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

New Music: Hazel English - More Like You (Video)

5 thoughts that went through my head when watching and listening to the new Hazel English video:

1. This makes me want to go on a road trip. Although whereas Hazel’s is full of warm Californian sunshine, mine would probably be full of British grey skies and rain. 

2. In a world where chart based pop music is becoming ever more lame, indie music that exists on the periphery, the stuff that sounds swirling and dreamy and made for people who like art and fashion that also exist away from the mainstream, seems ever more important and ever more comforting. The sound of More Like You provides that comfort. 

3. More Like You is a little bit like reading the secret diaries of Hazel English. It’s thoughtful and contemplative: “It's so funny how you live your life; always trying on a new disguise. And you lie to yourself all of the time, you rely on the safety of denial.”

4. She'll get lots of views on this. Why? Because it has dogs in it. The internet loves dogs and cats doesn't it?

5. I fancy a cup of tea. (I’m pretty sure this had nothing to do with the video, but I don’t remember ever promising you that the thoughts would all be about the music, did I?)

Hazel English - More Like You (Video)

New Music: Hazel English - Fix (Video)

I’ve already featured the Hazel English song Fix on the blog back in 2015 where I called it ‘a melancholy anthem for every teenager sat in their bedroom.’ I should, at the risk of having come across as archly elitist, also explain that it’s absolutely perfect for anyone to listen to this tune, whoever or wherever they are. Middle aged moms and dads with three kids down at the supermarket? Yep, come on in. Old aged pensioners having tea and biscuits? Join the crew. Young graffiti dudes down and the skate park? You're invited as well. Someone working in a car manufacturing plant in Asia? Most certainly. 

Let’s not ever forget that music is one of the most universal languages we have. It doesn’t matter that Hazel is based in Oaklands, California. She speaks to me in Southsea, Portsmouth, UK. As Hazel herself has said of her music: “Something I made had an impact on somebody else – that blows my mind. Actually having a conversation with someone who loves my music, that means a lot to me. Suddenly it’s not just a number, it’s a physical person standing in front of me that’s getting something out of this.” 

I get this completely. It’s one thing discovering an artist via the internet, but another thing watching them play live. Luckily, I got that opportunity last year when Hazel came to the UK. If you missed her then, there are some more opportunities coming up as she plays Brighton’s Great Escape Festival as well as dates in Birmingham, London, Manchester and Bristol in May. Go see her, connect not just with her, but other people in the audience. It's this real life interaction that makes the world a better place. (Did I suggest this in the last post I wrote? Forgive me if I'm repeating myself. It's important.)

But before that there’s a new video for the song, which is as irresistibly romantic as you could hope for. It's to help promote her forthcoming release which will compile her debut EP alongside six new songs to create her first full length LP release.

However, a word of warning, we’ve talked about our concerns for Hazel’s lack of health and safety before in this blog post (here). Now she’s at it again; right from the get go she has us worried. Reading whilst walking up a staircase? Hurtling along in shopping trolley with seemingly no risk assessment or protective clothing? Playing with guns? (Watch the video to see her lethal weapon of choice). But at least she has the decency to wear a crash helmet on a motorbike. That’s a start.

So, in summary. Hazel English. A+ for the music. D- for the health and safety. There’s a quote her press agent won’t be using.

Hazel English - Fix (Video)

Ones To Watch 2017 #4 - Hazel English

To give you an idea of how long it can take for a new artist to develop their profile, it was as long ago as April 2015 when Hazel English first cropped up on Breaking More Waves. Since that time a series of blog approved songs have led to Hazel signing with Marathon Artists (Jagwar Ma, Childhood), release her first EP and has some forthcoming shows outside of her own country, including the UK lined up.

When she first appeared on the blog I suggested that words like summery, hazy, wistful, dreamy and nostalgic were probably going to crop up a fair amount and that prediction proved to be very accurate. Her blend of indie pop like your dad used to listen to when he was a floppy fringed student and thoughtful pretty melodies are a world away from the charts or mainstream radio, but they’re engaging all the same. That’s why every song Hazel has released so far has found its way onto Breaking More Waves and why as we go into 2017 she’s on the One to Watch list.

Hazel English - It's Not Real

New Music: Hazel English - Make It Better (Video)

Remember when Bon Iver took himself off to a cabin in the woods and created For Emma, Forever Ago? Well for the last few days I’ve done something similar, living out of a corrugated iron clad shed, formerly a World War 2 Land Girls’ House in Somerset, complete with an air raid shelter, a 1940’s kitchen, a fireplace and attic bedroom accessed via nothing much more than a ladder. It revisits another era, a trip in time that is pure nostalgia. It’s the kind of place that, from the very little I know about her, I imagine Hazel English would be smitten with. After all her sense of style is absolutely vintage / retro and as I’ve noted before on the blog her music pays much reference to the past - albeit a past when many an indie loving student in the UK danced to chiming guitar music like this in their Doctor Marten’s whilst swigging snakebite and black. 

