FEATURE:
A Year Like No Other
IN THIS PHOTO: Fiona Apple/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Hayes
The Twelve Best Albums from American and Canadian Artists in 2020 (So Far)
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IN September…
IN THIS PHOTO: Moses Sumney/PHOTO CREDIT: Eric Gyamfi
we will get to see which artist walks away with the Mercury Prize. The award is handed to the best album from a U.K. or E.I.R.E. artist over the past year. This year’s shortlist is brilliant and diverse but, whilst British and Irish artists have produced some incredible work this year (the Mercury Prize also includes albums from July 2019 onwards), I think American and Canadian artists have topped us in terms of sheer wonder and genius - as unpatriotic as that might sound! That may seem contentious, but I think many of the biggest albums of 2020 have arrived from the U.S. and Canada. Rather than do another feature that collects the best albums of the year so far, I want to focus on the best of the U.S. and Canada. From established masters like Bob Dylan, through to young mainstream stars like Taylor Swift, there have been phenomenal albums from every corner. Here, as a sort of alternative to the Mercury shortlist, are twelve musical…
IN THIS PHOTO: Haim
WORKS of brilliance.
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Taylor Swift – folklore
Release Date: 24th July
Label: Republic
Producers: Aaron Dessner/Jack Antonoff/Taylor Swift
Standout Tracks: the last great american dynasty/illicit affairs/mad woman
Sample Review:
“Despite the centre-stage given to lyricisms and songwriting on this album, it would be reductive to call this a return to her roots – even when she was embracing full-on bombastic pop a-la Reputation the songwriting was always there. It always has been, Swift trading on stories and quick turns of phrase even on her now infamous red-herring singles. On Folklore this runs deeper, the lyrics once more given space to move and breathe, the music fitting around the story being told instead of succinct pop hooks. On this record Swift is enjoying the huge discography that trails behind her, even when she's trying on other people's tales: on "the 1" we get a glimpse of witty and unlucky-in-love Swift, (it would've been fun / if you would've been the one") whilst Bon Iver collaboration "exile" brings to mind "The Last Time", a collaboration with Gary Lightbody found on her Red album.
In an interview with Mark Sutherland for The Telegraph in 2015, Swift hoped that: "if I ever find some sort of meaningful relationship, I’ll be able to still find inspiration, just through the everyday ups and downs." Folklore is proof that she can, she can, she can – and beyond just writing about her own love story. This is an album of Swift at her most knowing, pushing away the tabloid fodder that has often surrounded her artistry and magnifying the talent she's been honing her entire life. The melodies are full of warmth and round-edges, moving and twinkling on her whim as she indulges in one of the most most human and timeless past-times we have” – The Line of Best Fit
Buy: https://shop.virginemi.com/taylorswift/
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0xS0iOtxQRoJvfcFcJA5Gv?si=mRuv3sXwTO-g94yae6VpTA
Key Cut: cardigan
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
Release Date: 19th June
Label: Columbia
Standout Tracks: I Contain Multitudes/Black Rider/Murder Most Foul
Sample Review:
“"I Contain Multitudes" is a meditation on a life yet unfolding; historic figures -- Anne Frank, William Blake, the Rolling Stones, etc. -- jostle against archetypes of gunslingers: "…What can I tell ya? I sleep with life and death in the same bed…." "False Prophet" is a jeremiad disguised as blues house rocker. The protagonist testifies; he's a witness who confronts evil in history and real time. "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" celebrates the bluesman in his own house-rocking style to equate religion, sin, and redemption with romantic obsession and sex. "Crossing the Rubicon" is a roadhouse blues with the afterlife riding shotgun: "Three miles north of purgatory/One step from the great beyond/I pray to the cross/I kiss the girls/and I cross the Rubicon…." Dylan's band are loose and joyful; their raucousness carries his swagger and joy. The suspenseful, loungey "My Own Version of You" features grave robbing as it employs the inspiration of the Bride of Frankenstein to seek truth in taboo. "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You," caressed by marimbas, and brushed snares, finds Dylan blurring distinctions between carnal and spiritual love. Conversely, "Black Rider" whistles past the graveyard, with a nasty caution: "… Don’t hug me, don’t turn on the charm/I'll take a sword and hack off your arm…." In the Celtic gospel of "Mother of Muses," he's a grateful supplicant, a servant who humbly requests transformation knowing full well he may not be entitled: "… wherever you are/I've already outlived my life by far…."
