LF Favorite albums of 2021
Check out my new fancy website! Now I have a real place to talk about all the awesome music you should have listened to during the year (in addition to all the great releases on our little label here). Without further ado!
GLOW ON by TURNSTILE
This is an unabshedly fun album full of amazing hooks, great guitar riffs, banging drums and a enough surprise moments to keep me interested every listen. From the absolute best rock song of the year in HOLIDAY to the weird 80s Duran Duran inspired NEW HEART DESIGN the album rocks from front to back and makes you move at the same time. There were a ton of really serious albums this year about how terrible everything is, but it was this uplifting and inspiring album which kept me going through some tough periods.
2. The Apple Drop by Liars
Liars are a band I have listened to for many years and stayed interested in, mainly because every album is a different aspect of frontman Angus Andrews strange musical sensibilities. This year’s Apple Drop combines elements of previous releases but also weaves in a level of listenability that has previously not been a concern. The result is the most cohesive and enjoyable album from the band.
3. Spiral by DARKSIDE
My love of Nicholas Jaar is well documented over the last ten years of writing these lists. He is consistently the most inspiring DJ and producer for me, whether he is working with FKA Twigs, making remixes for Florence and the Machine or writing his own experimental sound collages. Darkside is his collaboration with the guitarist David Harrington and together they made my fave album of 2013, Psychic. This follow up is many many years in the making (and we probably have to thank COVID that it happened at all) and it does not disappoint. Songs like Lawmaker and Spiral are classic Darkside while other songs like Liberty Bell and Inside is Out There take a more dancey and relaxed approached to their sound, maybe inspired by Jaar’s more recent work under the moniker Against All Logic. The end result is another trip through Jaar’s mind into the darker corners of electronic music.
4. HEY WHAT by Low
Hey What sounds like the direct sequel to 2018’s Double Negative which is a good thing. That was an incredible album full of out of this world production from BJ Burton and this album follows nicely in its footsteps. BJ is once again the producer, Low once again sings about the inherent dread in every day life events and they create soundscapes somewhere between ambient haze and noise addled anxiety. The final song, The Price You Pay, is an absolute stunner that wraps up the whole album and 2021 in general.
5. Fire by The Bug
Absolute bangers from British producer and musician Kevin Martin. He employs some well known and lesser known names from the UK grime and drill scene and gets them all to turn in amazing performances. This album hooked me more than any rap album I can think of mainly because of the frightening post-apocalyptic vision of the world of the future that it conjures up. Sirens wail, bombs drop, people are screaming and running in the streets and we are all witnessing the beginning of it through Martin’s lens of synths and drums.
6. Vanities by W.H. Lung
The last album that this 5 piece from the UK made was overlooked when they released it a few years back. Their follow up is an even more confident and assured album of dream pop and krautrock that hits all the right feelings. Lead singer Tom Sharkett’s voice is on point and the band backing him up moves through all these songs with a professional demeanor that belies their young age and minimal output so far. The songs Showstopper and Somebody Like have both been on repeat for me since the album released months ago.
7. For the first time by Black Country, New Road
When I first heard this album it sounded like it came from some long lost 80s minimal wave compilation of lost gems. The band truly conjures the post-everything songwriting and production of those old releases in new and interesting ways. They are already releasing a follow up in the same year so they are proving to be a prolific voice in the UK post-punk scene.
8. G_d’s Pee AT STATES END! by GY!BE
Way back in 2001 when I was first introduced to Lift Yer Skinny Fists by Godspeed You! Black Emperor it was one of the most life changing albums of my entire life. I had never heard of post-rock, the genre that I mainly write in now, and had never seen something as ambitious and epic in scope as what this band had done on that album. As the progenitors of the genre they have now been copied many times by many bands all looking for that same mojo. I actually include the band themselves in that group because since that album GYBE has sounded like a band trying to recapture the magic of that time, but never quite succeeding, however this year’s album feels like they finally got it back. The songs are more composed than previous releases and the band feels cohesive again. The inclusion of radio messages and found sounds only helps add to the same feeling I got all those years ago.
9. Luminol by Midwife
This is a pretty strange choice for me, since it doesn’t fit in nicely with what I am usually drawn to, but when this album released I was working hard on a TBA album and it was the perfect counterpoint to what I was writing. Quiet and minimal in all the best ways, with moments of energy that release all that pent up energy is what this one woman band focuses on. Songs like God is a Cop take their time to evolve and develop, anchored by the telephone like vocals of frontwoman Madeline Johnston. This was another album made during quarantine and one of the only ones that manages to encapsulate that terrible feeling from early 2020.
10. Agor by Koreless
A late addition to my list this year, but when I saw it listed on Bleep’s list at #1 I had to give it a listen and I am very glad I did. This is as psychedelic as an electronic album can get. Subverting all my expectations and making me rethink what experimental electronic music can do. The precision and production of this record is impeccable and without equal this year. It sounds like someone took about 15 years to put this together and its painstaking in every drum hit, every synth beep and every cut up vocal. Madness.
