2021 Favorites
We are once again at one of the most fun times of the year: year-end list season. The part of the year where all us music psychos try our hand at quantifying our year in music into some kind of ranking. There are eternal aspects of this. It’s a list we both overthink and underthink. I spent my year on it, I suppose, if you count “liking music for the last 12 months,” but I really threw this together in two days. There’s probably a whole list worth of albums that fall under the category of “if they came out in a slightly more boring week at work I would’ve listened to them about 20 additional times and they’d be top 5.” I’ve only listened to the new War on Drugs album like 6 times, mostly while running, cause, like, we had a Halloween decorating contest at work that week so I had to run to Party City and Staples a bunch of times.
I’m not a dishonest person. Half inspired by the fact that a giant chunk of my music listening gets left off my Spotify wrapped each year (y’know the copious CD’s that fill every crevice of my car), I started logging every album I listened to every day a couple years ago. This takes an especially absurd commitment to the bit. This is stupid data, I don’t really monitor it, it doesn’t really mean anything but I do think it instills in me some spirit of honesty. I’m really in it with these albums, they’ve actively animated my life, become part of me, and most of them are somewhere near the top of my most listened to albums list too.
Of course there are fascinating circumstances specific to the year in question that appear on these lists. I own only three of these albums on Vinyl, the others I have on CD or Cassette. (Caveat about no ethical consumption)…but I do think we could try to keep the CD market alive so that musicians don’t have to career plan around when Adele won’t be printing half a million copies of 30 on vinyl for Target. Whereas the majority of 2020 was spent “fucking around,” 2021 was spent commuting to work like clockwork. I had no major time off, no real breaks, and such a 25 minute long album is at the top. Something I could toss on for the last little bit of bus ride, or, eventually, the exact amount of time it took me to drive home.
There’s also the giant festering elephant in the room known as “the pandemic,” which was arguably at its true nadir from January to March of this year. There was the false start “post-pandemic,” the slow crawl back towards normalcy, then the re-explosion of cases. A calm will come someday but an air of uncertainty remains and the threat of this just being the new reality probably has us all on edge. Nonetheless, the things that keep us going keep us going, for me it is music and these folks below are the best of ‘em.
(P.S. Stay tuned next week for my 10 underrated picks)
Fiddlehead-Between The Richness
I’m once again believing in magic again. Did you know that the first Fiddlehead show in two years just so happened to be rescheduled last minute to a venue a mile from my house? Freaky shit man. (It fucking ruled). The album ultimately falls into the “came out of nowhere” category for me. It was sort of all over twitter. It was in my email inbox because they’re on Run For Cover records, but the first time I listened to it was really because Stereogum said it was the best album of the year so far in June.
I didn’t go in thinking it would change my life on impact but it’s an album that hits immediately upon pressing play. This already feels crafted into the stone of emotional hardcore. The message, the melodies, the way the songs and feelings all just spill into one another for the whole 25 minutes, it’s a rush of emotion. It also just so happens to be the album I needed in 2021. The dread of the worse losses of the pandemic, the loss of an old mentor, a favorite musician, a grandfather; Fiddlehead doesn’t fear Grief, it’s their mission statement, a reminder to do everything to keep fighting cause that’s what those who’ve left would’ve wanted. The visceral physicality of the live show is imbedded into this music, and no where is the fight to live more present and urgent than the fuckin’ pit.
illuminati hotties-Let Me Do One More
illuminati hotties very much did not come out of nowhere. Sarah Tudzin has made a year-end list for this newsletter for a second year in a row. Whereas last year’s mixtape was a quick sprint, Let Me Do One More dawns the proper apparel for full album mode. The pacing slows down for swaths of this album. Amongst the freak-outs and zany vocal stylings, there’s moments of quiet reflection and contemplation. She’s critiquing how dumb “industry” is and how everything becomes product, yet, within the framework of how things are sold, she’s finding ways to put love and friendship up there as the most valuable thing. Her talent is in the crevices of these songs, the little details that make them human, the way the kick drum hits your chest on “Pool Hopping,” the specific detail about the way an old lover takes their shirt off, the fact that Modelo is the beer of choice to share with friends. Of course she spends all her off days producing for others, few are so in tuned to how exactly something should land and even fewer know exactly how to make it happen.
Rachika Nayar-Our Hands Against the Dusk
It’s not necessarily rare that someone’s debut is this good, but it’s rare that someone’s debut is this developed—Rachika Nayar has seemingly already developed an entire auditory language to herself. There’s the obvious influences, the midwestern emo lean to the guitar textures, the ambient spaciousness, the neo-classical melodic work, but the particulars of the mixture leave us in a newfound world. It’s simply transcendent.