The album's final half-hour contains only two songs. The nine-plus-minute "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" is a rambling dirge guided by a soft accordion in a stripped-down journey of longing and weariness; an acknowledgment of mortality with the ghosts of the Beats, Buddy Holly, and Jimi Hendrix alongside him. It stands with his best work from the '70s. That gentle sojourn prepares listeners for "Murder Most Foul," a sprawling, 17-minute lyrical, labyrinthian closer that moves through history, metaphor, and culture with JFK's assassination as its hub. It will be decoded for generations. Rough and Rowdy Ways is akin to transformational albums such as Love and Theft, and Slow Train Coming. It's a portrait of the artist in winter who remains vital and enigmatic. At nearly 80, Dylan's pen and guitar case still hold plenty of magic” – AllMusic
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/bob-dylan/rough-and-rowdy-ways
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Qht64MPvWTWa0aMsqxegB?autoplay=true
Key Cut: False Prophet
BC Camplight – Shortly After Takeoff
Release Date: 24th April
Label: Bella Union
Standout Tracks: Back to Work/Shortly After Takeoff/Angelo
Sample Review:
“Brian Christinzio’s fifth album as BC Camplight is a marvel, in which currents cut across each other in a half hour or so that roils with anxiety, stuns with beauty and, occasionally, provokes laughter. The whole uneasy tone – is it wrong to take so much pleasure in something so plainly the result of turmoil – is set with the opening to the second track, Ghosthunting, in which Christinzio delivers a parody standup routine to bilious audience laughter: “For the whole first half of this record, I thought I had a really bad disease. It turns out I’m just mentally ill. I called an attorney to get my affairs in order and everything. He said, ‘You know I’m a personal injury lawyer, right?’ He asked me, ‘Have you fallen?’ I said, ‘Boy have I ever.’”
Christinzio has previously spoken of his reluctance to dwell on pretty melodies or memorable choruses. That’s not the case here: he’s still not one for hammering a hook down your throat until it’s so caught it becomes irritating, but he lets them hang around long enough to sink in, and allows them to return. It’s more that the passages of disruption serve as palate-cleansers for the next piece of sweetness. It’s funny, too. Born to Cruise – whose opening minute or so is a grand, four-to-the-floor road trip banger, which makes you want to wind your window down and hammer the steering wheel, begins with the perfect bathos-laden lyric: “I’ve had my indicator on since leaving Crewe / That explains the gestures in my rearview.” This album is a masterpiece” – The Guardian
Buy: https://bellaunion.ochre.store/release/167312-bc-camplight-shortly-after-takeoff
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3hAhEoDACSr25dnJcov5eb?Smoke_=
Key Cut: Born to Cruise
Haim – Women in Music Pt. III
Release Date: 26th June
Labels: Polydor/Vertigo Berlin/Columbia
Producers: Danielle Haim/Rostam Batmanglij/Ariel Rechtshaid
Standout Tracks: I Know Alone/3 AM/Leaning on You
Sample Review:
“They sound intimately familiar with depression in all its states, whether they're turning away from the wearying, pointless challenge to prove themselves to men in media and the music industry on "Man from the Magazine," sinking into isolation on the oddly comforting standout "I Know Alone," or emerging from the darkness on "Now I'm in It," a slow-building anthem that could be the album's statement of purpose. Women in Music Pt. III's creative process echoes its feeling of growing agency. For the first time, Danielle took on production duties alongside Rechtshaid and Rostam Batmanglij, and impressionistic touches like the seagulls and alarm clocks that embellish "Up from a Dream" or the way the guitar and saxophones drift through "Los Angeles" echo Batmanglij's dreamy musical memoir Half-Light. HAIM let each song and each mood be exactly what it needs to be, making for a collection of moments that are more interesting and real than if they'd attempted a more uniform sound across the album. The band's love for the '90s is as strong as ever on the Roxette-like "Another Try" and "3 AM"'s flirty homage to the era's R&B. Their singer/songwriter and folk-pop roots get their due on "Hallelujah" and the gorgeous "Leaning on You," a pair of songs that unite the sisters' voices and struggles in perfect harmony. The lightness HAIM use to combat the heavy things going on in their lives reaches its peak at the album's end: Written in the wake of Rechtshaid's diagnosis, "Summer Girl," taps into memories of the good times to get through the bad ones and borrows the effortlessness of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," but trades that song's aloofness for unconditional love. Sprawling and intimate, breezy and affecting, Women in Music Pt. III is a low-key triumph” – AllMusic
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/haim/women-in-music-pt-iii
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6NtEjhPWfZcvJQuvjGX4bk
Key Cut: The Steps
Thundercat – It Is What It Is
Release Date: 3rd April
Label: Brainfeeder
Producers: BadBadNotGood/Flying Lotus/Mono/Poly/Sounwave/Steve Lacy/Taylor Graves/Thundercat
Standout Tracks: Black Qualls/Dragonball Durag/Fair Chance
Sample Review:
“What’s impressive is how Thundercat makes this music, with its complex structures and zigzagging rhythms, so human. “Dance away the pain,” he sings on “Miguel’s Happy Dance”. “It’s gonna be alright… just do the f***ing dance.” The bass skirts around his airy falsetto like a car dodging traffic, punctuated by bursts of Eighties-style synths. “How Sway” is the dance itself, a jittery burst of energy that disappears as quickly as it arrives.
