THE BEST THING i’VE HEARD ALLYEAR!”
MOJO’s favourite musicians on the tunes that took them up, up and out of themselves in a testing 2020…
GRIAN CHATTEN Fontaines D.C.’s dashing young existentialist.
I’m going to go with 925 by [young north London indie oddballs] Sorry [above]. It’s just an album of amazing songs, by which I mean, like, old school craft and penmanship. It’s full of catchy choruses and riffs and simultaneously full of sentimentality but also… bile. Asha [Lorenz, singer] is such an incredible deliverer. She knows how to sound really sickened by what she’s saying. She’ll be part of the meanness and cruelty of a situation. And the music really fits that – like, the song Wolf has this kind of hellish merry-go-round quality. The other amazing thing I heard was [1978 French art-disco slink] The Sphinx by Amanda Lear. I heard it in a shop in Paris when we were over there doing promo and it really stunned me. It’s one of those songs that is its own character, it’s like the song wrote that character for itself. Stunning.
Oh yeah, and we’re all really into the Baxter Dury album, The Night Chancers. “I’m not your fucking friend”: that’s the best first line of an album ever.
PHOEBE BRIDGERS Singing the unsayable since 2014.
The best thing I’ve heard is still the Fiona Apple record. I like that it’s fucking unhinged. I pride myself on being able to write lyrics that other people wouldn’t write. I don’t get uncomfortable saying I hate people or overtly sexual shit, or whatever, and yet there are so many lines on this record that make me uncomfortable, and that’s the goal.
“I resent you for being raised right/I resent you for being tall” [Relay] is one of my favourite lyrics. But also, “You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in” [For Her]. I feel like that is the ethos of the record, talking from a first-person perspective you don’t typically hear. She’s said in an interview that it was for people quarantined with their abusers. But simultaneously, it’s a joy to listen to.
I actually avoided it for a couple of days when it came out, I didn’t know if I could deal with it. It only took me three days to get around to it, though. I laid on my bed and put it on. I don’t normally listen to music that way – I’ve always got my headphones on, staring at my phone – but I put it on and floated away on my bed.
MARIA MCKEE Lone justice-seeker.
Since I came out I’ve become mother to a lot of young queer and trans musicians. There’s a lot of age-gap mentorship, because oftentimes families can be mercurial around queerness and we need to fill in the gaps. My favourite new singer is Lauren Auder who’s kind of like my spiritual daughter. She made this really beautiful EP called Two Caves In [above], and I was a fan before we met on Instagram and became friends. We have very similar influences – people like Stephen Sondheim, Scott Walker and Kate Bush. There’s a stunning self-produced video for Lauren’s song June 14th that shows her amazing theatricality and power. She’s a baby genius, basically.
My favourite American band right now is a really cinematic, post-cowpunk band called Roselit Bone. They’re based in Portland and before the pandemic I loved seeing their wild live shows. I suppose there are elements of The Gun Club and they’re also Lone Justice fans. Charlotte [McCaslin], the lead singer, is a real riveting frontwoman and guitarist, there’s a kind of Roy Orbison sweep to her voice. She’s been protesting up in Portland with the gas-mask and helmet on – she’s the real deal.
RON MAEL Sparks’ moustachioed maestro.
I’ve always been a fan of the Beastie Boys, but have not stayed with their music as much in recent years, like a lover who has grown too used to another person after time. In this Covid-19 era, however, I’m looking for two things – hugely uplifting moments and evidence that not everything about the US sucks. I stumbled on a black-and-white, 45-minute 1999 Beastie Boys concert on YouTube shot in Glasgow that checks both boxes. It’s insanely wild and great, and it’s dripping with a special American brattiness that makes me proud – at least while I’m watching the video – to be an American.
ROBIN PECKNOLD Fleet Foxes’ chorister-inchief.
Tim Bernardes is a Brazilian artist. His album Recomeçar came out in 2017 but I didn’t really get into it until January this year. Five years ago I was surfing in Nicaragua with this guy from Brazil and he said, “Oh, my friends in this band O Terno love Fleet Foxes”. He sent me the band’s album, but I didn’t hear Tim’s solo album until earlier this year. It’s really lush, baroque Brazilian folk with beautiful string arrangements. I know he’s a really big fan of Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors and it feels like an amazing mixture of some of those ideas with classic Brazilian songwriting, chord shapes, tunings and arrangements… It’s relaxed, cinematic and romantic – a nice world to explore – and I loved it so much I reached out to him to add some vocals to a track on Shore. The song is called Going-To-The-Sun Road, and he comes in at the end, singing in Portuguese.
