Who can deny this perfect symmetry?

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Best Albums of 2020 list...

#14 : What's Your Pleasure - Jessie Ware

Ware’s fourth album was highly flammable. Its plush disco setting evoked the era’s velvet, feathers and static-crackled polyester – cinders at the drop of a lit Vogue. Moreover, as she served up dispatches from a fantasy dancefloor, her gasped vocals suggested how a subtle shift in touch or movement might ignite suggestion into full-blown ecstasy: “We touch and it feels like woo!” she trilled on Soul Control. That sense of promise, half danger, half flirtation, torched the memory of her previous album’s commercial hedge-betting, Ware’s finest record yet rising from the ashes.

I was aware of and liked Jessie Ware, but this album had passed me by so I was looking forward to listening to it.  And I liked it.  And, unlike a lot of albums on this list previously, I can see a lot of people liking it.  Yes, it's a bit Radio 2 but there's nothing wrong with that - I'm not entirely sure I agree with The Guardian's description of "highly flammable" but I'd certainly agree with "plush disco".  She's got a great voice and the songs are all quality - I had a suspicion she'd got a truck load of songwriters in, but she's been involved in all of them, so extra bonus points to her!

Jessie is quite an interesting character - she has always produced quality music but pretty much gave up on it because she just couldn't make the breakthrough.  So obviously, she set up a podcast with her mum which has gone on to be very successful, which resulted in her returning to music - and also starting a kids clothes range.  Makes perfect sense to me!  "Customers also listened to" Roisin Murphy who is coming up soon, so it will be interesting to compare.  I can honestly say though that it was a joy to listen to an album that was well crafted and not challenging me on every track - it's well worth your time if you're in the mood for such a thing.

#13 : Rough And Rowdy Ways - Bob Dylan

For his return to original songwriting after eight years away, Dylan was showing his age in the best way possible: these songs are reflective, wise and slow. On the exquisite Key West (Philosopher Pirate), he’s an old rogue hymning the last of his life at the far end of America, afternoon beer palpably in hand. Left alone by a departed friend or lover (“I wish you’d’ve taken me with you wherever you went”) on the funny, phantasmagoric My Own Version of You, a truculent nursing home inmate cobbles together a companion like Frankenstein. On Murder Most Foul, his longest song ever – and one of his very best – he’s like Walt Whitman spilling his thoughts on a meme page for Facebook boomers: a sublime epic of conspiracy theorising, American history and rock’n’roll nostalgia. He even eases off down to the blues joint for a couple of classic 12-bar stomps, though at a geriatric pace. Dylan turns 80 next year, but he’s still raising the bar for American song.

Just recently, I was forced to listen to the 411th greatest album of all time - Love and Theft, by one Mr Bob Dylan (here).  And my verdict was that it is a load of completely average songs, sung in a style that only their mother would love - so obviously I was ecstatic at getting another Bob Dylan album to listen to.  But...

...here the songs were, in my opinion, of a much higher calibre and the singing a LOT less annoying.  There is, obviously, no danger of me listening to any of it again but I'm pleased to report that I'm not struggling with a murderous rage (unlike my mood after his 1971 "masterpiece").

"Customers also listened to" Joan Baez who gets a special mention because my mum loves her - she's also 79 and still going.  I'd have to also say that, having seen some terrible performances from some of the more senior white statesmen of music on Later With Jools Holland (I seem to recall Ray Davies being particularly terrible), it's not a bad effort at all from someone who's nearly 80.  So well done, Bob - you have at least partially rescued your reputation in my eyes (or at least forced me to accept that it's not all terrible).

#16/15 - Two I find tricky to describe
#12/11 - Some fine female voices