The Breaking More Waves Top 30 Albums of 2020 List

 

As I say every time around this year, by now you’re probably sick of end of year album lists, but the fact that you are here shows that you still have at least a tiny bit of stamina for more, so thank you for visiting. 

So these are my favourite albums of 2020, in order from 1st to 30th. 30 is too many really. Why anyone would be interested in my 26th favourite album of 2020 I have no idea. But at least it’s not a top 50. Ideally I would have stuck to 20, even if just so that I could have had a headline that read '20 from 2020' but I’ve listened to so much music this year I just couldn’t cut it down to that number without feeling that there were some good ones missing. It’s like inviting friends to a party – if I don’t invite certain people I’m going to feel really awkward about it.

Like the previous few years there’s no big write up, because my guess is all you want to do is have a look at how my list compares with yours and then bugger off again. If it's good enough for Barack Obama to throw his album list up on line with no commentary and get thousands of views, it's good enough for me. 

If there’s something here you haven’t heard, why not give it a try. By way of introduction, I’ve made a playlist with one track from each record. Find it by clicking here. That means you get 2 Sault tracks and 2 by Taylor Swift as they both feature twice. Also, something that may be a surprise to those who saw my 2019 list is that there’s no Fontaines DC on this list (they produced my favourite of 2019). Sorry guys, I just didn’t feel the second album as much as the first. 

For the first time ever I couldn’t decide on an overall number one and so two records share the top spot. Another Sky’s I Slept On The Floor and Wake UP! by Hazel English have been not only my favourite records of this year, but my most played. Both these two records seem strangely out of fashion and yet are weirdly and brilliantly all the better for it. 

Another Sky’s record is the most complete album I have listened to this year. It feels like every track sits in the perfect place – there’s an ebb and flow that makes it the complete start to finish listen. It’s a record that I discover more every time I play it both musically and lyrically. It’s bloody brilliant. Wake UP! by Hazel English is a record that is just chock full of gorgeous sixties referencing indie pop melodies that won my heart on first listen and has stayed there ever since. It’s a record that makes me feel like I have a teenage crush on it.

Close behind these 2 wonderful albums is Sault’s much acclaimed Untitled (Black Is). It’s a record for our times; an essential statement that mixes R&B, funk, soul against the background of the Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd. It’s a hugely powerful piece of work on many levels. 

Add to that Phoebe Bridgers' sublime reality-core songwriting on Punisher, Dua Lipa’s all killer no filler mainstream pop album that hugely improves on her debut, Charli XCX’s lockdown computer bangers, Georgia’s Mercury nominated electronically enticing Seeking Thrills, Erland Cooper’s closing record from his Orkney trilogy, Pottery’s riotous party punk funk of Welcome to Bobby’s Motel and E.M.M.A’s cinematic soundtracks to the top 10 and all in all it’s been a very good year for new music.

These are the records that I have listened to excessively, the ones I have lived and breathed and the ones that have got me through the year. Thank you to all these artists for doing what you do. I love you.

1= Another Sky - I Slept On The Floor

1= Hazel English -Wake UP!

3 Sault - Untitled (Black Is)

4 Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher

5 Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia

6 Charli XCX – How I’m Feeling Now

7 Georgia – Seeking Thrills

8 Erland Cooper – Hether Blether

9 Pottery - Welcome To Bobby’s Motel

10 E.M.M.A – Indigo Dream

11 Taylor Swift - Evermore

12 Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song

13 Nat Vazer - Is This Offensive And  Loud?

14 The Blinders – Fantasies of A Stay At Home Psychopath

15 Laura Marling – Song For Our Daughter

16 International Teachers Of Pop - Pop Gossip

17 Ren Harvieu – Revel In The Drama

18 Mary Lattimore – Silver Lakes

19 Other Lives – For Their Love

20 Sault – Untitled (Rise)

21 Porridge Radio – Every Bad 

22 Oh Wonder  –  No One Else Can Wear Your Crown

23 Emily A. Sprague – Hill, Flower, Fog

24 Taylor Swift - Folklore

25 The Avalanches – We Will Always Love You

26 The Budos Band - Long In The Tooth

27 Lady Gaga - Chromatica    

28 Rosie Carney – The Bends

29 Baxter Dury – The Night Chancers

30 Gia Margaret – Mia Gargaret

I'll be back tomorrow with news on what I'm doing with the blog in 2021.

