The Top 50 Albums Of 2020
It's been a very odd 12 months, but 2020 delivered plenty of new albums to get excited about, from both big names and newcomers. Here, then, is the Classic Rock critics’ choice of the best 50.
Whether from veterans or relative newcomers, in the past 12 months we’ve
had plenty to get excited about.
50
BRITISH LION
The Burning
PARLOPHONE Eight years after the promising self-titled debut, Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris returned with his ‘other band’. The Burning suggests that touring has allowed British Lion to grow into exactly that – an actual band. Our review said it was “vastly more punchy and powerful than its predecessor”, adding that British Lion had “evolved into a fiery and characterful ensemble with a strong identity of their own”. DL Killer track: City Of Fallen Angels
49
GREEN DAY
Father Of All Motherfuckers
REPRISE
The sleeve revisits the hand-and-grenade of 2004’s American Idiot. And while Billie Joe Armstrong and co. haven’t displaced that career high with Father Of All Motherfuckers, there’s enough quality on it to take the edge off the 2020 shit-show. Don’t come looking for envelope-pushing, highconcept punk opera; do come for pogoready smashers like Oh Yeah! and Sugar Youth, played with an energy that puts most middle-aged punks to shame. HY Killer track: Sugar Youth
48
THE LEMON TWIGS
Songs For The General Public
4AD There’s high camp afoot in The Lemon Twigs’ 70s-style power pop, which is perhaps inevitable given that Brian and Michael D’Addario, brothers from New York, have a background in musical theatre. On Songs For The General Public, their third album, The One is a bubblegum anthem akin to a lovesick Wombles, but there’s some weightier stuff too, including punk-rock swagger in Leather Together and dark beauty in the emotional finale Ashamed. PE Killer track: Ashamed
47
CATS IN SPACE
Atlantis
HARMONY FACTORY A change of lead vocalist is always a potential risk for any band, and the fourth album from Cats In Space introduces their third frontman. Fortunately Damian Edwards is a startlingly gifted addition who besides ticking each of the band’s original boxes also opens up all manner of exciting new possibilities. Atlantis presents the Cats in full Technicolor, sounding even more bombastic, melodic and 70s-tastic than ever before. DL
Killer track: Revolution
46 BROTHERS OSBORNE
Skeletons
SNAKEFARM
Following 2018’s more sedate Port Saint Joe, the Nashville-based Osborne brothers decided to beef things up for album number three, Skeletons, and chucked a whole load of funky guitars, toe-tapping tunes and countrified good vibes into the pot while they were at it. The result is the sort of record you want to hear played live, in its entirety, with a drink in hand and your favourite people at your side. PG Killer track: All The Good Ones Are
45
BON JOVI
2020
VIRGIN EMI
Similar to the way in which post-9-11 Bruce Springsteen approached The Rising, 2020 sees Jon Bon Jovi, post-Trump, mixing his day job as a stadium rocker with man-of-the people spokesman for America’s disadvantaged. At its best, 2020 movingly and effectively addresses school shootings and gun laws, military vets suffering with PTSD, the covid pandemic itself and the impact of George Floyd’s murder. An unexpectedly powerful record. NJ Killer track: American Reckoning
44
THE OUTLAWS
Dixie Highway
SPV Eight years after their previous studio album, Henry Paul’s Outlaws released one of the finest southern rock albums of 2020. A work of quiet, determined dignity, Dixie Highway sits firmly on the same page as the group’s career-defining records from the 1970s. “I hope that it reinforces the notion that The Outlaws still matter, and that southern rock will always matter,” Paul told Classic Rock. Mission accomplished. DL Killer track: Southern Rock Will Never Die
43
BLUES PILLS
Holy Moly!
