THE TOP ALBUMS OF 2021

Well, here we are.  At the end of a year that simultaneously went by in a flash and yet things that happened in April feel like a lifetime ago.  The push-pull of "Wow November frickin' EVAPORATED" will lead to more than a few "Wow, that came out this year?"s when looking back.  (It also doesn't help that I published my 2020 Best Of List on like March 9th, a little over nine months ago.  Who's part of the problem and has two thumbs?  This guy!)

Point is, time is made up and so are the requirements for this list, but hey, the list is here so let's get cracking.

To qualify, the album had to come out between December 1, 2020 and December 1, 2021.  That's it.  (And I had to listen to it, obviously.)  As a result, there are 157 Albums on this list.  (EPs are considered albums for the purposes of this exercise.)  Thankfully, the bottom 56 are already out back in the dumpster (see: The Worst Albums Of 2021), so we only have OK to Amazing from here on out.

So let's check out the next tier on deck:

OKAY

These range from "There's technically not a bad song on here, but I don't quite vibe with it" to "This is all right; I'll probably listen to this again sometime."

Abusive Muse "Prom Night"
Andrew Huang "Monolith" 
Andrew Huang "Ooo"
Anneke van Giersbergen "The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest"
Beach Bunny "Blame Game"
Blues Traveler "Traveler's Blues"
Cadence Weapon "Parallel World"
Chevelle "Niratias"
Flotsam And Jetsam "Blood In The Water"
Foxy Shazam "Burn"
Go Ahead And Die 
Hayley Williams "Flowers For Vases / descansos"
Hiyatus Coyote "Mood Valiant"
Illicit Eagle "Illegal Eagle"
Jackson Browne "Downhill From Everywhere"
Jinjer "Wallflowers" 
Ledisi "Ledisi Sings Nina"
Lillith Czar "Created From Filth And Dust"
Liquid Tension Experiment 3
Lorde "Solar Power"
Mdou Moctar "Afrique Victime" 
Nothing But Thieves "Moral Panic II"
Omnipotent Youth Society "Inside The Cable Temple"
Origami Angel "Gami Gang"
Phonopsia "Horse Time"
Pop Evil "Versatile"
Possum "Lunar Gardens"
Puma Blue "A Late Night Special"
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets "SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound"
Someone "Orbit II"
St. Vincent "Daddy's Home"
St. Vincent "The Nowhere Inn"
Still Woozy "If This Isn't Nice, I Don't Know What Is"
Sungazer "Perihelion"
Taylor Swift "Evermore"
Teeth Agency "You Don't Have To Live In Pain"
Yu Su "Yellow River Blue"

• Cadence Weapon was interesting, but I think I needed more listens than I had the energy to give to really make it click.
• Jinjer, Ledisi and Pop Evil were pretty close to breaking into "Pretty Good".
• Liquid Tension Experiment 3 just did NOT hold up on second listen.
• St. Vincent laid two eggs this year, and the soundtrack album was actually better than Daddy's Home.  If the highs weren't quite as high, it could've easily plopped down in "Meh" town.

PRETTY GOOD

Pretty Good albums are ones I liked most or all of and intend to return to in the years to come.

Alesia Cara "In The Meantime"
Ani DiFranco "Revolutionary Love"
Arlo Parks "Collapsed In Sunbeams"
Blisterdoll "Collected Flora 2018-2020"
Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians "Hunter And The Dog Star"
Emma-Jean Thackray "Yellow"
Epica "Omega"
Esperanza Spalding "Songwrights Apothecary Lab" 
Evile "Hell Unleashed"
Jade Bird "Different Kinds Of Light"
Jane Weaver "Flock"
Joan As A Policewoman, Tony Allan & Dave Okumu "The Solution Is Restless"
Juliana Hatfield "Blood"
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard "Butterfly 3000"
Kings Of Convenience "Peace Or Love"
Lake Street Dive "Obviously" 
Mastodon "Hushed And Grim"
Melissa Etheridge "One Way Out" 
Men I Trust "Untourable Album"
The Mountain Goats "Dark In Here"
Nick Nutter "Unfinished Business"
Paul McCartney "III Imagined"
Pink Pantheress "To Hell With It"
Qveen Herby "Halloqveen"
Rise Against "Nowhere Generation"
Rob Zombie "The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy"
Royal Blood "Typhoons"
Sewerslvt "The World Is Fvcked"
Shungudzo "i'm not a mother, but i have children"
Soccer96 "Dopamine"
Soilwork "A Whisp Of The Atlantic"
Styx "Crash Of The Crown"
Tkay Maidza "Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3"