But to pull it forward to the here and now, somebody on Twitter recently noted “Can we all agree that Hazel English is the indie darling of 2016?” I certainly wouldn’t disagree with that statement.

With that title under her belt, here’s another new song. Make It Better is the fifth and final release from her 5 track EP Never Going Home, and yes I’ve featured every single one of those songs on the blog. It’s a sweet and serene tune that has some similarity to The Sundays in terms of its sonics - if you haven’t heard Reading, Writing and Arithmetic please go and investigate it - but before you do so, press play on the video of Make It Better below, which features clips from some of Hazel’s old school films and TV shows whilst she sings of dilemmas, of the want to be seen, but invisible at the same time.

Hazel English - Make It Better (Video)

New Music: Hazel English - Control (Video)

I’m pretty sure Hazel English was born in the wrong decade. You’ll certainly find words like ‘nostalgic’ lobbed around a fair bit in connection with her tunes – and that’s not a bad thing. Control is a song that sounds like it would fit perfectly in any record collection that contains works by Joy Division, The Cure and The Cocteau Twins (that will be mine then). And although, at a stretch, you could suggest that there are small elements of new goth in her music (certainly it could be argued that on this one the synth sounds a little gloomy), Control is far too indie-pop, far too pretty, far too uplifting in its musicality to ever spend too much time rubbing up against the darkness.

“What are you searching for?” sings Hazel in the video as she seemingly sets off on some sort of journey away from working in a café. There don’t appear to be any clear answers or conclusions in the film, but with its hazy summer skies and scenery it’s lovely to watch (and listen to) anyway.

Having picked up plenty of blog support over the last 18 months (including from this one) Hazel’s debut EP Never Going Home is finally out this Friday and in November she hits UK shores for dates in Glasgow, Leeds and London. I’ve booked to go already. So should you.

Hazel English - Control (Video)

New Music: Hazel English - I'm Fine

New Hazel English tune alert! I’m very much enjoying what Hazel is doing. If she had a fan club I'd probably join. (Old people amongst you might remember fan clubs – I was a member of the 80’s synth pop ‘wizard’ Howard Jones' fan club and through it received badges, newsletters, flexi discs and even several handwritten letters from HoJo’s mum. You probably wouldn’t get that these days with The 1975 or Rita Ora) 

Her new tune is called I’m Fine and it sounds pretty er….fine. Damn fine even.  

Here’s a multiple choice question for you. First take a listen to the song. Then ask yourself about its sound. Do you think it sounds as if it is

A Caked in Californian sunshine

B Straight from the heart of a London Art School

C A pleasing indie pop song

D Two people sticking their tongues down each other’s throats in the back of a taxi after a night out clubbing?

If you answered A you’re probably her PR representative. If you chose B you’re probably me. If you chose C you’re probably accurate but a bit boring. And anyone that chose D - you’re probably drunk.

The reason I think I’m Fine sounds particularly British is those very OMD inspired synth noises combined with the concept of the song which Hazel has explained is about “struggling with something nobody else can see and trying to act like everything's fine, when it's really not,” something the Brits with their supposed ‘stiff upper lip’ are known for.

I’m Fine is the final track on Hazel’s forthcoming EP, with further tracks arriving in the next few weeks. You can pre-order the EP by clicking here.

Regular readers will also probably have already realised my continued health and safety concerns for Hazel as once again we find her sitting on a rock in a quite possibly dangerous location with no harness or safety rope attached* Newbies, you can catch up by clicking here*

*Footnote 1 - If you want ‘serious’ music criticism please go elsewhere. If you want the really important issues that everyone else ignores, stick with Breaking More Waves.

**Footnote 2 - This song has a number of little woah-oh's. It might explain why I like it, after all HoJo was a fan of the woah-oh as well (here)

Hazel English - I'm Fine

New Music: Hazel English - Never Going Home (Video)

You may well remember Oakland indie musician and all round creative type Hazel English from last year; she cropped up a number of times on Breaking More Waves, where amongst other things I (correctly) predicted that a lot of music writers would use the word dreamy when describing her sound, compared her to Jeremy Corbyn and revealed that Hazel English probably wasn’t even her real name. 