NUCLEAR BLAST Recorded in an analogue studio in the wilds of their native Sweden, these retro rockers’ third album is another gleeful denial that the past 40 years in music ever happened. It’s also the sound of a band bouncing back from burnout and existential turmoil, and bringing with them their most intense, mature and impassioned work to date. Channelling her pain, singer Elin Larsson discovers new levels of soul here. GM Killer track: Kiss My Past Goodbye
42
COREY TAYLOR
CMFT
ROADRUNNER Freed from the cage of fury and angst that is Slipknot, their frontman Corey Taylor pushes the ‘fun’ agenda hard on his debut solo album. Outlaw country rock’n’roll (HWY 666), gold-plated arena anthems (Black Eyes Blue), even 80s-style pop-metal (Samantha’s Gone, a ringer for Poison)… CMFT is stylistically promiscuous, superhumanly cocky and a total blast. And amid the ongoing dumpster fire that is 2020, that’s exactly what we needed. DE Killer track: Black Eyes Blue
41
SONGHOY BLUES
Optisme
TRANSGRESSIVE
The Malian rockers’ third album is gnarlier than their previous ones but no less optimistic for it. Right from the gut-grabbing classicrock riffage of opener Badala – taking in their rare English-language track Worry – Optisme fizzes with hard-nosed joie de vivre. Across 11 tracks the band flit with honeyed fluidity between atmospheric desert blues, staccato rhythms and hypnotic funkiness.
The most life-affirming protest music you’re likely to hear all year. PG Killer track: Badala
40
LOW CUT CONNIE
Private Lives
CONTENDER/MIDCITIZEN
Adam Weiner was spoton when in he described this record to Classic Rock as “a beautiful mess”. It is messy, but all the more warm and characterful for it. A big, sprawling double album that took two years, 30-odd guests and a ton of spaces across the USA to complete, it’s the soulful, sweet yet sugarfree accumulation of all Weiner’s years spent lugging pianos around, meeting society’s misfits and ingesting rock’n’roll with a religious fervour. PG Killer track: Private Lives
39
GINGER WILDHEART
Headzapoppin
ROUND RECORDS
No one does that fearless, schizoid mix of rage, joy and melancholia quite as naturally as Ginger Wildheart. With that in mind we weren’t expecting any old power-pop cocktail from Headzapoppin, and we didn’t get one. Whether revelling in monolithic monster hooks (Meet My Killer), sweary, idiosyncratic shapeshifting (Catch That Stranger), bouncy sugar and spit (Yorvik (My Hood)) or blissed out haze (Love Is), Ginger makes this shit look easy. In a year of uncertainties it’s good to know you can still count on some things. PG Killer track: Meet My Killer
38
THOSE DAMN CROWS
Point Of No Return
EARACHE In some virus-free parallel universe, 2020 was the year that Those Damn Crows really took off. Their strong debut The Murder And The Motive, plentiful gigging and slots at last year’s Steelhouse and Download festivals earned the Bridgend rockers a sizeable fan base – who in February took this year’s Point Of No Return to No.14 in the UK. Delivered with passion and guts by singer Shane Greenhall, that stadium-sized, radiofriendly album is the sound of a band hitting their stride, earning every bit of their growing success. GM Killer track: Who Did It
37
FIONA APPLE
Fetch The Bolt Cutters
EPIC/CLEAN SLATE
The American singersongwriter’s first album in eight years, recorded at home, is arguably the most experimental of 2020. Everything from cutlery to – brace yourself – her dead dog’s bones becomes a musical instrument. Pets meow and bark in the background, while a clear-eyed and crystal-voiced Apple dissects a multitude of human relationships with a surgeon’s steady hand and a surprising shot of humour.