• Shout to Joan As A Policewoman & co for the song "The Barbarian", which was in contention for my Top 20 Songs Of 2021 list.
• Also shout to Kings Of Convenience for "Rocky Trail" which would've been #22.
• Melissa Etheridge's last two albums have both been solid.  She's undergoing a bit of a renaissance.
• I hate that I like Qveen Herby as much as I do.
• Another shout out to Rise Against for the title track, which I can't believe didn't make the list either.
• Rob Zombie's always good for a good time.
• Shout to Shungudzo for "There's Only So Much A Soul Can Take", another near miss on the songs list.
• This was Styx's best album in...possibly my lifetime?  I've always been more a fan of Styx's songs than their albums; the only full projects I thought came together were this one and The Grand Illusion (1977); all the others had potholes.  But even in their frickin' 70's, Styx still puts up some good tunes.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Honorable Mentions are albums I would've felt comfortable including in The Top 20, if only it were numerically convenient to do so.  (Can't have a Top 20 with 32 entries.)  A cut above "Pretty Good" and getting into the crème de la crème.


Adele "30"
Adia Victoria "A Southern Gothic"
Courtney Barnett "Things Take Time, Take Time"
Frost* "Day And Age"
Gojira "Fortitude"
Helado Negro "Far In"
Jason Bieler And The Baron Von Bielski Orchestra "Songs For The Apocalypse"
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard "L.W."
The Night Howls "In Sheep's Clothing, Vol. 1"
Qveen Herby "A Woman"
Scale The Summit "Subjects"
Thank You Scientist "Plague Accommodations"

• If not for three out of the last five songs being a drag, Adele would've made the Top 20 proper.  This album has strange moments of Adele trying to expand her sound and I think I'm going against critical consensus to say I liked those moments the best.
• Seriously, why the hell do I like Qveen Herby so much?

  

THE TOP 20

20. The Seatbelts "Cowboy Bebop (Soundtrack From The Netflix Series)" 

Yoko Kanno / The Seatbelts were my favorite band of the 2000's.  Full stop.  They landed nine songs on my Top 100 of that decade, so to hear they were doing a new one got me excite.

When I was putting together this list, I initially stopped taking in new albums at the beginning of November because I didn't really want to do as much work (I say typing this at 1 AM on a Wednesday with an alarm set for 5:30, already 2,000 words deep and knowing this might not be done until next week) (Hey!  Next weeky here to say: "Accurate!").  But then after a deluge of new releases and Adele and The Seatbelts dropping on the same day, I knew I had to play catch up.

And I'm glad I did because eight of the albums I listened to in that week long stretch made "Honorable Mentions" or above.  The rest landed in "Pretty Good".

Anyway, this album captures the spirit of a lot of Seatbelts jams but with better production, which kind of changes the feel; definitely more digital than analog and not as groundbreaking but what could be?  The six Cowboy Bebop albums, the five Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex ones, the two Arjuna ones, the two for Wolf's Rain...that alone is an insane track record to compete with and all of it was in ten years.

This one definitely has the feel of a soundtrack, with shorter, more chopped up songs that do their thing and get out, but they all still work on their own and together and are a worthy addition to the Bebop cannon.

19. Twelve Foot Ninja "Vengeance"

Genre-fluid Australian nu-metal with catchy hooks, eight-string guitars and is short enough to not overstay its welcome?  Sign me up!  Hope you like out of nowhere shifts to Swing, Bossa Nova, 80's Synth Cheese and Djent, cuz that's what's for dinner!

18. Aesop Rock & Blockhead "Garbology"

I was not expecting something this involved this close after last year's Spirit World Field Guide but here we are.  He will not be aiming for the apple.  Went home different.  All Day Breakfast.

17. Mega Ran "Live '95"

His best since RNDM and probably second only to that one.  The nostalgia and life lessons mingle into music evocative of that time, but obviously cleaned up for modern sensibility.  The inspiring clips from basketball players, the lyrics that take some of them to task in retrospect and the voicemail from his dad (who died at the end of 2020) all serve to paint a vivid picture of what the journey from 1995 to now has been like.

16. Kenny Mason "Angelic Hoodrat: Supercut"

Last year I almost stopped listening to rap completely.  This year there's...six in the Top 20?  Depends on how you define rap now, I guess.  I'd argue Trap is to Hip Hop what Rock & Roll was to the Blues before it; it's an evolution (even from the original genre called "Trap" in the 2000's).  And we're well into the psychedelic phase.  All hail.