Few songs make it past the three-minute mark: the album’s mid-section is three skits, including “Funny Thing”, where the squelchy bassline is a continuation of Drunk’s boozy, carefree sentiment. Songs such as “How I Feel” or the freewheeling “Innerstellar Love” (on which Kamasi Washington offers a brief but intricate sax solo) speak more to the space-y grandeur of 2015 album The Epic; synths blink and whirl like constellations and Thundercat’s vocals take on a psychedelic tone.
“Fair Chance”, which directly addresses Mac Miller’s death, feels raw with grief. The acceptance that runs through the album is still here, but Thundercat sings in a softer register – almost a whisper – as the “tik-tok” of the hi-hat marks the passage of time. “Everything’s so strange,” Ty Dolla $ign, who has a surprisingly soulful voice when it isn’t bogged down with autotune, sings. “Too hard to get over it,” Thundercat admits, before uttering the album’s title. He acknowledges he cannot change things, but at the same time legitimises his own struggle to accept that. Not all things are meant to be understood” – The Independent
Buy: https://thundercat.bandcamp.com/album/it-is-what-it-is
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/59GRmAvlGs7KjLizFnV7Y9
Key Cut: King of the Hill
Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Release Date: 17th April
Labels: Epic/Clean Slate
Producers: Fiona Apple/Amy Aileen Wood/Sebastian Steinberg/Davíd Garza
Standout Tracks: Shameika/Newspaper/For Her
Sample Review:
“About a minute into "I Want You to Love Me," the opening cut on her fifth album Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple holds a note a few seconds longer than you'd expect, then a few seconds more. It's the first time Apple veers away from the expected course on Fetch the Bolt Cutters and it's hardly the last, but it's telling that the shift occurs within a song, not in a transition between tracks. Apple spent the years after the 2012 release of The Idler Wheel sculpting the songs and sounds of Fetch the Bolt Cutters, working at her home studio with a band featuring drummer Amy Aileen Wood, bassist Sebastian Steinberg, and multi-instrumentalist David Garza, using their interactions and interplay as a suggestion of where the finished track should head. Everything on Fetch the Bolt Cutters seems restless: overdubbed harmonies don't quite jibe, rhythms are cluttered, narratives turn inside out, and Apple treats her own voice as a rubber instrument, stretching it beyond comfort. As pure sound, it's exhilarating. It's rare to listen to a pop album and have no idea what comes next, and Fetch the Bolt Cutters delivers surprises that delight and bruise at a rapid pace. The density is dizzying but melodies and certain lyrics make an immediate impression, such as the jolting denouement of "For Her." Apple wrote "For Her" in the wake of the contentious Brett Kavanaugh hearings and while its fury is palpable and by no means an anomaly on Fetch the Bolt Cutters, the album isn't defined by anger. Rage sits alongside heartache and humor, the shifts in mood occurring with a dramatic flair and a disarming playfulness. The unpredictable nature feels complex and profoundly human, resulting in an album that's nourishing and joyfully cathartic” – AllMusic
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/fiona-apple/fetch-the-bolt-cutters
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0fO1KemWL2uCCQmM22iKlj
Key Cut: Under the Table
Neil Young – Homegrown
Release Date: 19th June
Label: Reprise
Producers: Neil Young/Elliot Mazer/Ben Keith/Tim Mulligan
Standout Tracks: Separate Ways/Mexico/White Line
Sample Review:
“Of its 12 songs – recorded in late 1974 and early 1975 – seven have never been released before, including heartfelt opener ‘Separate Ways’. Over Levon Helm’s solid but minimal drum line comes a chorus up there with Young’s best, as melodic as it is thoughtful, as pensive as it is powerful. A sonic red herring, it’s perhaps the most downbeat moment on the record, which is overall a pretty chipper thing. The upbeat Try follows, a sweet little shuffle with Emmylou Harris on backing vocals and Young at his most positive, crooning: “We’ve got lots of time / To get together if we try.