A true work of art that sounds like nothing else. EJ Killer track: Newspaper
36
GREG DULLI
Random Desire
BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
With the Afghan Whigs and the Twilight Singers, Greg Dulli created a soulful art form from the selfloathing pit of his tormented psyche. It’s little surprise, then, that while his first solo album attempts to break into the light – not least on the surprisingly funky Scorpio – he can’t help but over-think any shot at contentment, his pessimism casting a beautiful gothic patina over the album’s thoughtful 37 minutes. Beauty and the beast: Dulli has both living inside him in perfect harmony. EJ Killer track: A Ghost
35 BLACK STONE CHERRY
The Human Condition
MASCOT Kentucky band of brothers Black Stone Cherry embrace their roles as musicians and producers on their third album for bluessavvy stable Mascot Records. Many of the songs on The Human Condition had been kept up their sleeve for years, which is reflected in the raw yet comfortable nature of the delivery. There are shitkickers, heartbreakers, warming singalongs (tender closing track Keep On Keepin’ On is a favourite of ours)… they’ve even done a kick-ass cover of ELO’s Don’t Bring Me Down. We’ll take that. PG Killer track: Keep On Keepin’ On
34 FM
Synchronized
FRONTIERS Few singers who emerged in the 80s sound as good now as they did back then. Thunder’s Danny Bowes is one. Steve Overland, of AOR heroes FM, is another. On Synchronized, Overland’s voice is as richly melodic as it was on the band’s 80s classics Indiscreet and Tough It Out. Equally importantly, the great songs are still coming – the title track is a banger, The Ghost Of You a killer power ballad, and Superstar the perfect soundtrack to a summer day. PE Killer track: Superstar
33 STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES
Ghosts Of West Virginia
NEW WEST A fully engaged Steve Earle is something to behold. Ghosts Of West Virginia, his twentieth studio album, on which he’s backed by his trusty five-piece band, revolves around the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion that killed 29 men in West Virginia in 2010, a tragedy compounded by the subsequent cover-up over lack of adequate safety. A return to the politically charged work of Jerusalem and The Revolution Starts Now, the album balances rage and compassion to stunning effect, soundtracked by country-blues drones and rustic mountain folk. RH Killer track: It’s About Blood
32 JAMES DEAN BRADFIELD
Even In Exile
MONTYRAY
No stranger to big concepts – or to magically wrestling pieces of sprawling verse into gleaming rock anthems – Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield teams up with poet Patrick Jones (Manics bassist Nicky Wire’s elder brother) to tell the tale of Chilean activist and musician Victor Jara, who was murdered by the Pinochet regime in 1973. On this elegant, heartfelt and unapologetically progressive record, Bradfield’s unmistakable powerhouse voice is tempered by lush, Pink Floyd-influenced instrumentals like Under The Mimosa Tree.
Even In Exile is both a fitting tribute and a wonderful glimpse of Bradfield stretching his creative wings. EJ Killer track: The Boy From The Plantation
31
WISHBONE ASH
Coat Of Arms
SPV This is the first album Wishbone Ash have recorded with guitarist Mark Abrahams alongside original Ash guitarist Andy Powell, who credits his new partner with lighting a fire under the band. A vintage Wishbone vibe informs stately hard rocker We Stand As One and echoes in the shifting moods of It’s Only You I See. Those trademark twinguitar harmonies ring out artfully over Déjà Vu’s folky foundation and Drive’s soaring chorus, and weave intricate trails through the shape-shifting title track. RD Killer track: We Stand As One
30
CHERIE CURRIE
BLACKHEART
The long-awaited return from the former Runaways vocalist swaggers exactly as it should. Packed with A-list guest spots (including Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, Gunners Slash and Duff McKagan, Brody Dalle and Juliette Lewis) and produced by Matt Sorum, the album perfectly showcases Currie’s enduring ability to rock (the GN’R-esque opener Mr X), roll (a muscular take on Suzi Quatro’s Roxy Roller) and emote dramatically (an immense The Air That I Breathe). A triumphal closing romp through Queens Of Noise seals a splendid deal. IF Killer track: Queens Of Noise
29 STARBENDERS
Love Potions
SUMERIAN Love Potions, Atlanta four-piece Starbenders’ second album is the best kept secret of 2020; a witchy glam-gothpunk masterpiece that wears its massive 80s crush on its voluminous velvet sleeve. Ball-of-charisma frontwoman Kimi Shelter weaves her spell across Bitches Be Witches and London like the long-lost stepdaughter of Stevie Nicks and Anne Rice, while Down & Out and Precious beat with a pure-pop heart – albeit one
‘Love Potions is the best-kept secret of 2020. A witchy glamgoth-punk masterpiece.’
