There’s a line near the end of the apocalyptic musical comedy Urinetown that goes “Don’t you think people wanna be told that their way of life is unsustainable?” The answer is usually no. It makes us angry, it makes us frightened, it makes us worry that our own contributions to the downfall of humanity have been helped to speed it up. Nobody likes a prophet. And Richard Dawson was not attempting prophecy in 2019 when he recorded 2020, the middle part of a trilogy of examining British existence in different periods of time. But then the year itself happened and it’s kind of hard not to hear the current state of things in songs like the soaring “Jogging” (“the atmosphere around here is getting nastier/people don’t care anymore”) and the glitchy suite of horrors that come with “killing yourself to survive” in “Fulfilment Centre.” The album’s heart, however, shines bright in the description of little victories amongst the chaos of modern living; unfamiliar neighbors helping fix up a pub after a flood has knocked through town, a father consoles his son after a football loss, and even the act of quitting a soul-breaking job has the air of storybook heroism. Dawson is one of our most empathetic songwriters, and in 2020 his burst-open heart is on full display.