Here are two tracks from my two (equal) favourite albums of 2020

Hazel English - Milk and Honey

Hazel English · Milk and Honey

Another Sky - Tree

Another Sky · Tree

Another Sky - Fell In Love With The City

“Fell in love with the city. Fell in love with @AnotherSkyMusic (again).” I posted those words on Twitter back in September last year after the band’s phenomenal show at London’s Village Underground. Now we finally get that song ahead of the band’s debut album I Slept On The Floor due 7th August.

It feels good to be posting this song today. It is, after all, the day Breaking More Waves was born back in 2008 with a quote from Lyndon B. Johnson: “We can draw lessons from the past but we cannot live in it," together with a reflection that it was eleven years before that that I’d published my first ever fanzine (Breaking Waves) under the author pen name The Boy On The Boat. (Simply because at the time I lived on a houseboat on the Thames).

Now here I am 12 years after that first post (despite supposedly retiring the blog last year) and 23 years since that first scrappy stapled and photocopied ‘zine. I'm still writing about the work of bands and artists I love for no other reason than i like doing it. 

I still occasionally go off at tangents and reflect on the oddness of pop. Questions such as why is it that music seems to be the only profession where it seems totally normal to promote your product by publishing a photo of yourself in the bath? Or why are musicians so full of contradictions? I still write posts unedited and throw them up online in the spare 15 minutes I find in the day. I still get over excited about an artist who I'm sure will be the next big thing that we then never hear of again. I'm still a nerdy fanboy. I still love this thing we call music.

And there you have it, I’m veering off again. This is about Another Sky. 

Fell In Love With The City is classic Another Sky. Surging cinematic guitars combine with Catrin’s Vincent’s mighty vocal to make a song that is exhilarating and elevating. I've already played it a dozen times and I've only just got started.

This is big music. This is another one to lose yourself in. What a band.

Another Sky - Fell In Love With The City

Another Sky · Fell In Love With The City

A Personal Note On Dials Festival 2019 - An Event I Help Run

Away from my day job (which has absolutely nothing to do with music) one of the other projects I’m involved in is running a small music festival in Portsmouth. It’s called Dials. It’s a multi-venue event run by a team of volunteers in support of Solent Mind, a local mental health charity. 

Dials ran in 2015 and 2016 as a smaller replacement for the now defunct Southsea Fest, before taking a break in 2017. My original role was not much more than having a small hand in booking some of the artists that played in those first two years, helping out with a bit of public relations and trying to understand how a putting on a music festival worked; it's a jigsaw and you have to put all the pieces in the right place at the right time.

In 2018 we decided to continue, with a slightly different (albeit very small) team as well as a modified concept and I acted as festival director as well as co-booker. For 2019,  I’ve taken a step back after some recent health issues and another team member Abbie Eales has taken on the role, but I’m still quite heavily involved; I co-book the event and generally do whatever I can to help with the limited spare time I have.

2018 was the first year that the festival took the decision to support a charity and it is something that is very important to me. I’ve always been more of an actions speak louder than words sort of person (ironic given that I write a blog) and so you won’t find me doing lots of posts on Twitter about how important mental health is – I’d rather get on with organising an event like Dials and supporting an organisation like Solent Mind and (hopefully) giving people a great day out watching some of the best new music out there. Tweets are useful, but taking real action is even more so.

2018 represented a new start for our festival with its charity support and revised team structure. The feedback we got from punters was hugely positive and spurred us on to do it again in 2019.

This year we’ve grown the team working on the festival as we had lots of interest from people about getting involved and volunteering after the 2018 event, although the festival itself is the same size. I like to think that when something is positive and successful people want to be part of it. It certainly helps having a bigger number of people to spread the workload, especially when the team is full of such talented and brilliant people. 