28 THE ALLMAN BETTS BAND
Bless Your Heart
BMG
Devon Allman and Duane Betts proudly continue to fly the flag for the southern rock tradition pioneered by their respective fathers Duane and Dickey. Now joined by bassist Berry Oakley Jr (another chip off the Allmans block) in the seven-man line-up, they stretch out brilliantly in all directions, from the gothic-rock rumble of Ashes Of My Lovers to the Johnny Cash-influenced Much Obliged. The essence of the band is distilled in Savannah’s Dream, a glorious 12-minute, 6/8-time epic, with intertwining guitar parts soaring on a magic carpet of organ and syncopated percussion. Sublime. DS Killer track: Savannah’s Dream
27
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
The New OK
ATO Not content with one remarkable album in 2020, Georgia’s finest roots-rockers promptly gave us a second. The New OK, released just nine months after The Unravelling, was devised as a response to a fractious summer of protest, riots and political unrest in the US, and framed by the global pandemic. Led by frontman Patterson Hood, the Truckers spit fire and fury on songs like Watching The Orange Clouds and the title track, and finish off with a boiling cover of the Ramones’ The KKK Took My Baby Away. RH Killer track: Watching The Orange Clouds
26
BIFFY CLYRO
A Celebration Of Endings
14TH FLOOR/WARNER
One of the reasons why Biffy Clyro steadily became one of the UK’s biggest rock bands is their steadfast refusal to give a solitary fuck what anyone thinks of them and their music, leaving them to run free and wild in their own imaginations.
A Celebration Of Endings, their eighth album, is a spectacular culmination of two decades of musical twists and turns, one moment seething and biting, the next settling into a singalong groove that won’t quit, the next weaving exquisite emotional beauty as delicate and intricate as a spider web. The end result is a deeply moving, breathtakingly intense experience. EJ Killer track: Cop Syru
25 STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
Perdida
RHINO
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Stone Temple Pilots had such a heart-rendingly beautiful and mature album in their locker. With Dean DeLeo’s distortion pedals left in his gig bag, Perdida’s clean, gentle, mostly acoustic palette sheds burnished, autumnal light on the rock-solid songwriting that has underpinned even their most fuzzdrenched moments, from 1992 debut Core onwards. Singer Jeff Gutt sets some ghosts to rest here, sounding at home in his role on this reflective, melancholy addition to the Pilots’ impressive catalogue. GM
Killer track: Years
24 THE TEXAS GENTLEMEN
Floor It!!!
NEW WEST
Having begun as a go-to backing band for any number of big names, The Texas Gentlemen finally come into their own with their second album, an ebullient set forged from the traditions of the 60s and 70s, when country, funk, R&B, psychedelia and southern rock were free to boogie. Floor It!!! carries echoes of Little Feat, The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Leon Russell, Elton John and more, carried forward by the energy of guitar-playing frontmen Nik Lee and Daniel Creamer. Truly a tonic for the times. RH Killer track: Ain’t Nothin’ New
23
ALL THEM WITCHES
Nothing As The Ideal
NEW WEST The latest transmission from this spaced-out Nashville trio alters your head space like few other records released this year. Emerging from the gloom with the intriguing, disquieting Saturnine & Iron Jaw, this intricate, cleverly composed modern-psych masterpiece combines the atmospheric heft of The Doors, arcane Zeppelin-esque rock textures, and cool stoner riffs to boot. Ben McLeod’s guitars chug and chime to thrilling effect, and singer Charles Michael Parks Jr. keeps a hip grasp on the woozy psych sections and Americana beats alike.
Brilliant. GM Killer track: Rats In Ruin
22 TYLER BRYANT & THE SHAKEDOWN
Pressure
After a blaze of early publicity prompted by the 17-year-old Tyler Bryant’s precocious talent, the following decade or so saw he and his band release too much that was unoriginal and predictable. But, temporarily reduced to a three-piece and woodshedding in the basement studio, lockdown constraints sparked a flow of quality songwriting. One track became two, two became three… and eventually they had a 13-song fourth album proper, Pressure, an invigorating cocktail of rock and blues, laced with oodles of slide guitar and sweet harmonies. NJ Killer track: Like The Old Me
‘Nothing As The Ideal alters your head space like few other records
released this year.’