THUNDERCAT Bass in your face.
This has been a weird time. There’s been a lot of ups and downs, and this country’s been in turmoil. And it doesn’t lend itself to creativity. It’s been a time to chill and breathe and let life in. I’ve been hanging out with my cat, doing a lot of kickboxing, and I became vegan. Self-care. That’s what my friend Mac [Miller, who died in 2018] left with me. But the album that blew me away this year was Ambrose Akinmusire’s On The Tender Spot Of Every Calloused Moment. It’s a very bold, poignant statement, very emotionally twisted, a genuine masterpiece. There are not a lot of people that can express all those wounds. Ambrose’s album feels like what is happening right now. And the new Deftones album, Ohms, is really fantastic. I’ve been a fan for a long time. I’m proud of them for putting out an album right now, making art, and it’s beautiful. And [squeakyvoiced Atlantan viral-rapper] 645AR did this collaboration with FKA Twigs, Sum Bout U, and it made this year so much less worse. I almost crashed my car a couple times listening to it, I love it so much.
PAUL WELLER Reclaiming music hall for Mod…
My best album of 2020 was from 2008, but it was re-released [on Bandcamp] this year: Ajo Se Po by Kevin Haynes and Grupo Elegua. Kevin is saxophone player who lives round my way and we got chatting because we’re both musicians, blah blah. It’s an amazing piece of work: there’s an Afro-jazz thing happening with it, lots of talking drums, and some Eastern modal things, some parts quite synchronised, other parts quite freeform, and I love the way it all ties together. Kevin also teaches African drumming and I’ve been very privileged to go down to his drum school and check out one of his sessions – 20 drummers going at it, with all the cross-rhythms and everything. You can hear the roots of all popular music in there.
My big rediscovery? Yeah, it was Any Umbrellas [AKA The Umbrella Man] by Flanagan & Allen… Seriously! Get on your Spotify for nine pound or whatever and have a listen to it. It’s such a beautiful bit of music, with a lovely innocence and a great melody, like so many of the songs of the ’20s and ’30s.
LUCINDA WILLIAMS Car wheels and a gravelly voice.
This year it was easy to answer this question because I found the music of Steve Gunn. He saw me when I played a show with Yo La Tengo in New York City over the Christmas holidays and afterwards he e-mailed to say how much he liked my set. When I got back home off the road, I listened to his album, The Unseen In Between. Wow! I could hear traces of Pentangle and Bert Jansch and also some Buffalo Springfield, with a little Television in there too. Who is this guy? Why haven’t I heard of him? We now have several of his records and love them all. In a year when we have been homebound and the turntable spins all day long, Steve has definitely been in heavy rotation. He’s brilliant. Listen to him.
ROBERT LLOYD The Nightingales’ Brummagem Beefheart.
I listen to Radio 4, hardly ever have the inclination to fanny about with internet sites and the truth is I hear very little new contemporary music. But my mate Vic Godard advised me to download his latest single and while doing that I came across some other old favourites. Till By Turning are a four-piece American group, who have been around for quite some time, playing an eclectic bunch of stuff and I dig them. But it was only through my Bandcamp visit this year that I discovered Four Chambered Heart – a wonderful 40-minute piece in eight movements written by TBT member Katherine Young, who I think is one of the great living composers. It’s the usual TBT set up of violin, viola, bassoon, and keyboards and as usual the quartet play with real panache. Movement 4 features some lovely vocals by Emily Manzo, and though today I particularly love Movements 7 and 8, that can change – it’s all good.
BILLY BRAGG Bignosed bard turned birdspotter.
