Best Albums of 2021

Oh 2021.  A year so full of hope: the end of Trump, hopefully the end of the pandemic, life back to normal.  And.....nope.  Trump did eventually leave office but not after instigating an insurrection and laying the foundation for levels of division the US hasn't seen since 1860.  The vaccines came in and with them a bunch of people who haven't taken a science class since junior year of high school all of a sudden became immunology experts and decided that these life-saving, pandemic-ending vaccines were dangerous.  So the virus lingered and now we exit 2021 with an even more infectious (but hopefully less severe) variant.  The lesson of 2021, if we haven't gotten it by now, is that we should expect to be disappointed by people.

But 2021 ended up being a really interesting musical year.  A lot of the albums that were delayed in 2020 came out this year, bands were able to physically get back into studios, but a lot of the established polished acts didn't get their act together until later in the year.  So there are A LOT of albums slated for early 2022 that left the door open for under-the-radar bands in 2021.  The best of 2022 list is already filling up with albums coming from David Bowie (posthumous), Spiritualized (!), Mitski, and hopefully, finally, The Wrens (more on them later).  It was also a year that saw a number of bands come out of hibernation after decades away:  Spiritualized, Crowded House, Iron Maiden, Radiohead re-released Kid A and Amnesiac as a double album.  ABBA, after more than 30 years, decided for some reason to get back together and release an indescribably atrocious album.  You would've thought that they would have had better material after all that time. 

And that's essentially how my 2021 list came together.  Some recent favorites that released albums this year that were delayed last year, some old favorites that I have been waiting for FOR FOREVER, and some new blood that really provided an outlet to silently scream at all the idiots that think "Let's Go Brandon" is clever.

Best Single That Wasn't on Any Album

Sharon van Etten & Angel Olsen - Like I Used To

God, I wish there was an album connected to this song.  Unique voices, amazing songwriters, just a great pairing.  It's probably my #1 song of the year.

10. Sparks - Annette

This is really much more of a career appreciation award for Sparks and an acknowledgement that I completely missed their incredible 2015 album with Franz Ferdinand and that the fact that they were the subject of the best music documentary this year (yes, that includes The Beatles: Get Back).  It's really, really hard to describe Sparks in any kind of meaningful way.  They're definitely weird and they've clearly never been motivated by mass market appeal.  The one thing that they have always wanted to do was write a screenplay, particularly one inspired by French New Wave cinema.  They finally got that chance with Annette, written by Sparks and directed by Leos Carax.  A word of warning for anyone who thinks of watching the movie:  It's weird.  Like really, really, really weird.  Adam Driver is a malevolent, self-loathing comedian who marries and ultimately kills his opera soprano wife (Marion Cotillard).  But his wife come backs to haunt Adam Driver by imbuing her daughter with her operatic voice from beyond the grave.  Oh yeah, and the daughter is just a very obvious doll for 95% of the movie.  So, like Sparks, it is gloriously incomprehensible and just....so....strange.  But the music does have a lot of moments from the opening reprise to the love song between the conductor and Marion Cotillard (sung by Howard from the Big Bang Theory).  And it ends with a real gut punch of an ending and a heartbreaking piece of music.  It's not the album I would recommend if you're new to Sparks, but well worth it if you know them.

9. Agnes - Magic Still Exists

You know that ABBA album that was an indescribable piece of dogshit?  Well, this is the Swedish disco pop album that ABBA wishes it could put out.  Agnes didn't have quite the hiatus that ABBA did.  This is her first album in 10 years and it's a banger.  I had a run of like 12 years where some album out of Sweden always made they list.  It's like they instinctually know how to either play hockey or write pop songs.  Magic Still Exists channels the best of Robyn into a distinctively modern take on dance pop.  24 Hours is a banger, but the real rollicking hit here is Here Comes the Night.

8. Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders - Promises

I've got these lists recorded going back to 2006 and one of the noticeable trends is how much more jazz shows up on these lists as compared to hip hop.  A lot of that is that I'm just getting to be an old man.  But not only is jazz more and more inventive these days whereas hip hop is boring, corporate, produced, and focus group tested but jazz is also more and more vocal about cultural issues while hip hop is all but sold out to whatever sells the most records.  You've got Vijay Iyer's album built around George Floyd and Makaya McCraven re-thinking Blue Note standards with a hip hop influence.  Standing out above all of them, though, is this album that brings jazz legend Pharoah Sanders back after a decade plus and pairs him with electronic producer, Floating Points, and the London Symphony Orchestra into a single piece of music broken up into movements. You get pieces of Sanders' intricate sax, futuristic notes from Floating Points, and the power of the orchestra but the album is at its best when all three come together.

7. The Coral - Coral Island

I fell hard for the Coral and their throwback Merseyside sound back in 2001 with their debut album and the song Dreaming of You.  Every time I say that you should never, ever miss the opener at a concert, I reference a Coral concert that I went to at the pocket-sized 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis where the opener was an unknown band of Southern brothers that only had like 8 songs, played to the 25 people that were there, and absolutely blew the doors off the place.  That band was called Kings of Leon.  The poor Coral had to come on after that and everyone was like "Bring back the other guys".  But they faded into oblivion for me after that and I didn't realize they were still pumping out records until Coral Island came across my radar.  It's a sprawling double album that is built around the theme of a seaside resort.  It honestly could use a little editing as there are too many ideas here and some of it should have been cut.  But the good stuff is really good and has that retro Merseybeat sound that I love.  