Wild Pink-A Billion Little Lights
I can’t lie, A Billion Little Lights was almost a let down for me at first (heavy almost). I loved the last Wild Pink album so much and this one we can admit has a little bit less fire power. “The Séance on St Augustine Street” is like…epic, this one isn’t epic. This is the warm, zen album of the year, it’s all big guitar strumming, wispy slide guitar lines, it feels like a hug, but there’s a lot of subtleties to it. At first, the funny lyric stuck with me “you’re a fucking baby but your pain is valid too,” now I’m always latching onto “writing in the afternoon, temple of doom on mute.” It’s such a perfectly human scene. The music is all big sky and wide open spaces and we’re placed in this intimate moment where a man is finding his way through his thoughts doing the most mundane thing. Whenever things got crazy and I just needed to lie down and bed for awhile, this one was my go to. This one you might need to grab on vinyl.
Japanese Breakfast-Jubilee
Aside from Charli XCX’s wifi cutting out at the youtube premier for “New Shapes” and Black Midi’s hilarious faux-press conference at the premier for Cavalcade, the best live internet moment in music this year was Michelle Zauner casually asking Michael Imperioli what he likes about Shoegaze. Zauner is in the pantheon of famous indie people now, but she’s not succumbing to it. She’s doing this with some of the most earnest and thoughtful material one can find.
When I first heard the lyric “When the world divides into two people/those who have felt pain and those who’ve yet to,” I knew it was about her mother’s death. It’s not just because this is woven into much of her work (and these exact words come up in her book about it), it’s because there’s such clarity to it. You hear a description of that feeling and you think of some moment where grief really sets in. You think of the kids at school unaware of your loss or the niceties of you hear at the office in adulthood and you think of that deep sadness you carried through those spaces. It takes an incredible voice to connect with a listener like that and perfectly define something they’ve felt, Zauner is one in a million.
Makaya McCraven-Deciphering the Message
Ok this one did JUST come out but McCraven is a voice I’ve been tuned into for a couple of years now and I think this is one of the greatest realizations of his vision. This is the kind of album that succeeds on every level for basically any listener. Now, that can be a dangerous sentiment, in the end a lot of things for everyone end up for no one, but it’s not exactly down the middle or lifeless. It’s more that it walks the tightrope between nostalgia and futurism; high and low. The compositions can be challenging or hypnotic; the drums are simple yet, McCraven is able to make them sing. There’s set pieces here, a vintage 50’s hard-bop tune, the modal moods of the label’s 60’s releases, a backbeat soul joint, but flashed through McCraven’s lens, they all feel like today. The framing is illuminating, an MC tells us that tonight’s performance at the jazz club will be released as an album so, we can tell people out in the world, that’s my applause on that record. McCraven is a fan who wants to leave his own mark, a common sentiment in the long tradition of jazz, but not all come out with something that’s truly theirs—McCraven has continuously proven he can.
Black Midi-Cavalcade
For the uninitiated, hearing that this album is more tame than the their old stuff may cause concern. Midi still pack chaos, but they’re tuned into a more diverse vision of music than radical guitar shredding. Cavalcade is symphonic in vision and attains a sense of borderline grandeur. I’m thinking this buzz band will have a lot say for many years.
Low-HEY WHAT
Low is the other band on this list that’s trying to actively change music. Formally, texturally, sonically, HEY WHAT continues the work of its predecessor with anonymous shards of distortion bending the lines between percussion and melody beneath their trademark twin vocals. This ones a little bit more immediately satisfying. It’s a bit warmer, more active, there’s hooks to latch onto. I think if there’s anything bad about Double Negative is it strikes much of the same mood throughout. HEY WHAT enters with industrial dungeons and then “Disappearing” presents a glorious clearing; there’s meditative runs of near silence on “Hey” then “Days Like These” rip us right into a hard-edged chorus. It’s one thing to attempt to create a new language for your art, its another to give it the many of nuances that life and music have to offer—it seems like Low’s world will grow even more vast than we imagined.
Turnstile-GLOW ON
“Personal Brand” is not a phrase I’m a fan of but yeah; anyone who’s ever known me and hears any part of this would probably be like “I just know Donovan loves this.” It’s tough sometimes where stuff you know you’re supposed to like comes out. No one wants to feel like a sucker and between the vague allusions to Weezer that underpin some of the guitar riffs and the general drive to have a blast while getting mad, I think a part of me initially was just like “did someone make this in a lab for my brain?”
Anyways, none of that ended up mattering in the end—Turnstile just fucking rules. The CD has been living in my car since I bought it and along with Fiddlehead it’s my main comfort listen. This thing is fun and irreverent; the energy never takes a backseat as momentum constantly pushes onward. And of course heart carries through it all. Just like Fiddlehead, these guys are fighting for those who didn’t make it, who lived through a fight they’ll never know.
Olivia Rodrigo-SOUR
I feel like there’s not much that I can really add to any discussion of this album considering, but I do remember exactly where I was when I first heard “Driver’s License.” I was running across a parking lot to try and make the 1 bus at Kennedy Plaza at 4:10 instead of 4:30 and I turned on the song that everyone was talking about and then I just wanted to keep hearing it (and then she released two better songs somehow). I still want to hear it.
-Donovan Burtan