This has low key, sedated vocal delivery on a few cuts, but primarily Kenny Mason is enthused to be here and that really pulls me in.  This guy's flow is the right balance to sit between the heavy bass and vibey synth drones.  And then on some songs: there's electric guitar.  [*GASP*]  That element, adding guitar more for tone than to use it as a lead instrument, is the icing on the cake for an old rock-head like me.  (Wait, that means something different on the streets.  I'm talking rock music!  Wait, where you going?)

15. Naia Izumi "A Residency In The Los Angeles Area"

Spacey, well more into the B side of R&B if you know what I mean.  Izumi notes among their influences country music and math rock and their guitar-monies do reflect such a hybridization.  There's a uniquely melancholy, propellant, yet not forceful tone set with these songs.  There's a lot of beauty in these passages, a lot of note choices you might not see coming and some good lyrics too.  This music isn't just technical; it feels lived in.

14. Poppy "Flux"

This is the album that told me Poppy is for real.  I haven't checked out her previous one I Disagree because my experiences with Poppy up to that point were on the gimmicky side, but this is a solid-ass alternative rock record.  And the title track is another song that wound up just missing the cut (I should've made a Top 40; I swear).   "Lessen The Damage", "So Mean", "Bloom", "As Strange As It Seems" and "Never Find My Place" could've probably been contenders too, and all for different reasons.

13. Spiritbox "Eternal Blue" 

Rock deserved to die for its sins in the 2000's.  This shit got BORING.  It's taken a number of years of sitting in the ocean and letting the currents wear it down to wash some of the stink away.  The production on most rock and metal albums is either plastic and compressed or trying to be church-burn-y levels of black metal and recorded on a potato.  And yeah, Eternal Blue falls into the former category.

But if the songs are there, if the riffs are there and if the attitude is there, even the most polished production can't take too much away.  It's been awhile since I've heard pop metal done right, and we have two examples in the last seven entries!  Things are looking up!

Though one thing about slicker production: it makes 8 and 9-string guitars sound better (the latter of which comes into play on "Yellowjacket"; I've seriously never heard a 9-string not sound like crap before).  And this shit is tuned lower than the devil's asshole.  Which is why Courtney LaPlante is the perfect vocalist for this: she can get pretty gutteral with her harsh vocals but she sings really well too.  I think that's what's missing from most metal I hear: personality.  All of the production goes one of two ways and usually clings to the tropes for dear life.  This album does that in places, but LaPlante's personality carries the material above.

It also helps that a lot of these riffs are PUMMELING.  There are some really beautiful arpeggios and whatnot, but there's also some building-dropping sledgehammer riffs in here.  Specifically on "Holy Roller", which was another in a long list of songs that I wanted to fit into my Best Of 2021 list, but just didn't have room.

12. Willow "lately i feel EVERYTHING"

Willow Smith managed to cram 11 pop punk bangers with a melancholy edge into 26 minutes and it slaps.  There's not really much else to say; it slaps hard.

11. Diablo Swing Orchestra "Swagger & Stroll Down The Rabbit Hole"

Despite one of the worst production choices of the year (turning the mids up to 15 then breaking off the knob, giving everything as nasal a sound as possible to the point where even after an hour of fucking with the EQ in Audacity I had to give up and accept it just sounded like that), this is the band's most solid collection.  They already have an eclectic style, detuned metal playing swing and orchestral music, but now they've added Spanish and Celtic flare to their repertoire and, frankly, it's over for you hos.  If you can get over the overdose of midrange and the truckloads of camp, this is a catchy, cornucopic set with a lot to offer for show tune enthusiasts and headbangers alike.

10. Aly & AJ "a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun"

What can I say?  I'm a sucker for a pretty chorus.  The knock on Aly & AJ is that they're boring and I get it, but sometimes I just wanna relax, okay?  The world is a lot and I've learned to appreciate soft and sweet when I can get it, y'know?  On top of that, "Break Yourself" reminds me of Phenomenal Handclap Band (which I love), "Paradise" also barely missed my Top 20 Songs list (#24), and the hook for "Don't Need Nothing" has been stuck in my head for weeks.  

9. David Crosby "For Free"

Fifty plus years in, this motherfucker can still work a vocal harmony like a sorcerer.  Actually all the instruments have a magical bent to them.  I keep expecting this album to not hold up when I listen again, but it never disappoints.

8. Remi Wolf "Juno"

Irrepressible technicolor bangers loaded with personality.  One of the more fun albums I've heard all year.