The first recordings of songs that would appear on later albums from 1975 to 1980 boost the record into something not just of niche interest to Neil Young diehards, but something with universal appeal. Here the sugary ‘Love Is A Rose’ – first released by the majestic Linda Ronstadt in 1975 – sees Young being just about as cute as he’ll ever be (“I wanna see what’s never been seen / I wanna live that age old dream”) while the sparse ‘White Line’ and devastating ‘Little Wing’ prove his masterful way with deceptively simple balladry.
The hip-shakin’, joint-rollin’ title track – which would first be aired on 1977’s ‘American Stars ‘N Bars’ alongside ‘Star of Bethlehem’ – is proof, too, that Neil Young has always known how to have fun, but – as with the drawn-out release of ‘Homegrown’ – it will always be on his terms” – NME
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/neil-young/homegrown
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5zPtFuFrZs4IKuCEKNVJla
Key Cut: Love Is a Rose
Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud
Release Date: 27th March
Label: Merge
Producer: Brad Cook
Standout Tracks: Fire/Hell/Ruby Falls
Sample Review:
“There’s always something tempering the beauty of Waxahatchee’s music. I mean that as a compliment: on the American singer-songwriter’s fifth album, Saint Cloud, luscious melodies are undercut by a lingering unease, sentimentality by steeliness.
The glorious “Fire”, which starts with plaintive keyboard strains, might have been described as “lovely” were it sung down an octave. As it is, with Waxahatchee (real name Katie Crutchfield) stretching to the upper limits of her range, her voice sounds like a match being struck. Her lolloping delivery on “Lilacs” – “and the lilacs drank the water/ and the lilacs die/ and the lilacs drank the water/ marking the slow, slow, slow passing of time” – is Bob Dylan by way of Lucinda Williams” – The Independent
Buy: https://waxahatchee.bandcamp.com/album/saint-cloud-2
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7icLwE6vs6umiO7MrCy6XJ
Key Cut: Lilacs
Moses Sumney - Græ
Release Date: 21st February (Part One)/ 15th May (Part Two)
Label: Jagjaguwar
Producers: Moses Sumney/Adult Jazz/Ben Baptie/John Congleton/FKJ/Daniel Lopatin/Matthew Otto
Standout Tracks: Cut Me/Polly/Me in 20 Years
Sample Review:
“The 2014 arrival of Moses Sumney’s soaring soul voice attracted fans from Solange Knowles to Sufjan Stevens and led to a record-label bidding war. The Ghanaian-American’s 2017 debut Aromanticism was a beautiful collection of essays on romantic attachment, and Græ picks up on this theme from its opening spoken-word passage on the subject of isolation.
Released in two parts (Part One in February), the album branches into themes of masculinity, encapsulated by the propulsive “Virile”, where a satisfying contrast of textures incorporates a growling drone, soft flute and his angelic vocals. When the album shifts into its second part, and turns inwards with a slower pace to match its vulnerable introspection, there’s no jolt: Sumney’s voice ensures that his soundscapes melt together.
It’s here that the emotional heft is to be found, particularly in “Two Dogs”, “Bless Me” and the heart-wrenching apex, “Me in 20 Years”, in which he imagines himself alone in the distant future. The song swells with an arpeggiating harp, male choral backing and delicate splashes of cymbals, until his voice is flowing so freely of rhythm that you feel him yearning, painfully, for an answer to “I wonder how I’ll sleep at night/ With a cavity by my side/ And nothing left to hold but pride.
