Historians looking back on 2020 will find no shortage of material on which to pin a thesis entitled “The Year Everything Changed”. But music doesn’t really work like that. The big youth protest years in the UK and US – 1967 and 1977 – occurred during Democratic presidencies and when Labour was in power. Your descendants listening in 3020 to this list will struggle to deduce this was the Final Year of the Trump and The Time of the Great Pandemic.
Artists ultimately plough their own furrow. Influenced by culture, sure. But in “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”, Breughel’s painting, it’s famously nearly all landscape and hardly any Icarus.
Like a badly tuned radio, these songs go their own sweet way, and perhaps that’s just as it should be. I’ve aimed for a range but some musical themes recur. The return of ‘90s icons, Tricky, Bill Callahan, Cornershop and Stephen Malkmus. The deconstructed post-punk of Sneaks, Porridge Radio and Lithics. Shoegaze and trip hop feature – there’s even a Robert Palmer cover.
The twittersphere is obviously now a feeding frenzy of speculation concerning the Top 12, but I would ask you to exercise patience and stop threatening my family. It won’t be long.
Tracklist:-
Mustang, Bartees Strange
Faith, Sneaks
Johnny and Mary, Black Marble
I’m in the doorway, Tricky
You fear the wrong thing baby, The Radio Dept
Sweet, Porridge Radio
The Mackenzies, Bill Callahan
Sat by a tree, Dan Deacon
Hands, Lithics
Heart to ride, Nadia Reid
Ste Marie under canon, Cornershop
Troubled girl, Drab City
What kind of person, Stephen Malkmus