21
THE DIRTY KNOBS
Wreckless Abandon
BMG Nearly 50 years of playing guitar alongside Tom Petty taught Mike Campbell a lot – except maybe how to choose a cool band name. That wry humour resurfaces on this album in Sugar and the JJ Cale-like Fuck That Guy, but Campbell remains serious about his craft: welding great stories to superb melodies. The arrangements (co-produced by George Drakoulias, and including a guest appearance by fellow Heartbreaker Benmont Tench) range from heavy blues to jingle-jangle country, and Campbell’s singing voice will appeal to Petty fans too. NJ Killer track: Wreckless Abandon
20 THE CADILLAC THREE
Country Fuzz
BIG MACHINE
‘We got tunes? Check. We got girls? Check’, Jaren Johnston sings in Crackin’ Cold Ones With The Boys. And The Cadillac Three certainly have a gold-plated, country-fried, sure-fire winner on their hands with Country Fuzz, their fourth album. These Nashville cats are as deep into their blue-collar, Southernman world of cars, girls, whisky, weed, dirt roads and country rock as you can get. And the stories they tell on this album run rich and deep. Hellraising? They’ve got it nailed. Oh yeah, and just as we were pulling this list together they went and released another cracking album, the luxuriantly funked up Tabasco & Sweet Tea. Turns out 2020 wasn’t such a bad year for these three amigos. DS Killer track: Slow Rollin’
19
THE PRETENDERS
Hate For Sale
BMG A knowingly sharp album title. Chrissie Hynde is at her best translating hatred of something or someone, even herself, into three minutes of pure pop poetry, and she’s at her best on this record.
Hate For Sale is a big improvement on 2016’s Alone, every track a hand-in-glove co-write with guitarist James Walbourne, empowered by the returning Martin Chambers’s whip-crack drumming. No two songs are alike, but each could be a single, indicating that The Pretenders are once again at the top of their game, with early-80s sparkle. NJ Killer track: The Buzz
18 METALLICA
S&M2
BLACKENED
“Go big or go home” was the ethos driving Metallica’s belated symphonic S&M sequel – and they went huge. Recorded at two epic hometown shows and backed by the San Francisco Symphony, this is metal on a blockbuster scale. The old standards sound even more grandiose than they did on the original S&M album, while lesserloved recent songs gain a dazzling new shine. But a human heart beats amid the multitude of moving parts, never more apparent than on a spine-tingling reimagining of immortal Cliff Burton showcase (Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth. DE Killer track: The Day That Never Comes
17 JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT
Reunions
SOUTHEASTERN
Nashville star Jason Isbell gave indie record stores the first bite of this, his seventh album, and the karma was paid back with the greatest acclaim of his career.
A world away from the trucks and babes of drive-time country, Reunions is a personal excavation that spoke for many of us, with Isbell exploring subjects ranging from the bumpy road back from addiction (It Gets Easier) to divorce seen through the eyes of a child (Dreamsicle). It was a pleasure getting to know him better. HY Killer track: It Gets Easier
16
OZZY OSBOURNE
Ordinary Man
EPIC A month after confirming his Parkinson’s diagnosis, the beleaguered Prince Of Darkness released the twelfth album that he says “saved my fucking life”. Ozzy doubted he had the strength to make Ordinary Man. Turns out he had ample, yowling a storm on standouts like Eat Me and Straight To Hell, and even sounding like his ant-snorting younger self on the anarchic It’s A Raid. Throw in the partingshot lyrics of Under The Graveyard, and this album would have served just fine as a full stop. But don’t book the retirement home yet, says Ozzy. HY Killer track: Straight To Hell
15
LARKIN POE
Self Made Man
TRICKI WOO Their current home might be Nashville, the motherland of modern country, but the Lovell sisters’ sixth album feels far more rooted in the Mississippi Delta circa 1930. A sweet yet smoke-filled fusion of slide guitar, percussive hand claps and invigorated early blues sensibilities, Self Made Man is laced with a darkness that’s missing in most of their Nashville peers. The two sisters have been singing together since they were kids, and it shows brilliantly in their harmonies – not so much pitch perfect as ‘in their bones’. Easily one of the most exciting blues records of 2020. PG Killer track: Back Down South
14
MASSIVE WAGONS
House Of Noise
EARACHE Last year Massive Wagons celebrated their tenth anniversary by proving their mettle in the big league, supporting Lynyrd
Skynyrd and Status Quo. Despite the current pandemic curtailing their live plans this year, they’ve captured an effervescent energy in the 12 fat-free tracks that make up House Of Noise. In opener In It Together, Baz Mills sings: ‘Give ’em a lesson in good-time rock’n’roll’, and that’s precisely what the Wagons deliver throughout, fusing walloping riffs and cast-iron choruses. RD Killer track: Freak City