Top Albums, 2021
It’s always confounded me that music publications (or pretty much any media outlet) basically just write off the month of December - seemingly compiling their Best-of lists in November and releasing them before punching out for the year in the first week of December, as though they are surrendering their readers to fend for themselves against the incoming tide of recycled holiday hell.
Ditto the Spotify year in review - what happens to my December data? Do all the minutes of music I listen to in the month of my birth get pushed into next year’s count, or are they just so much chaff, shucked off into nigh-oblivion and silently fed to an algorithm?
Wow, that got bleak fast.
2021 was another crappy pandemic year, but some brave people still managed to put out great art and I feel lucky to have been alive and in good enough health to enjoy it. Here are my highlights:
Madlib - Sound Ancestors (Album of the Year)
The most listenable album I heard this year. Easy to put on, hard to stop, and harder still to not start again as soon as it’s over. I’ve only heard scattered portions of Madlib’s prolific output through the years, but this makes me want to start digging to better appreciate all the digging he’s done.Jaubi - Nafs at Peace / Vijay Iyer, Linda Oh, Tyshawn Sorey - Uneasy / Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises / Damon Locks, Black Monument Ensemble - NOW
If my brain in 2020 was saved by all the gentle, folk-inflected albums that Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, and Fleet Foxes released, then the sonic balm of 2021 was provided by the wealth of improvised music and jazz that arrived to provide the calm center of a world which appeared to be taking every opportunity to tear itself apart.
Nafs at Peace puts a smile on my existence almost as soon as I press play and is the most unexpectedly pleasing oasis of sound I discovered this year. This and Sound Ancestors were two albums I spent the year trying to score on vinyl during Bandcamp Fridays, and both were consistently sold out. I eventually managed to get Madlib on the final one, in December, but it wasn’t until I idly checked my phone after brushing my teeth at 11:36pm on January 17th that I was able to (quietly) throw my money at Jaubi to pre-order one of the last twenty six copies of the fourth pressing of this one. There’s something extremely heartening about living in a world where a jazz group from Lahore, Pakistan can consistently sell out pressings of their music to a global audience.
Uneasy, to me, sounds like marching along Sunset in a protest against police violence while silently being watched by the cops that are redirecting traffic. It’s an amazing set of music that captures specific tensions, hopes and pains with remarkable ease. NOW shares some of that energy, but channels it into a more communal and cathartic experience; the sound of sweat, from jungles concrete and organic, to dancefloors, organized or improvised. Whereas Promises is the soundtrack to a mysterious science fiction film that only poses more questions for each one it raises. Cosmically intimate and engagingly elusive.Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee (Dirty Computer Award*, 2021)
This one took time for me to get got by it, but once I got got, at least half its songs became lodged in my head at one point or another for the rest of the year. Not quite as fuzzy or spaced out as Soft Sounds From Another Planet was, but the focus she’s found these songs is fucking infectious in the best of ways.CHVRCHES - Screen Violence
I think this is now the best Chvrches album. Their anthemic synth pop feels bigger and shinier than ever, the songs have a thematic weight and teeth that coheres together into an album whose concept is relevant without being overbearing. It is also hella catchy; another album with a bunch of songs that got stuck in my head on the regular.Deafheaven - Infinite Granite (24-Disc Caselogic Award**, 2021)
My favorite rock album of the year is also a notably chill experience. I’d say it’s surprising what a shift from vocals up in the METAL HOWL range down to… normal human male singing will do, but is it? There’s a beautiful catharsis in the former expression, but it is also nice to be quieter, sometimes, and they make the transition gracefully. There’s definitely still a metal vibe to be heard, but it’s all a little bit calmer; smooth curves instead of carved shrapnel.Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
This is my second favorite rock album of the year, a hazy psych rock record from a Tuareg-fronted group of Nigerien musicians (plus one American). Further proof that rock music is its own international language. This one friggin’ shreds, and, honestly might have been preferred by Teenage Andy over the Deafheaven.Mogwai - As The Love Continues
A good album made great by being in the country the band is from, seeing landscapes they’ve probably seen, with this music as the perfect soundtrack.Lil Nas X - Montero ((I Was A) Teenage Iconoclast Award***, 2021)
I like to think that following Lil Nas X over the last three years is kinda like witnessing David Bowie change personalities between his albums in the sixties and seventies. The difference here being that we’re seeing both an artist and a human come into a fuller expression of himself through his work. Being able to watch his story and enjoy the good pop record it produced makes me feel grateful to be alive. I hope Lil Nas X is able to take care of himself and that we get to follow his journey for a long time to come.The Soft Pink Truth - Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? (Asleep at the Wheel Award****, 2021)
This is what I chilled out to before all the records in the number two spot came out, because it was released in 2020 and January 2021 was a motherfucker. Oddly (as it’s kind of an electronic album), I got into this through Allyson, whose rigorous reviews of previous years’ best of lists occasionally produce pleasant household crossover hits. It’s music created in response to a world that seems bent on making the wrong choice at just about every turn, and is all the more powerful for how not angry and not depressing it is; a healing balm for burning times.
Honorable Mentions, 2021
BROCKHAMPTON - ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE
The first album of theirs that I listened to and I dug it! Great Danny Brown feature, a fun, weird energy throughout, and one song that made my top 50.
Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
The best Genesis album Phil Collins never made. Seriously - I know the 80’s sound is and has been back, but I didn’t quite expect this after Laura’s last, lush, cinematic pop record. Surprises are awesome!
Kid Cudi - Man on the Moon III: The Chosen
My favorite thing about this album is that every time I listen to it, I think each one of the last, like, half-dozen or so songs is the final track. They all just have that “closing out” vibe to them. Maybe that means it’s too long? But it also makes for a pleasantly unsettled, engaging listening experience.
Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
Another great jazz album, but this didn’t have quite the impact that the others on the list had. There’s a great intimacy in the distance between all the parts of the music that seem to barely graze each other, forming something almost by accident, as though they were complete pieces of a puzzle, suspended separately in sheets of glass above each other and only coming together when viewed from the right angle.
Sleigh Bells - Texis
It had been a long time since I listened to a Sleigh Bells album and something about this one called to me. I don’t know if their music will ever recapture the novelty their first album still retains in spades, but this is close and it has a pretty fucking killer opener. Do I need to suggest listening to it as loud as your ears/neighbors can tolerate?
* Dirty Computer Award - Album with the most songs that got stuck in my head this year.
** 24-Disc Caselogic Award - The album most likely to fit in with my modest teenage CD collection.
*** (I Was A) Teenage Iconoclast Award - Favorite album teenage me would have been too cool to enjoy (aka, my favorite pop album of the year).
**** Asleep at the Wheel Award - My favorite album from the year not currently under review.