As the new year dawns, we count down some of the most impressive album releases of the past 12 months
The Killers Imploding the Mirage
Almost 20 years since their formation in Las Vegas, the rock superstars returned in 2020 for an uplifting sixth studio outing.
It was a long time coming, with the album’s initial release on May 29 pushed back.
For fans, the wait may have been anxious, given this was The Killers’ first collection without lead guitarist Dave Keuning, who took a break in 2017.
They needn’t have worried, though, because this was still unmistakably The Killers.
From the opener, My Own Soul’s Warning, to the title track, there is a sense of moving forward at pace, which for 2020 was the perfect direction.
9/10 Review by Edward Dracott
Bruce Springsteen Letter To You
Since releasing his autobiography in 2016, Bruce Springsteen has been on a hot streak.
There has been a one-man Broadway show, a first cinematic directing credit and a lockdown-inspired turn as a radio DJ. Until now he had been holding back two aces: career-long companions the E Street Band and his trademark brand of impassioned rock’n’roll.
Letter To You welcomed both back in emphatic fashion, with the Boss’ old compadres delivering a series of stadium-sized performances captured live in the studio in just five days.
Ghosts turns Springsteen’s lyrical nostalgia into a white-hot riot, while Rainmaker taps into the political stylings of his post9/11 classic The Rising.
Most surprising and rewarding, are three lost epics from his early Seventies playbook, dusted off, polished up and finally rescued from the bootleg pile.
The best of them, If I Was the Priest, might have been the song that made him a star had he set it free first time around. 10/10 Rory Dollard
Laura Marling Song For Our Daughter
Three years after the Grammy Award-nominated Semper Femina, the cream of British folk returned with another album to delight the scene.
Fans of Laura Marling will know how difficult it is to listen to her dulcet crooning without being delighted. But for those not versed in the 30-year-old’s work, this new record is as good a place to start as any.
From the feet-stomping rhythm of Strange Girl to the reflection of Fortune and the album’s title track, this is another perfect example of why Marling is so highly regarded.
More pensive than upbeat, the album is a lyrical masterpiece that rewards attentive listeners in new ways each time.
In an announcement on her website which explained that the album was being released early amid the Covid crisis, Marling wrote “An album, stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it, is essentially a piece of me, and I’d like for you to have it.” I recommend you take up her offer. 10/10 Edward Dracott
Ghostpoet I Grow Tired but Dare Not Fall Asleep
I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep was missing from most lists of best albums of 2020, but it sums up the year perfectly.
Spotify says the most popular genre of the year was pop music, reflecting a rise in happier, up-tempo music during the pandemic, which is not exactly what Ghostpoet does.
But since no one’s ever going to want to party like it’s 2020, why choose escapism over the ominous, unsettling reality?
Ghostpoet, aka Obaro Ejimiwe, doesn’t fit easy musical categories, using post-rock textures as well as beats to articulate themes of alienation and paranoia.
The album was recorded before Covid but, released appropriately on May Day, provided the perfect soundtrack to the eerie first lockdown. The first words on opener Breaking Cover are “I am alive”, but he’s soon saying “I want to die”, and the chorus says “It’s getting kinda complex these days / We’d better get our hard hats ready”.
Ejimiwe, whose parents are from Nigeria and Dominica, warns of the “far right on the jukebox” and references the Windrush scandal in Rats In A Sack, while its refrain of “out means out” evokes the fracturing Brexit debate.
Birdsong at the start of When Mouths Collide provides some respite from the sense of menace and disquiet, but the lyrics hint at personal turmoil to match the dystopia outside.
Never an easy listen, always an essential one.
9/10