10 Debuts of Note: 2020
Debuts of Note’s fifth annual look at our 10 favorite debut albums
SAWAYAMA
Sounds Like: FKA twigs, Evanescence
Favorite Tracks: “XS”, “Comme Des Garçons (Like The Boys)”
Homebase: London via Niigata, Japan
Home For Now
by Babeheaven
Sounds Like: Hælos, Mazzy Star, Cocteau Twins
Favorite Tracks: “Casette Beat”, “In My Arms”, “How Deep (Love)”
Homebase: West London
Listen to Home For Now: Spotify / Apple / Pandora / Bandcamp
If I Am Only My Thoughts
by Loving
Sounds Like: Whitney, Adam Torres, The Radio Dept.
Favorite Tracks: “Visions”, “Lately In Another Time”, “Nihilist Kite Flyer”, “Simple Moon”
Homebase: Vancouver & Toronto
The album cover for Loving’s If I Am Only My Thoughts looks — for lack of a better term — boring. It’s, like, a wheat field? But it’s not, it’s definitely flowers upon closer inspection, only they’re two different shades of beige.
Forgettable, right?
Wrong.
Two weeks into 2020’s pandemic, I finally decided I needed to go through my catalogue of debuts that were still collecting dust and catch up for the end of the year. Loving’s debut was one of the first albums I came back to and, boy, that’ll teach me to ever judge an album by its cover. Since moving to Los Angeles, where seasons meld into each other in an almost indecipherable way, music releases have become the primary way that I judge the passage of time. There is simply no 2020 debut that more accurately embodied this year of society’s collective rumination via hibernation.
The three members of Loving — brothers Jesse and Lucas Henderson alongside David Parry — met years ago when the Hendersons were looking for a guitarist (David) to join them for a few shows as a part of a previous act’s tour. After having a “nice psychedelic time together at (a) funny little festival in the mountains (where they) got a flat tire, swam in a glacier-cold river, (and) listened to a lot of Bill Callahan,” the boys once again reunited some time later to plant trees together in the forests of Western Canada. David and Lucas eventually became roommates (shuffling between a few different residences in Victoria, British Columbia), while Jesse lived in Toronto. The three kept in touch, however, sharing guitar licks, lyric snippets, etc.
Loving’s first release, a 7-track, self-titled EP from 2016 “came together pretty much by accident,” according to Jesse Henderson: “We hadn’t really set out to create an album, so there wasn’t much of a method.” Once five of those seven tracks amassed over 3 million streams each, the bandmates collectively huddled on the tiny island of Gabriola, BC and turned the Hendersons’ late grandmother’s home into a makeshift studio. If the EP was happenstance, their debut album was created with intention. While portions of the album would be recorded in other locations, this original isolated setting seems to have cast a long, influential shadow on all further proceedings.
If diversity of sound is something you absolutely crave, by the time you reach the titular track “If I Am Only My Thoughts” you will likely turn off Loving’s debut. But if lo-fi guitars, glistening wurlitzers and melancholic vocals are your vibe (or could even possibly be your vibe), If I Am Only My Thoughts greatly rewards repeat listens. Recorded entirely via analog tape machine (and with zero looping, even if it may sound like it), Loving’s heroes muse over life’s existential woes — keeping their subjects at a distance while dissecting their guts from afar.
As dark as it may be, 2020 will be remembered for a long while as a year of mass death. For many, contemplating the purpose of existence is simply too arduous a task, especially during a year such as this. For the rest of us, there’s no better album to idly drift you into a dream-like state where worrying about such things is inconsequential. You’re alive right now — slip on If I Am Only My Thoughts and glide alongside. There’s no time like the present.
Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order by artist/musician):
070 Shake / Modus Vivendi
Banoffee / Look At Us Now Dad
BLOXX / Lie Out Loud
Cathedral Bells / Velvet Spirit
Helena Deland / Someone New
Hi Frisco / Goodbye, Blue Monday
Honey Harper / Starmaker
Katy J Pearson / Return
keiyaA / Forever, Ya Girl
Pottery / Welcome To Bobby’s Motel
Purr / Like New
Samia / The Baby
Silverbacks / Fad
Too Free / Love In High Demand
Westerman / Your Hero Is Not Dead
