It’s that time of year again where, as the editor, I get the joy of selecting my personal favourite Top 100 folk music albums of 2020 which have been covered on Folk Radio UK by our team over the last year. Of course, as all the albums featured on Folk Radio UK over 2020 are only on here in the first place because we enjoyed them so reducing this down to just 100 has not been easy. Like some of the personal Top 10 lists from reviewers which will soon follow this, all are selected from the 400 plus reviews we have featured on Folk Radio UK over the past year.
Inevitably, there are a number of releases I have covered in news and in my mixes which I would have loved to have seen in this list but as they weren’t reviewed, are not included…hence one of the reasons we are always looking for more excellent writers to join our team. The list does not include EPs, compilations, re-issues or live albums.
While 2020 will be remembered as an exceptional year with our daily lives transformed by the pandemic, it has, in contrast, been a strong year for music despite the challenges laid down by social distancing – complications in recording and production, as well as loss of incomes as the gigging economy came to standstill.
Included below are review extracts along with music links (mostly Bandcamp) so please also consider buying albums and supporting the artists featured. Click on an album title to read the full review, this will open in a new window to make it easier to come back to the list. As with previous years, the albums are listed alphabetically and not in order of merit.
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Best Folk Music Albums of 2020
Alasdair Roberts: The Songs of My Boyhood
The Songs Of My Boyhood won’t be the only album of reworked material recorded in 2020: the nature of isolation will likely cause a whole host of musical artists to reexamine their formative years. But the strength of Alasdair Roberts’ songwriting, and the fact that even his earliest songs have a melodic and lyrical maturity most musicians will never achieve, means that it will certainly be one of the best.
Alex Rex: Andromeda
At some point in the future, it will become possible – necessary, even – to define Alex Neilson’s place among the very best songwriters of this still-young century…Andromeda, like its predecessor, is a difficult, brilliant, rewarding snapshot of human turmoil. It’s final song, Pass The Mask, ends with the paradoxical refrain ‘nothing can heal or destroy you better than time’, and while it’s not for us to speculate on how time will treat Neilson, its seems certain that the stature of this formidable album will continue to grow even as the scars it describes begin to heal.
Allysen Callery: Ghost Folk
Ghost Folk casts a mesmerising spell, impossible to resist, and yet also conjures subtleties and substance that demand your closer investigation (you need to give it more than its purely linear time to make its mark). Since, for all the shape-shifting nature of the music, there’s a discrete, and consistent, quality to the sound-world Allysen inhabits.
Amy LaVere: Painting Blue
Across fifteen years and four albums, not to mention other long players in collaboration with others, she has proven herself to be a top-drawer songwriter with a personal punch and a disarming lightness of touch. Playing her upright bass and singing with that voice that is honeycomb sweet but lived in and streetwise, her albums are carefully curated affairs, mixing original songs with eclectic but always complimentary covers. Once again, Amy LaVere has delivered a record that is more than just a selection of songs, it’s a work of art in its own right….an album that will enrich any music collection, get on it now folks.
Andrew Tuttle: Alexandra
Painting a portrait of his hometown, Andrew Tuttle illustrates his own ability to imbue these locations with a sense of wonder and worldliness. What emerges is not merely a vision of Alexandra, but a watercolour full of the wonder of that which comes from the hands of an acoustic artist of the highest order.
Aoife Nessa Frances – Land Of No Junction
Aoife Nessa Frances has untapped a natural spring of expression and realised the strongest of debuts.
This music is all about alerting your inner senses, the silent self that occupies a less defined dreamscape and it works spectacularly well if you are of a mind to go on that journey. The album finale is also the title track, six minutes plus of breathless conclusion. The opening lines kind of some it all up perfectly. “You were with me in my dreams last night, you stayed a while”.
Ariel Sharratt & Mathias Kom: Never Work
Never Work is an album about how employment and production are changing as capitalism destroys itself. Given how fast that change is taking place, there is always the danger of a project like this sounding outdated before it hits the shelves, particularly in light of recent uncertainties. But Kom and Sharratt get around that by creating an imagined future, and imagination is key here: this is a future peopled by utterly believable characters in uncannily recognisable scenarios, but the wealth of artistic and personal detail means these songs are more than just speculative microfictions. Never Work is by far Kom’s most impassioned and political lyrical statement to date. Augmented by Sharratt’s superb, understated singing and musicianship, it shows just how relevant protest music is, and how much fun it can be.
Bill Callahan: Gold Record
Where last year’s outstanding and sprawling Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest was a seemingly up close and a personal set of songs built around some significant changes in Bill Callahan‘s own life, Gold Record sees the master songwriter look up and out to craft a set of ten short stories or vignettes. Patient, pensive and meditative, as well as witty, ironic and razor-sharp, these fully realised sketches are Callahan at the top of his game. Oh, how I love this album.
Blue Rose Code: With Healings Of The Deepest Kind
With the minimum of fuss, Blue Rose Code has gathered a rich seam of studio recordings that evidence a talent for songwriting of the old-fashioned kind, where craft is allied to real-life experience, such that every listener can identify within the songs a little piece of themselves, and so better understand the writer because of it. Every new album has been a progression from the last, and ‘With Healings…’ is no different. It should be on everybody’s end-of-year list without fail.
Bob Dylan: Rough And Rowdy Ways
Nearing 80, Bob Dylan remains a wonder, able to paint aural pictures that excite the senses, continuing to breathe life into a medium that doesn’t tend to value longevity. Yet he soldiers on, remaining relevant and true to his vision. Rough And Rowdy Ways cannot be categorized simply as a late period success, it is so much more than that. It defies age, suggesting that we look beyond easy answers and keep trying to understand how we relate to an ever-changing world.