I mentioned the praise we received in 2018; we especially liked that ticket holders thought that Dials had a friendly community atmosphere, was well run, had some nice elements of attention to detail (even though we had very little budget), how close all the venues were to each other, and how much great new music they discovered. 

And it’s new music discovery that is at the heart of Dials Festival. Which is why I’m incredibly excited today to reveal the first 13 acts that will be appearing at Dials 2019. 

Headlining will be The Blinders - a band I named as Ones to Watch in 2018 (here). Since that time they’ve released their debut album Columbia and cooked up a storm wherever they’ve played live. This year they’ve already played the Scala in London and will be supporting Noel Gallagher at some of his summer shows before they head to Dials. 

Alongside The Blinders I’m ecstatic to bring Another Sky back to Portsmouth for the second time. If you’ve read Breaking More Waves this year or followed me on Twitter you’ll probably know that this band is one of my favourite new acts of the last 12 months. They were the first band I approached about playing for 2019 and was absolutely delighted when they said yes. If you haven’t heard them yet, it’s time to do some catching up and listen to tracks like Chillers, The Cracks, Forget Yourself, Apple Tree and Avalanche and feel the band’s power. Having seen them play a number of times I know they can deliver the goods on stage as well – they are all fantastic musicians.

Besides these 2 bands today we’ve announced 11 more acts. From fresh new cosmic dreamy synth pop from Bristol (Pocket Sun) to snarling South London new wave punk recently signed to Felix White of The Maccabees new Yala! Records label (Talk Show) to analogue ambient audio-visual electronic art from Brighton (Johanna Bramli) to a band that are playing Glastonbury, Boomtown and Download this summer, have collaborated with Bobby from Primal Scream on a recent single and are making people’s jaws drop with their full-on live performances (Black Futures). 

We’re really proud of the line up we’ve curated and hope that as many people as possible will come along for the day. We’ve already sold out of early bird tickets and hope that even if you know none of the acts playing, you’ll come for a grand day out anyway.

A quick plea: It really helps us survive as a festival if you buy tickets early so if you have any thought about coming to Dials 2019 – grab a ticket now (just click here). 

Dials takes place on October 5th on one road (Albert Road) in Southsea, Portsmouth and runs from lunchtime to around 11pm at night.

The artists announced for Dials 2019 so far are: The Blinders, Another Sky, Arxx, Black Futures, Fake Empire, Haze, Hussy, Johanna Bramli, LibraLibra, Pocket Sun, Saltwater Sun, Talk Show and Wych Elm, but this is just the start, we have lots more to come. 

Find out more about the artists, check out the Spotify playlist and most importantly buy your tickets at the Dials Festival website by clicking www.dialsfestival.com 

If you’d like a free ticket to Dials, then why not come and help out and volunteer? We’ll be looking for people to help with things such as merchandise sales on the day, artist accreditation and acting as runners. It’s a really rewarding experience (something I never really considered until I started helping out) and we’ll make sure you get some time off to go and see some of the artists play. If you’re interested in volunteering just send an email to dialsfestival@gmail.com

To finish off, here’s some music from a few of the artists playing Dials 2019. We look forward to welcoming you in October. For more information on Solent Mind and what they do click here.

The Blinders - Brave New World



Another Sky - Apple Tree



Saltwater Sun - The Wire



Johanna Bramli - Spirals

New Music: Another Sky - The Cracks

I've mentioned this before on the blog, but i think it's worth repeating.The common consensus that I see amongst music biz types and some industry publications is that bands are out of fashion and out of favour. But that misses a critical point – that some of those groups are still creating incredible music. It’s why when I named my Ones to Watch 2019 on the blog last year I purposefully started with two bands. Two bands that I firmly believe are making some of the most intoxicating and compelling music to be heard right now. 

One is Dublin’s Fontaines DC, a group that has recently released a brilliantly boisterous and lyrically poetic debut album called Dogrel.

The second is Another Sky, a four piece who seemed to fly under most people’s radars with their debut release Forget Yourself in March 2018 but have been beavering away ever since, slowly drawing attention to themselves with a string of bold and arresting songs that get better and better with each listen. They’ve now got to the point where they are able to announce a headline show at Village Underground in London on September 24th, a step up from the tiny toilet venues they’ve been slogging around which seem somewhat unbefitting of their superbly structured sound, a sound that can only be created by musicians who have already mastered their tools. 