It’s Wrackline by a folk singer called Fay Hield, on Topic. I saw a video of her singing the opening song, Hare Spell, based on a spell by a woman who was tried as a witch in Scotland in the 1700s. The way Fay was performing it, there was a certain… “Yeah, I am a witch and I don’t care who knows it.” Really powerful. This year, I’ve noticed much more the turning of the seasons. Normally, seasons are all about gigging: summer festivals, autumn tours, Christmas shows. I’ve never really been home just watching the seasons go by, noticing that we had housemartins nesting on the back of the house, or we’ve seen the falcon a lot more. Fay’s album plugs into that onnection between time and nature. She has a great voice for singing folk songs, she’s done research into these songs, and written some of them herself. Cruel Mother might be about infanticide – it’s a pretty dark record! But after I listen to it, I feel as if I’ve got mud on my boots. It fits into the strange times we’re living in. Fay somehow managed to get into that space between the wild and the weird.
TAYLOR SWIFT Breakout indie-folk star of 2020!
I remember first hearing Again by Lenny Kravitz on the radio when I was about 10, at a low volume in the car as my mom drove around to the various errands we ran. She owned the CD and it became a backdrop for school runs, grocery shopping, life in a small town. Maybe that’s why, when I discovered Again again (sorry, I had to) this year, it signified both lifelong comfort and shiny new brilliance all at once. I put this song on and it feels like I’m on a plane taking off, or like I’m floating above everyone falling in love all over the world, watching it happen. This song is transportive and achingly wistful. It can be BLASTED at maximum volume or the soundtrack to my quietest moments. Solo-written and produced by Lenny Kravitz,
I live in awe of this song and I’m so grateful it exists.
MAX WEINBERG Doing the E Street Shuffle since 1974.
I typically like rock music that aims for a physical experience first of all.
It must be the drummer in me! 1) Pearl Jam, Quick Escape. PJ always come up with new stuff that’s so interesting. And Eddie Vedder is one of rock’s great voices.
2) Slipknot, We Are Not Your Kind. Even if my son, Jay, wasn’t drumming on this it hits me where I need it to. The middle drumbeat, by the way, just knocks me out. Great vocals as usual by Corey Taylor and the interweaving of the guitars are a hallmark of this band.
3) The Pretty Reckless, Death By Rock And Roll. I know what they mean! Love the vocal and the atmosphere.
4) AC/DC, Shot In The
Dark. Reminiscent of some of their greatest hits, but who cares. A classic band and Brian Johnson is killing the vocal here. Phil Rudd’s drumming is always right there.
5) Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul. Dylan is the original rock alchemist. Some 60 years after his first recording, he still can knock you out.
MARK BOWEN Idles’ hardcore guitar hero: how far will he go?
Viviankrist’s bludgeoning electronica was a source of plenty inspiration this year. Her album Cross Modulation and the accompanying remix album feeds many an hour of what-on-earthery. I discovered some older music that feels very new to me; Egisto Macchi and Rosa Yemen both have a disregard for convention that jars and refreshes in equal measure, like a cold shower for the ears. Also the saxophonist Bruce Lamont; his post-apocalyptic post-music felt apt this year, somehow. Sinéad O’Brien’s dark chocolate-rich imagery added escapism to proceedings. It wasn’t all cerebral and esoteric. My one-yearold daughter incited an interest in the Moana OST, and she’s a big fan of the new Fleet Foxes too, so that’s a win.
KHRUANGBIN Texas’ twanging exoticists.
Mai Yamane’s Tasogare – what a tune! We first heard this song in a vinyl bar in Tokyo while we were on tour. We’d been listening to Japanese City Pop for years without knowing the name of the genre. Once we knew, we started seeing it everywhere: the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in full effect. There’s something so precise about the funk of this music. This singer’s also known for her work on the Cowboy Bebop series with Yoko Kanno, widely regarded as one of the best Anime scores. It’s a jumping-off point to finding all sorts of treasures.
BLAKE MILLS Singer-songwriter, producer and Dylan’s new guitarist.
Mike Hadreas [Perfume Genius] first turned me on to The Healing Day by Bill Fay when he posted on Instagram about it. Then one night I was listening to it in the car on the way home from the studio and I just lost control, emotionally, in a way that I wasn’t prepared for. I walked into the house and said to my partner, Gaby, We’ve got to listen to this song. We sat at the table, put it on and we both just sat there, quietly sobbing, and smiling.
