happy new year’s eve. we’ve finally reached the end of the dreadful year known as 2021. 2022 will not be any better, but whatever. all years, to date, have been bad. to exist is to suffer. anyway, what if i talked about music for a little bit on here? would that be allowed? here are my top 50 musical albums of 2021:
50. Ben Monder, Tony Malaby, and Tom Rainey – Live at the 55 Bar (jazz)
49. The Weather Station – Ignorance (folk rock)
48. TEKE::TEKE – Shirushi (psychedelic rock)
47. Aaron Dilloway & Lucretia Dalt – Lucy & Aaron (experimental electronic)
46. Snail Mail – Valentine (rock)
45. Yu Su – Yellow River Blue (electronic)
44. L’Rain – Fatigue (experimental R&B)
43. The Body & Big Brave – Leaving None but Small Birds (rock)
42. Richard Dawson & Circle – Henki (folk rock)
41. The Go! Team – Get Up Sequences Part One (pop)
40. Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg (post-punk)
39. Lucy Dacus – Home Video (rock)
38. illuminati hotties – Let Me Do One More (rock)
37. Tyler, the Creator – Call Me If You Get Lost (hip hop)
36. Claire Rousay & More Eaze – An Afternoon Whine (ambient)
35. Claire Rousay – a softer focus (ambient)
34. The Antlers – Green to Gold (rock)
33. Tunic – Exhaling (noise rock)
32. Tunic – Quitter (noise rock)
31. Mdou Moctar – Afrique Victime (blues rock)
30. Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee (pop)
29. Hildegard – Hildegard (electronic)
28. Viagra Boys – Welfare Jazz (post-punk)
27. The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings (psychedelic rock)
26. Russell Louder – Humor (electronic)
25. Julien Baker – Little Oblivions (rock)
24. Indigo De Souza – Any Shape You Take (rock)
23. The War on Drugs – I Don’t Live Here Anymore (rock)
22. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Theory of Ice (folk rock)
21. BadBadNotGood – Talk Memory (jazz)
20. Tobacco – Fucked Up Friends 3 (electronic)
19. Shame – Drunk Tank Pink (post-punk)
18. Squid – Bright Green Field (post-punk)
17. Faye Webster – I Know I’m Funny haha (folk rock)
16. Black Country, New Road – For the first time (post-punk)
15. Wild Up – Julius Eastman, Vol. 1: Femenine (classical)
14. Backxwash – I Lie Here Buried with My Rings and My Dresses (industrial hip hop)
13. Bachelor – Doomin’ Sun (rock)
12. R.A.P. Ferreira – the Light Emitting Diamond Cutter Scriptures (hip hop)
11. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Haram (hip hop)
10. Chad VanGaalen – World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener (psychedelic rock)
Calgary’s genre-bending musical wizard Chad VanGaalen has done it again, folks. He’s created another excellent album of psychedelic melodies and fantastical, tongue-in-cheek lyrics about haunted keychains, “beings of dreams and starlight,” and adventurers who misplace their friends’ valuable samurai swords. Jaunty-yet-eerie rockers like “Starlight” and “Nightwaves” are joined by atmospheric instrumentals like “Earth from a Distance” and “Plant Music.” Surprisingly, the contrasting styles don’t feel at odds with each other; they reinforce the album’s sense of whimsy. It’s a lot of fun!
9. black midi – Cavalcade (experimental rock)
And speaking of contrasting styles, there’s this album. It opens with “John L,” an abrasive, noisy track featuring dissonant electric guitar, aggressive violin stabs, and fortissimo piano bashing. The song ends abruptly and transitions right into the soft orchestral ballad “Marlene Dietrich.” Cavalcade continues like this, alternating slow and fast tempos, across various genre stylings running the gamut from free jazz to progressive rock to modern classical. If that description makes the album sound messy and incoherent, that’s because it is, but it’s also what makes it compelling. It’s the musical equivalent of whiplash, except good.
8. Spirit of the Beehive – ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH (psychedelic rock)
ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH starts with a bang – a waterfall of crashing bass drums and cymbals, guitar feedback, and indeterminate siren-like noises greet the listener on the album opener “ENTERTAINMENT.” This fades out and is replaced by a skittering synth line and drum machine. But the song switches it up again by shifting to an acoustic guitar-driven, string-backed melody and lyrics about a narrator driving down a busy highway while reflecting on their life choices. The album is full of sudden twists and turns like this. Bird calls, old advertisements, and radio static can be heard in the background, audible enough just to catch the listener’s notice before being reeled back in by ominous synthesizers and propulsive percussion. The result is an album that feels scattershot and disjointed, but in a very satisfying, dream-like way.
7. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra – Promises (jazz / classical / ambient)
I can’t seem to find the tweet, but I saw someone on Twitter jokingly liken this album to the music in the underwater levels of a Donkey Kong platformer. I agree. That’s what makes it great. A seven-note string motif plays repeatedly across Promises’ nine movements. Jazz legend Pharoah Sanders, whom I was delighted to find out is still releasing new music at the age of 81, joins in partway through with smooth saxophone improvisation. His characteristic overblowing is largely absent from the composition, which makes its sudden reappearance in Movement 7 all the more exhilarating. Absolutely sublime.