Today saw another new song join Another Sky’s collection of powerful hymns. It’s called The Cracks and is taken from their upcoming EP Life Was Coming In Through The Blinds which is due for release on 14th June. Vocalist Catrin Vincent describes the track as “a response to a Leonard Cohen lyric, ‘the cracks, that’s how the light gets in’. The song is an ode to our generation, one that is more self-aware and being forced to have the difficult conversations that lead to progress and evolution. It’s inspired by the little girl fined by the council for setting up a lemonade stall, the kids suing the US government for global warming, teenagers like Greta Thunburg. It’s about our generation’s unique position of facing extinction.”.  Driven by a rhythmic force it once again showcases Catrin Vincent’s incredible voice; it jumps from solid rock to the heavens with what seems like ease. There’s a real sense of drama here, but it’s never overblown. 

If you get the chance to see Another Sky live grab it. It’s only in that environment you really get the opportunity to appreciate the atmospheres, textures and sheer bloody great musicianship that the band possesses. They’re already in the Breaking More Waves diary for Are You Listening festival in Reading (where they play in a church) on 27th April, Brighton’s Great Escape in May and most likely a few others as 2019 rolls on as well.

Out of fashion? Perhaps. But fashion is transient. This is music built to last. 

Another Sky - The Cracks

New Music: Another Sky - Apple Tree

When I first featured Another Sky on Breaking More Waves in March 2018 there seemed to be a strange lack of excitement about the band – very few websites wrote about Forget Yourself, despite the song being bloody marvellous. However, 10 months on and the group is now deservedly picking up plenty of traction. I hope that this will continue with new song Apple Tree which has recently hit the world in all its glory with a superb stop motion video.

“This song is for the boy who talked to daffodils and found joy in being who he is,” state the band on their Facebook page – hinting at the group celebrating men who are perhaps a little more sensitive and have a gentler outlook on life than those who exhibit macho alpha male type characteristics. Yet despite this idea the instrumentation on the tune is far from placid. The guitars kick-hard and create a joyous sort of carnage that may well leave you bouncing and breathless. 

Of particular interest to me (OK maybe not to you, but this blog is personal – it’s hardly Pitchfork) is the fact that the song was recorded at Chale Abbey Studios in the Isle of Wight. This is partly because I was born on the Island with my parents living just 15 minutes drive from the studios location but more recently, and of more musical interest, because Breaking More Waves favourite Lauran Hibberd has also recorded there as well.

Another Sky are touring the UK (a big tour of relatively small spaces) this February. Having now seen them live twice I can confirm that they are pretty special and totally formed live band. Just don’t expect to be able to see much of them – they’re big fans of hiding themselves by backlighting. But even so, grab a ticket (here) before it’s too late. 

Another Sky - Apple Tree

Ones to Watch 2019 #2 - Another Sky

The 2nd One to Watch for 2019 on Breaking More Waves is Another Sky. 

The band first appeared on Breaking More Waves back in March after I had become just a little obsessed with their debut track Forget Yourself and its accompanying surreal digital artwork video by artist Mikey Burey.

At that point in time very little was known about them except that they formed at Goldsmiths College in London and had a small number of shows lined up over the summer. 

Since that time Another Sky have impressed me time and time again. First there was the powerful Avalanche, a song that showed a group with a social conscience that was prepared to bring some of the big issues of the day into their music, in this case toxic masculinity. They combined it with an impactful video (below) which garnered a positive response to every single person I showed it to.

Then there was Chillers, a song that hit me on first listen: “Why worry about the weather or nuclear weapons when they can eat for free on a black card at Nandos?” sang lead vocalist Katrin providing a questioning voice about the self-centred times we live in. A tour support with Breaking More Waves favourite and regular Laurel followed, with Another Sky playing under minimal lighting and dry ice – the focus clearly being on the sound they were creating rather than what they looked like. Then suddenly there they were on the TV with a slot on Later With Jools. As the year closes it really feels like Another Sky has got out of first gear.