7. Billie Eilish "Happier Than Ever"

Happier Than Ever is kind of a parallel to how music went this year.  Pretty slow and quiet at first, with a handful of extremely high highs (we'll get to those), then building, building, building to the unstoppable crescendo that is the title track.  The ultimate catharsis for these times.

Leading up to that, this album is full of moments of quiet power.  Plenty of emotional honesty and self-awareness, far beyond her years (she just turned 20 on the 18th of this month).  Relatable ennui, the need for self love and the need to look forward to things, having to hide what makes you you because you'll attract the mob if you shine too bright, image issues young girls and celebrities have to go through, dealing with abusive relationships, realizing the hollow side of fame and feeling the teeth of its trap...almost all of which is delivered without having to raise her voice beyond a soft moan.  

6. Tyler, The Creator "Call Me If You Get Lost"

It's weird the things you get nostalgic for.  In 2006, I never would've dreamed hearing "GANGSTA GRI-ZILL!!!" over a beat would make me smile, but I'll be damned if we aren't here in 2021 and Tyler pulls in DJ Drama King to host his new album.  

I think this is his best.  It takes the progress of his last few works and rolls it into an effortless hip hop journey, kind of feeling like a mixtape, and definitely with more #BARS, but without sacrificing the emotional vulnerability of Flower Boy or IGOR.  It's coolness and honesty at the same time.

5. Left At London "t.i.a.p.f.y.h."

If you're having mental health problems, you'll probably connect with this one on a lyrical level, but it's also...a lot.  Musically it's a lot too: I believe the technical term is "Extra As Fuck".  I've already gone off about "Pills & Good Advice" and "The Ballad Of Marion Zioncheck" twice now (once in the O.G. review and once in the Top Songs Of 2021)  But "There Is A Place For You Here" soars in the face of an uncaring world, "Out Of My Mind" is a nice loungy bit of chiptune, "It Could Be Better" is a distorted memory of listening to the "urban music station" after hours back in the 00's, and "THIS IS A PROTEST FOR YOUR HEART!!!" is a brazen, needle all the way in the red dose of autotune.  (I still don't like hyperpop yet, but this is kind of working to inoculate my adverse reaction.)  This album goes for it and it fucking HITS.

4. Tropical Fuck Storm "Deep States"

None of this should work.

This band, and especially this album, make me think of Red Dwarf, specifically the triple fried egg sandwich with chili sauce and chutney.  This band is the triple fried egg sandwich with chili sauce and chutney of music.  The ingredients?  All wrong.  But put them together...

For example: The instruments on this album sound like they were tracked on a tape recorder, then the tape got warped in places.  Braying vocals, weird keyboard stabs, seemingly off-key guitar...  But because the album is about...the year and change we just lived through, these sounds really capture what modern life feels like.  Scarily well.  It's the perfect balance of anger and melancholia, with a sprinkle of resigned detachment at knowing these problems are way too big for one person to deal with.  The damaged state of the music is a sonic parallel to Modern Society: It still functions, it's still "there", but it doesn't really "work".

Though unlike Modern Society, this album does work and is really good, so...points off?

3. Tune-Yards "sketchy."

Purveyors of indie quirk, experimental scenario and, love 'em or hate 'em, hooks for days.  "nowhere, man" has a repetitive line of "People wanna hear you sing" through the whole song, which will get stuck in your head, but depending on whether you like the song or not, maybe for the wrong reasons.  "Hold Yourself" and "Hypnotized" however are two of my favorite hooks of the year.  An album of slow groove, off the wall approaches and delectable vocal harmonies.

2. Lil Nas X "MONTERO"

Lil Nas X is a deft hand at the promotional game (especially the modern one; he's plugged the fuck in), but at the same time it feels like he genuinely wants to make art.  This album is the equilibrium of those two desires.  Genre-fluid, relatable yet space-age, this things packs a lot into 40 minutes.  "Montero", "Dead Right Now", "Industry Baby", "Sun Goes Down", "Life After Salem"...there's a lot of alt-rock pop trap synth goodness to choose from.  And the best part is he's just getting started.

1. Little Simz "Sometimes I Might Be Introvert"

Spectacular, magnificent, astonishing in all the ways a prestige film is and just so happens to also a really dope rap album.  So personal yet so grand in scope it sounds Imperial.  Little Simz is taking over.  Get used to it.


And that'll do it for 2021.  Hopefully 2022 will be a better year and usher in a brighter tomorrow.  (I know, I know.  But if we don't dream, who's gonna?)

Love Over Fear.