6. The Armed - Ultrapop

This is the album to put on when some mouth breather asks you what data exists to show the efficacy of the Covid vaccines.  When someone says something so inane that makes you want to scream, well there is one member of the Armed that seems to be there just to scream.  The Armed is a punk collective out of Detroit that ticks all the punk boxes.  There's the super buff shirtless nerd (the Henry Rollins), the punk rock girl that's just there to scream (the Diamanda Galas), the guys wearing Stooges tank tops (the...uh...Stooges).  This album is a pure release.  Put it on in the car, turn it up, and let it out.

5. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever

There's just no way to make a transition from the Armed to Billie Eilish so I'm not even going to try.  I have been, at times, maligned for ignoring "popular" music on this list.  The legions of Swifties have taken me to task for ignoring her and her scarf.  My wife has very vocally advocated for Olivia Rodrigo to make this list.  In my defense, I've had plenty of "popular" albums on the list and truly good pop music does take a lot of talent and effort to pull off (unless you're Swedish and just born with it).  But it took Billie Eilish to make me realize that I like my teenage break up songs with a little bit of an edge and a lot more emo.  I usually listen to the SNL music artists for 15 seconds and then fast forward through the rest of it, but Billie Eilish lit...it...up.  That performance got me to actually listen to the album and it's shockingly good.  Maybe those trillion Spotify listens were onto something.  Her and her brother are freakish musical talents and I love that they won't be pigeon-holed into any particular style.  I mean, there's a bossa nova song on the album.  Bossa nova!

4. Polo G - Hall of Fame

So in that write-up of the Pharoah Sanders album at #8, while it is true that jazz albums show up on this list more and more, often coming at the expense of hip hop albums, it's still the case that great hip hop albums still reliably show up in the top 5 (much more often than jazz albums).  Immaculate rap is still such a singular art form particularly when it tackles social issues.  And it seems like there's Kendrick, sometimes Kanye, and then a whole mess of everyone else.  But this Polo G album is up there.  The central theme is everyone he's grown up with who's died far too young pulled together with melodies that often verge on indie rock.  A lot of excellent tracks here clocking in right around 3 minutes each including No Return and Rapstar, but Black Hearted is the best of the lot.

3. IDLES - Crawler

IDLES topped this list a few years back with Joy as an Act of Resistance.  And I am all about everything these guys are for.  IDLES is punk rock with a modern message: respect and love for immigrants and minorities, respect and love for yourself, and fuck you if you have a problem with any of that.  I saw IDLES play at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco right before the pandemic and it was such a good show that I actually got into the pit for the first time in 20+ years.  I promptly hurt my ankle and had to leave the pit, but the point is that I even got there in the first place.  They had a couple of middling efforts after Joy as an Act of Resistance but Crawler is right back up there save for 1 or 2 clunkers.  The highlight piece is Beachland Ballroom, a song about staying humble as you achieve success.  The song uses the metaphor of a band moving from tiny venues to big venues and they score bonus points for using my much beloved Cleveland venue, the Beachland Ballroom, as their muse.  Also, nothing beats hearing Joe Talbot scream "DAMAGE".

2. Low - HEY WHAT

Oh my.  Such. Beautiful. Noise.  Mark Ronson had a show on Apple TV this year called Watch the Sound where each episode focused on a particular technical innovation in modern music.  In the episode on distortion, they talked about how distortion is introduced to make the listener feel uncomfortable.  It's what often gives rock music its edge.  And I do love my distortion particularly in the hands of noise masters like My Bloody Valentine.  But, on this album, Low elevates distortion almost to a component of the melody.  I don't know when I've ever heard noise used quite like this.  Everything on the album is worth listening to.  Check out White Horses, Hey, and especially More.

1. Aeon Station - Observatory

And we're finally back to the Wrens who I mentioned might be finally coming out with their follow up album next year.  If you're not an obsessive fan like me, you might not remember that the Wrens put out what might be the best album of the last 20 years back in 2003.  That album, Meadowlands, was my number one album on this list back when I just finished grad school.  The only copy of that album that I can find on vinyl is listed at $700.  Every song on it is epic including this and this and this and this.  

Now I can hear asking, "Wait a second.  All this is about the Wrens, but the album pictured above is from a band called Aeon Station.  WTF?"  So, the Wrens started talking about a follow up to Meadowlands around 2006.  And talk continued and continued and continued and the album never materialized.  I think I started writing about my anticipation for "the new Wrens album" on this list back in 2013.  The issue was that one half of the Wrens songwriting duo is a maniacal perfectionist who would relentlessly tinker with the songs and the other half is a normal dude who has a pretty good job working in medical devices (which, by the way, gives medical devices the Wrens and Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads making this far and away the coolest of all engineering occupations).  So this album wallowed in creative purgatory.  Finally, the non-maniacal half of the Wrens songwriting duo said enough, took the songs that he had written, and released them under the name Aeon Station.  The whole saga is meticulously laid out in this New York Times piece.

So we finally sort of have the Wrens follow up to Meadowlands and it's 37 minutes of indie rock perfection.  Not a mediocre song anywhere.  If the actual Wrens finally release their album next year, I imagine it'll be in this same spot.