The early part of 2019 will find the band heading out on a headline 20 date tour of the small venues of the UK. They’re probably hitting a town or city near you. Do try and catch them. They have certainly started out as one of the stand out new bands of 2018 and therefore have to be ones to watch for 2019.

Another Sky - Forget Yourself




Another Sky - Avalanche

New Music: Another Sky - Chillers (Video)

If you drew a Venn Diagram that featured Radiohead and London Grammar, Another Sky could well be found highlighted at the intersection.

However, impressively hefty and unsettling new single Chillers slides much further into the Radiohead element of that Venn Diagram with added social bite from lead singer Catrin Vincent. It’s probably the only credible tune you’ll hear that mentions chicken wings and Nandos in the lyrics this year. 

Added to this comes the band’s new video which features a young guy who works doing a low paid job at a car wash for a living. The divide between the haves and the have nots when it comes to money is made fully apparent. The film is perfectly edited to fit with the music and whilst it is completely different to their Avalanche video (which if you haven’t seen it you really should watch by clicking here) it really works well with the tune and words.

Following their recent support slots on Laurel’s UK tour (I caught the band in Portsmouth where the audience seemed 50% bewildered and 50% mesmerised – I was certainly in the latter half, being particularly taken by the bands excellent guitar work, and I’m not normally one for noticing technical excellence of guitarists so it must have been very good indeed) Another Sky are now heading out on their own UK dates in small venues all over the country. Full details can be found at their website. 

Catch them whilst they’re still relative unknowns.

Another Sky - Chillers

New Music: Another Sky - Avalanche

Another Sky won me over on first listen back in March with their bewitching track Forget Yourself and the accompanying digital video (see the previous Introducing post by clicking here) and now they’ve gone one better with Avalanche.

First there’s the song. A hard hitting take on toxic masculinity that finishes with a repeated raw and impassioned angry mantra by lead singer Catrin Vincent: “When you hold them to account, they’ll spit you out, just a bad taste in their mouth.” Its’s a powerful piece of music that sonically shares some similarities with OK Computer era Radiohead, although I don’t ever remember Thom Yorke singing lines as targeted as “They’re strangers, they’re in Hollywood, they’re your neighbours you left back in your childhood, your fathers that won’t make amends, they’re in schools, they’re your boyfriends.” A direct statement that the traits of toxic masculinity such as misogyny, homophobia and violence can exist anywhere.

Then there’s the video. It’s a potent piece of work. Don’t be fooled by its apparent simplicity at the start as you watch a weird white-painted bald-headed person that looks like a long lost relative of Jed Hoile or Pinhead from Hellraiser pull some shapes. As the video develops you'll see the personal anger and upset forge to the front as Catrin reveals more of herself in what is clearly a very personal piece. This is certainly the video that pulls the most punches I've seen since This Is America by Childish Gambino.

A highly impressive and compelling piece of art. Another Sky are way more than just your average indie band. 

Another Sky - Avalanche

New Music: Introducing - Another Sky

New band Another Sky released their debut single Forget Yourself with very little online fanfare just over a month ago. Yet the beautiful quality of the track demands that you take notice, but perhaps that demand comes with a whisper first before a shout. Fans of Radiohead will probably be nodding along in quiet contemplation as the piece seamlessly grows from looped beats and chords, through gentle falsetto vocals into a crescendo and wash of noise. It all sounds awkwardly and twitchily romantic. If I was going to tag the song with a genre I’d go for something along the lines of ambient-electronic-experimental-post-rock-pop; essentially this track covers a lot of ground without ever sounding over complicated.

There’s not a lot of information available about Another Sky at the moment, but they are playing at St Pancras Church in London on April 19th and are also at London’s Bushstock and Citadel Festivals this summer. The one site that seems to know something is Highclouds which states that the band met at London’s Goldsmiths University and their name is taken from the Emily Dickinson’s poem There Is Another Sky. But that’s all there seems to be for now. No doubt as time and more music is released their story will unfold, but this is a bewitching start. 

Watch the surreal digital artwork video by artist Mikey Burey below.

Another Sky - Forget Yourself