months to realise that thanks to the filler around it). A bit of culling down to ten or twelve tracks and it would very likely have been my number one.

    *except London Calling

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