You know when you listen to a song and all of a sudden it seems to resonate with the world in a new way? The way the lyric unravels line by line it keeps feeding you this narrative of hope, but you can’t have a song that’s that hopeful without there being an element of extreme loss. In the second stanza he sings: “When the tyrant is bound and tortured free from his pain and the lofty brought to the ground and the lowly rage/Ain’t so far away/ The healing day.” It could sound pretentious, but it doesn’t. A lot of that has to do with the track’s discipline; the
measured way the lines unfold and how much space there is to digest between each phrase. Also, the music is cyclical and familiar. There’s not a lot of variance but there is a lot of expression. That weird tension: this is just going around and around and around, but I don’t ever want it to stop.
THURSTON MOORE The downtown sound of Stoke Newington.
The one record I felt was really genuine, and reflective of 2020, was Apparition Paintings by David Toop: you’re hearing the sonics of someone’s feelings and emotions and recollections, defined by this bizarre situation of being told not to socialise. I’ve always enjoyed David’s records, but this one I find momentous. It comes out of this contemporaneous place, more so even than records dealing with this anxious energy we’ve been subsisting with. Public Enemy’s new record is exciting and strong, it’s defined by feelings of heat and anger. That’s a good thing. But David’s record had the most thoughtful vibe to it, he’s putting out sounds that come from nature, things that rub up against each other through the random moments of the day, using singers’ voices as sound elements. Toop’s one of the good guys. He gives equal value to Solange as he does to Steve Beresford! He has a real rock’n’roll sensibility that I don’t find too readily in free improvisation and experimental music.
STEPHEN MALKMUS Still brightening record collection corners.
There’s a few things I heard this year that I really like. Scramblers by Container is minimal overdriven synths and drum machines from this American artist – intense, succinct, DGAF blasters. Brigid Mae Power’s album Head Above The Water. She has a great voice, makes cool understated videos too. It’s that perfect mix of folk and rock, with nods to the greats like Sandy Denny and Anne Briggs. And Japanese composer Hiroshi Yoshimura’s album Green was recently reissued by Light In The Attic. It is pretty much the opposite vibe of Container – chill/ meditative/ warm synthesizer tones.
Ponderous new agey stuff that goes down well with the family.
WAYNE COYNE Flaming Lip sieves the corker from life’s clunkers.
I’m not very good at working the Google Assistant or the Amazon Alexa thing in our house but one day I asked it to play Simon & Garfunkel, and it played this song I’d never heard before: “He was a most peculiar man…” I’m thinking it’s one of these tangents they send you down, but sure enough it’s Simon & Garfunkel, A Most Peculiar Man – this stunning song, a real Nowhere Man vibe – and it turns out that somehow I’ve never listened to the whole of the Sounds Of Silence album all the way through.
So A Most Peculiar Man took me back to Sounds Of Silence. And of course, most of it is stunning. The Sound Of Silence, the song, is an untouchable piece of work. But three songs in you get some clunky, bad ’60s pastiche! [Presumably, Coyne means Blessed, or Somewhere They Can’t Find Me.] How can you do something so perfect, then the next minute sound like you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing? But that’s what music is! You don’t get The Sound Of Silence without the clunkers. Life is clunker – but sometimes the reward is The Sound Of Silence.
JOHN COOPER CLARKE Poet laureate of Beasley Street.
My daughter Stella’s banged up with us at the moment, fortunately, and she introduces me to stuff – I go a lot by names, and when I heard Working Men’s Club,I thought – great name. And then, track number three on their album is called John Cooper Clarke! Haha! It’s a lot of fun, it’s got my titles and lines written into it. I’ve got to love them, haven’t I? I’m a guitar guy, but as digital stuff goes it’s real good and wouldn’t sound out of place on a playlist at the Haçienda. And last Saturday we watched the Sex Pistols live at Brixton in 2007 on the telly – it was already old news when it happened, but good God! What a reminder of what a great rock’n’roll band they were. Steve Jones, one of the top five rock’n’roll guitar players of all time, and what a great frontman Rotten was. The trouble with punk was, the ideology swamped the music, but they’re part of the pantheon now. I play the Ramones all the time too. They were a return to core values, like reinventing The Beach Boys for an urban crowd.