When pinned down, Sumney defines his music as “experimental folk-soul-jazz”, but it’s more complex than that. Under his masterful production, it sounds as though there are 20 musicians in the room with him. Flourishes of jazz flute and brass add warmth to “Two Dogs”, which showcases the acrobatics of his vocals as they glide effortlessly from falsetto vibrato to rich baritone. And the euphoric dreaminess of “Bless Me” – could there be a more heavenly gospel-cloaked crescendo on which to wrap up this astonishing feat?” – The Independent
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/moses-sumney/grae
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/35CHoLB0GEwYlOomriifC6
Key Cut: Virile
Run the Jewels – RTJ4
Release Date: 3rd June
Labels: Jewel Runners/BMG
Producers: El-P/Josh Homme
Standout Tracks: yankee and the brave (ep. 4)/ooh la la/JU$T
Sample Review:
“‘Walking In The Snow’, the album’s sixth track features a guest appearance by one time Three 6 Mafia member Gangsta Boo. The beat is heavy and the lyrics are eerily all too close for comfort as Mike takes us back to the 2014 death of Eric Garner at the hands of the police: “And every day on evening news, they feed you fear for free / And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me / And 'til my voice goes from a shriek to whisper / ‘I can't breathe’ / And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV / The most you give's a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy.” Such lyrics are hard to listen to, especially in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a police officer.
‘RTJ4’ is a must listen. It is diverse enough to appeal to even the hardest crowds. Many genres are represented here, but lyrical hip-hop is at the forefront of all that Run The Jewels is. They stand out from the crowd, whilst invoking the people to stand up for themselves. There is not a bad song on the entire album and the production and features are second to none. I kept rewinding the tracks, not just from a reviewer’s perspective, but to hear the how well combined Mike and El-P are.
As the album’s finale builds up with a saxophone crescendo, the track fades out before we are once again introduced to the mock TV show Yankee And The Brave. As I pressed play once more on the album, I realised I cannot wait to hear what Run The Jewels 5 will bring” – CLASH
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/run-the-jewels/rtj4
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6cx4GVNs03Pu4ZczRnWiLd
Key Cut: pulling the pin
Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
Release Date: 15th May
Label: Matador
Producer: Blake Mills
Standout Tracks: Describe/Your Body Changes Everything/Nothing at All
Sample Review:
“It feels like he’s rewriting musical history in his own image, usually by making it more oblique. Hadreas is a really good lyricist, who has an eye for detail – as when the grim, youthful one-night-stand in Jason plays out to the sound of “the Breeders on CD” – and a way with a striking line. Moonbend, the one track that recalls his early work, with its sparse sound, tape hiss and the audible creak of chairs, features a description of sex that keeps shifting from erotic to dissonantly medical: “carving his lung, ribs fold like fabric.” But it frequently feels as if he’s adapting the music here to express feelings he can’t quite articulate. Describe is punchy until it cuts dead halfway through, the rest of the song given over to ghostly synthesisers and mumbled, indecipherable voices; the beautiful harp arpeggios on Leave are set against a vocal that’s distorted and mumbled until it’s only half-comprehensible.
Whatever he’s doing, the results are uniformly fantastic: rich, fascinating and moving, packed with gorgeous melodies and arrangements that feel alive, constantly writhing into unexpected new shapes. For an artist frequently characterised by his miserable backstory of bullying, addiction and chronic illness and his lyrical empathy for human failure and frailty, it feels astonishingly assured and confident in its approach, which perhaps explains the cover image and supporting cast: an expression of power and focus, like the album itself” – The Guardian
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/perfume-genius/set-my-heart-on-fire-immediately
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6daEdTBi1hyFQgmsnR7oRr
Key Cut: On the Floor
Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
Release Date: 18th June
Label: Dead Oceans
Producers: Tony Berg/Ethan Gruska/Phoebe Bridgers
Standout Tracks: Garden Song/Kyoto/Chinese Satellite
Sample Review:
“When Bridgers drops down to breathily lament “I know you had to go”, it carries a heartbreaking power before the song explodes into a surprising noise-rock coda. The epic, free-form conclusion includes contributions from iconic 1970s singer-songwriter Jackson Browne on piano, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zimmer on guitar and top session drummer Jim Keltner, alongside a choir featuring Conor Oberst and many other Americana contemporaries, while Bridgers screams at the top of her lungs. It’s evidence of how much regard Bridgers is held in by the music world, and a finale that leaves you wondering where the woman of the hour will go next.
A take-no-prisoners penchant for cutting to the savage kernel of truth is something that has been at the essence of the singer-songwriter genre since its earliest days. Bridgers’s modernity is actually a kind of timelessness, yet delivered in an emotional and lyrical lexicon that speaks directly to this moment. Punisher is an album stretched between depression and recovery, laughing at the world to stop from crying, on a set of songs exploring Bridgers’s emotional self-isolation, yearning for places and people that she can no longer reach, and might not want to even if she could.
And what could be more timely than that?” – The Daily Telegraph
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/phoebe-bridgers/punisher
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2xECuqnvvmVktV7UO8Dd3s
Key Cut: Punisher