Renaissance (Beyoncé)
Each new Beyoncé album tends to serve as something of a sea change, the singer leading the musical tide in unexpected directions—fresh rhythms, new thoughts, a vision that is as sociological and cerebral as it is sonically creative. So while other artists might have emerged from the pandemic with dancefloor-driven records, none did so with quite the same flourish or political clout as Beyoncé. Her seventh solo record drew on club culture as devised by black women and queer communities: house, techno, ball and kiki houses, subwoofers, roller rinks, churches and discotheques. It was dramatic and daring and irresistibly danceable.
Watch My Moves (Kurt Vile)
The restless, brilliant mind of Kurt Vile has never found a better home than his ninth album, in which he married his trademark stargazer rock to his pent-up pop inclinations, added a little Lou Reed drawlery, and invited along a cast of musical greats, from songwriter Cate Le Bon to lap steel wizard Farmer Dave Scher, via Warpaint’s and Harry Styles’s drummers, Stella Mozgawa and Sarah Jones. It made for something musically infectious and hugely witty, but also granted insight into Vile’s own pandemic-lockdown thinking—daydreaming, mind-travelling, and a new contemplation of home.
The Sea Drift (The Delines)
At the heart of The Delines’ magic lies the intersection between novelist Willy Vlautin’s lyrics and singer Amy Boone’s vocals; together, they create something timeless, sad and beautiful—like Bobbie Gentry singing Raymond Carver over warm swells of brass. Their third album focuses on a series of short, tight tales set on the Gulf Coast of America, from two young boys fleeing a mini-mart shoplifting turned ugly, to the crestfallen poise of the narrator of “Surfers in Twilight”, watching her man get hauled off by the cops. This is one of those flawless records you can live in for days.
Motomami (Rosalía)
Like many of the artists on this list, the Catalan singer Rosalía is a wilful and consummate melder of genres, whipping up a storm of electro-flamenco, bachata, champeta, dembow, reggaeton and free jazz, and littering it with lyrics about fame, faith, feminism and chicken teriyaki. What marks her out is firstly the unquestionable sense of fun that wriggles through this record, and secondly the sheer weltering force of her voice—a classically-trained soprano, it brings an extra emotional heft, whether she’s deep in the eroticism of “Hentai” or reconjuring Cuban singer Justo Betancourt’s 1968 hit “Delirio de Grandeza”.
Skinty Fia (Fontaines D.C.)
Over the last few years, Dublin-spawned five-piece Fontaines D.C. have acquired a fearsome reputation. They are a spectacular live band—ferocious and invincible—while the records allow closer study of both their fine musical calibration and all of the beauty and rage of Grian Chatten’s lyrics. This year, the band released their finest album to date, much of it tackling their sense of disorientation having relocated to London: the muddled relationship with their new country, the new perspective on their homeland. Faith, literature, language, history and violence mingle to create something remarkable.
Aiir, Earth, Today & Tomorrow, Untitled (God) and 11 (Sault)
Releasing five albums on the same November day was a thrilling move by the mysterious British music collective Sault—especially as they arrived a mere six months after their last surprise album release. Drawing on American, African and British black music history, this rich collection offered everything from doo-wop to strings and spoken word, via psychedelic funk and trip-hop; 56 songs to explore and examine. The peculiar thing was that it never felt excessive or unedited, rather there was something unique and exalting that ran through each of these records.
Midnights (Taylor Swift)
At this point in her career, one assumes that Taylor Swift is the keeper of some secret pop-hook recipe to rival Coca-Cola: when her 10th album was released in late October, it promptly broke every record imaginable, from Spotify-streaming to 21st century vinyl sales. Much of the appeal is surely that there is still a freshness to the way Swift writes, still a sense of revelation, and on this record an extra sense of intimacy and vulnerability. Midnight’s tracks were billed as small-hours songs, ruminations on everything from soured romances to the relentless societal pressure to be a “good girl”. Partnered with uber-producer Jack Antonoff, it made for vivid, irresistible pop.
Two Ribbons (Let’s Eat Grandma)
When the Norwich synth duo made up of Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton emerged in 2016, it was the pair’s similarity that provided intrigue—two teen best friends whose live performances sometimes saw them plait their long curly hair together. But by the recording of album three, a distance had arisen—a natural unravelling brought by maturity, but also the result of Hollingworth navigating intense grief following the death of her boyfriend. The record they managed to make in this time—climactic, conversational, glittering—is an astonishing portrait of loss, bewilderment, hope and evolving friendship.
I Love You Jennifer B (Jockstrap)
For some, Jockstrap’s debut record was a discombobulating listen; a discordant mash of styles and sounds; songs that sounded like a flickering radio dial, or tunes half-heard through an open car window, that morphed from one genre to a wholly different one over the course of a single track. But to others it was the work of two pop visionaries, graduates of the Guildhall School of Music, capable of darning together bhangra, balladry, opulent disco keys, an 18-piece orchestra, a plaintive acoustic guitar, and still making a coherent, theatrical world.
Harry’s House (Harry Styles)
The third offering from global, cross-genre, cross-gender, cross-generational pin-up Styles almost feels ubiquitous enough to omit from any best-of list—tracks such as “As It Was” and “Music For a Sushi Restaurant” are now so familiar that it’s hard to remember whether they are actually music or perhaps a fragrance, a taste, a colour to which one has grown accustomed. But this would be to undermine the feat of impeccable pop engineering that created its 13 tracks, each one as pleasing and sassy and easy on the ear as the last. It’s a rare and laudable skill.
And some music you might have missed…
It is one of the great niggles of the music critic that best-of album lists rarely reflect the full musical texture of a listening year. While we are duty-bound (and eager) to listen to each week’s new releases, we might also spend many hours with old favourites, or find ourselves fully electrified by a single song played live over a bad PA system by a support act at a pub gig in Sydenham.
Among my own great joys this year stood Gold, the latest album by Alabaster DePlume, the Mancunian saxophonist-jazz-poet who is surely one of this country’s musical treasures; there’s a kind of rapture and wonder and deep compassion to everything he makes.
Smart pop wonder Self Esteem showed her range by releasing the singular, striking soundtrack to Prima Facie—the Suzie Miller play in which Jodie Comer made her acclaimed West End debut. Meanwhile, Self Esteem backing-singer (and Terence Trent D’Arby’s daughter) Seraphina Simone also got her solo career off to a resounding start with the release of Milk Teeth—an interrogation of (white-skinned, slim-figured) beauty standards in a gleaming pop wrapper.
If you missed Canadian Charlotte Cornfield’s UK tour, there’s a chance to make up for it by listening to the live EP she released in February. Cornfield is an uncannily fine songwriter—be warned, her tracks will take up permanent residence in your head.
Among my other live delights was the Bristol-based vocalist and producer Grove, who seemed to be the major triumph of this year’s festival season, and recently released their inspired, shuddering take on Girls Aloud’s hit “Sound of the Underground”.
Lastly, Johanna Warren’s fantastic sixth record, Lessons For Mutants, bore my favourite song of the year—a short, spare, album-closing track called “Involvulus”, that strikes me just as keenly now as the first time I heard it in the early days of spring.
You can listen to Laura’s selections on Spotify here.