Now Hazel is back with a video for Never Going Home, the song that first pricked my ears last April. However, I have some serious health and safety concerns about this video. For here we find Hazel, sitting on a rocky outcrop, (you’ll first see it just after the 30 second mark) apparently with a serious drop below her, with no safety harness on. Yes, I know what you’re all thinking ‘but she’s a musician and musicians are dangerous crazy sexy people who live life on the edge.’ Well if that’s true let me ask you this; when Kanye played Glastonbury last year why did he wear a full safety harness (that he then struggled to get off - showing his lack of personal protective equipment skills) when he went up in the air on a cherry picker when wind speeds were low? If Kanye, who let’s face it seems to be capable in his mind at least of doing anything, from designing to being president, doesn’t feel safe in a situation where there’s a slight chance of falling, then surely Hazel should be taking more precautions? Or, just like her name, is this all a big bluff and the ground is just a couple of feet below? Or maybe she’s rigged up some sort of safety net fixed to some scaffolding just out of shot? 

Anyway, health and safety concerns aside, there’s an awful lot I love about Hazel. I love her preppy style, this retro / home shot styled video and I adore her dreamy (yes, there you go I’ve used the word) music; it’s music a long way from the majority of the stuff that floods my in box these days (identikit r ‘n’ b bangers and very average laptop produced electronic pop). It seems that I’m not the only one – having amassed a huge number of plays on Soundcloud she’s now been signed to Marathon Artists (Courtney Barnett, Jagwar Ma), and is getting ready to release her first 5 track EP in October. For this time round Never Going Home, which will feature on the EP has been given a fresh mix by Charlie Huggall (Florence and the Machine, Låpsley) and now I’m just hoping that we’ll see her over in the UK for some gigs at some point. Press play on Never Going Home and let go of your body and mind’s safety harness as you lose yourself in its chiming guitars.

Hazel English - Never Going Home (Video)

Hazel English - Fix

Right now Hazel English is a bit like the Jeremy Corbyn of the blogs. When we first heard her music we liked it a lot, but we really couldn’t see it appealing beyond the fringes – it sounded too old fashioned and certainly wasn’t in keeping with what the  vast majority of uber-cool new music sites were getting excited about. 

But just like Corbyn, English has jetted rapidly from being a 100/1 outsider to a leader of the pack. Never Going Home and It’s Not Real have already been big online hits and now third song Fix is on its way to doing something similar. Upon its release a couple of days you could almost hear the tap-tap melee of bloggers keyboards, rattling away, getting the song on line as quick as possible. 

So why is this? 

We hope (and think) that the main reason is simple; good songs.

Fix continues the good song trend. It’s a little subtler than her previous efforts, a melancholy anthem for every teenager sat in their bedroom, bored, dreaming of excitement with a call of wanting to feel alive and to ‘take me away again’. It’s also deliriously pretty. 

Oh and just like Corbyn it appears that Hazel English is also a big fan of rocking up to work in a pair of shorts (see above pic). We salute the both of them for this.

Hazel English - Fix

Hazel English - It's Not Real

The second piece of jangly power pop from Hazel English (not her real name – see our previous post about her here if you want some more info that probably no other blog told you) carries on where the wistful Never Going Home left off. In a world where stadium EDM builds and mellow R ‘N’ B electronic jams have become so common place, it’s almost become possible to forget that any other form of pop music exists, especially something like this. For It’s Not Real sounds so lo-fi, so D-I-Y, so old school indie that it’s very old-fashioned style sounds refreshing. It’s a song for people who dance in a slightly awkward, shy, ‘please don’t look at me in the corner’ way. Floppy fringes are probably involved as well. There’s lots of people out there comparing Hazel’s sound to things like summer and the beach (well, it was in the PR email) but we think it would work equally well on a grey wet day. It’s as much rainy Manchester or drizzling Glasgow as it is sunny California. Anorak music for anorak types – and that’s a compliment not a criticism.

Hazel English - It's Not Real

Hazel English - New Waves

Words like summery, hazy, wistful, dreamy and nostalgic are probably going to crop up a fair amount when it comes to Hazel English and her debut song Never Going Home. In fact nostalgia and the old fashioned seem to surround the way Hazel has chosen to present herself and her work, from the sun-drenched polaroid picture by Brandon Long of The Only Magic Left Is Art, to Hazel’s style, which has a casual near-preppy easy going vintage look to it. 

So who is Hazel English? We know for certain that she’s from Oakland, California although she originates from Australia. We think (if we’ve got our facts right) that her old fashioned sound and image permeates right the way through to other aspects of her life (she owns a vintage store), she may have another folkier sounding musical project under a different name, and even her ‘real’ name Hazel English may not actually be her real name. Of course, we can’t be sure about any of that, Google / the internet isn’t always the truth, but the ten minutes of digging we did, if correct, revealed that Hazel is quite the creative type.

But what is certain truth is that Never Going Home is a sweetly jangling, chiming piece of indie pop with a reverb laden tunefulness that wouldn’t have sounded that out of place on the famous NME C-86 cassette from the eighties, and is, in its own small scale way, rather lovely.

Hazel English - Never Going Home