6. Lingua Ignota – Sinner Get Ready (experimental folk)
Sinner Get Ready is a haunting depiction of rural Pennsylvanian religious fervour. Drawing abundantly from eighteenth-century Amish and Mennonite texts, Kristin Hayter portrays God as vengeful and full of violent fury. He demands eternal devotion from His flock, offering relief from torment only to those who are sufficiently deferential to His every word. “O He will knock the breath from you / He will ram your eyes with glass / He will take your legs and your will to live / If you do not confess now,” as she sings on “Repent Now Confess Now.” The atmosphere of dread is perfectly sustained by sparse piano arrangements, discordant banjo twangs, and dark cello and organ drones. Put simply, this is a bone-chilling auditory experience. It’s enough to make me thankful for being an atheist. Although I fear the void that awaits me upon my death, it’s so much less terrifying than a belief in the raging fires of Hell.
5. Big Brave – Vital (drone metal)
A heavy darkness permeates this record. Electric guitars whimper and moan in proverbial anguish. Robin Wattie’s wails reverberate through the air, as if from the other side of a canyon. Comprising only five songs across nearly 40 minutes, Vital can at times feel overwhelming and uncomfortable. That discomfort reflects the difficulty of finding a sense of belonging in a society hostile to the singer’s existence. As the lyrics to the lead single “Half Breed” quote from the author Alexander Chee, “Historically, [mixed-race people] are allowed neither the privileges of the ruling class, nor the community of the ruled. … We survive only if we are valued, and we are valued only for strength or beauty, sometimes for intelligence or cunning.” A dire sentiment at the core of a powerful drone metal album.
4. Low – HEY WHAT (experimental rock)
If I hadn’t looked it up on Wikipedia, I couldn’t have told you that the only instruments on HEY WHAT are electric guitar, percussion, and vocals. The production is so dense that it can cause the listener (or perhaps just me, a doofus) to mistakenly assume the presence of synthesizers or strings. The album’s cover art, appropriately, is an abstract field of thin black and white lines, resembling television static or a cracked electronic screen. In Low’s music, as with a piece of malfunctioning machinery, it can be difficult to process information, to piece together just what it is I’m hearing or seeing. Where do Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk’s harmonies end, and the guitars begin? In contrast to the cascading waves of distortion, the lyricism is relatively straightforward. The final two minutes of “All Night,” for example, contain solely the phrase “all night,” repeated twelve times, the words slowly warping and being consumed by a crescendoing fuzz. There’s a certain unease at the core of this record. Songs rarely end with much closure; rather, they either transition directly into the next song without a clear demarcation between the two or simply fade out. This yawning absence is reflected in the lyrics to “Days Like These”: “Always looking for that one sure thing / Oh, you wanted so desperately / No, you’re never gonna feel complete / No, you’re never gonna be released.” You can spend your whole life searching for meaning, for something to justify your seemingly futile daily drudgery – but what happens if you never find anything? Low offers no answers. Go figure.
3. R.A.P. Ferreira & Scallops Hotel – bob’s son (hip hop)
Written out, the lyrics of R.A.P. Ferreira’s ode to beat poet Bob Kaufman often don’t make sense to me. “Flying high off the strength of kickin’ a old habit / Miasma fold like fabric / The old Ciabatta roll out the hat trick / Rogue be a Rhodes scholar boom-baptist / Quantum leapin’ through timelines,” he raps on “Skrenth.” What does that mean? Beats me, but he sounds good saying it. The exact meaning of the words is secondary to the phonetic construction of them. Ferreira’s flow is smooth and precise. His rhymes are accompanied by infectious, jazzy piano and bass loops, and occasional snippets of speeches and interviews from poets and musicians. Gregory Corso interrupts the aforementioned “Skrenth” to say, “If you wanna be a poet, you can’t be. You gotta know you are a poet and then you’ve got no fucking choice.” The call to create art is a powerful one in our strange, unjust world. While Ferreira admits that “the answer isn’t rapping,” art is still an essential feature of the human experience. Now let’s eat some oatmeal cookies and listen to another song.
2. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END (post-rock)
I find it challenging to put into words what Godspeed You! Black Emperor means to me. There are no lyrics to analyze and every album of theirs from 1997’s F# A# ∞ to present can be described as “apocalyptic guitar drone music.” G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END is more of the same, and that’s exactly what I want from them.
1. Cassandra Jenkins – An Overview on Phenomenal Nature (folk pop)
An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, easily my favourite record of 2021, is a serene and poignant tribute to the fleeting human connections we make as we go about our lives. Jenkins weaves together a patchwork narrative of brief conversations held with strangers, of the loss of a friend to suicide, of an acquaintance’s optimistic Instagram post into a gorgeous quilt of jazz-inflected pop. Saxophones, flutes, and strings swirl peacefully in the background of several tracks, perfectly complementing Jenkins’ soft vocal delivery and producer Josh Kaufman’s dreamy synthesizers. Although life contains many joys, there is also an existential sorrow at the heart of this album: things cannot last indefinitely. “Empty space is my escape / It runs through me like a river / While time spits in my face / Turns us like stones into drifters,” Jenkins sings in “Crosshairs.” We are all carried along helplessly by the river of time. Death is inevitable, so why not try to find some solace where we can? This album provides some of that solace for me.
ruminations of a sad oaf. 