radio414 903 Posted December 28, 2021 (edited) hi how are you I started compiling a list back in like September when I realized two things: I'd listened to a lot of music from this year, and a lot of it had been good. In fact, even before I get into the top ten list, here are a bunch of other albums from this year I think you could also do with checking out just because. They're only ordered alphabetically by artist; I saved the real effort for the list itself: Spoiler Altin Gun - Yol Amyl and the Sniffers - Comfort To Me BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory Goat Girl - On All Fours Gaspard Augé - Escapades Soccer96 - Dopamine Spellling - The Turning Wheel With those out of the way, if I haven't mentioned something on this list, if I didn't include your favorite album, it's probably not that I didn't like it and think your taste is bad, it's just that there was way too much music that came out this year for me to have feasibly heard all of it (just like every year). In fact, if you include links in the comments, I'll probably even check them out. I mean, that's what my (admittedly poorly maintained, sorry) rates thread is for, but still, leave your list (or any good albums of 2021 it doesn't have to be ten i know how big of an undertaking this was you don't have to follow my footsteps) in the comments if you have one -- it will be just as valid as mine. Spoiler 10. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Carnage Both Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have been in the game for a while, known mostly for their work in the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but have stepped away from that to deliver Carnage, an album very much inspired by the pandemic and associated conflicts. It isn't always direct in its reference, of course, often relying on a general sense of disquiet, but when they really need to, the lyrics are as direct as they can be ("A protestor kneels on the neck of a statue. The statue says, 'I can't breathe.' The protestor says, 'Now you know how it feels,' and kicks it into the sea" from White Elephant). What elevates this album above all the other pandemic albums, though, is there's still a sense of hope at the other end. It's similar to what I wrote about in my Planetes retrospective: the world is broken, but we can keep working to make it better -- there's no reason to give up. In fact, in that way, Carnage is even more optimistic than that. Carnage says that a better future must happen, that it is inevitable on our current path, and honestly, I kind of like that thought. 9. black midi - Cavalcade If you don’t like this album, that’s fine -- black midi is an eclectic bunch of youngsters who are still figuring out their sound -- but I would recommend you then go check out the albums Bright Green Field by Squid and For the first time by Black Country, New Road, as these are all albums that are lumped together by a common nationality (they’re all English with a capital E) and “weirdness” (math rock-y, experimental nonsense, like midi’s Geordie Greep has a distinctive singing voice and Squid’s Ollie Judge is not much different), but they’re different enough that this is the only album making it onto my list. I like Squid a lot, for example, but I have to take Bright Green Field in small doses, and I bounced off of For the first time completely on my initial listens -- though later listens have improved my opinion, that initial impression is still there -- so I’m still not sure what to make of it even if I still recommend it here. If you don’t like any of them, hey, that’s okay, thank you for trying. The riotous energy from black midi’s first album, Schlagenheim is toned down significantly, but it’s still present. If I were comparing the two, I would say they’re two different sorts of trips, the bad, stressful kind that you want to experience again afterwards just for the novelty of it, and a smoother, slightly more cohesive (if anything black midi does can be called cohesive) trip that keeps threatening to drift off into unconsciousness subliminals but swerves back into the land of the living every time. Morgan Simpson continues to be an actual god at drumming, for the record. If you take anything away from this bit, take away that. 8. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - LW Maybe this is cheating, given that the accompanying album, KG came out last year and they're definitely two parts of the same whole. That being said, even if LW was a standalone album, it would still probably make this list. King Gizzard has always had an eclectic psych rock sort of sound, with each album varied in their specifics, from the metal Nonagon Infinity and Infest the Rat's Nest to their incredibly mellow Butterfly 3000 (also from this year!) and Fishing for Fishies, but this is my favorite version of them, a long, flowing sound that blends together well and sounds upbeat while still allowing the lyrics to carry a bit of edge. Make no mistake, they aren't subtle, but they also don't really have to be. 7. Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert Like many rap albums held in high regard, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert feels like an incredibly personal album to Simz. Its core exploration is right there in the title, the conflict between being a performer whose star power is only growing with a naturally reserved personality, though throughout the album this expands into several neighboring topics, from the sociopolitical climate of Britain to specific relationships in Simbi's life. Each song manages to be both a stand-out in its own right, and, with the help of a few interludes, still part of the cohesive whole. In addition to the above-linked Introvert that leads off the album other songs to listen to are Woman, Point and Kill, and the closing track, Miss Understood, which should help illustrate the point, and if you want more outside of her other albums, her collaboration with Gorillaz, Garage Palace (MAJOR flashing lights warning for that video, though), is also a banger. Basically, what I'm saying is that that rising stardom I mentioned isn't an accident; Little Simz continues to be an artist to watch. 6. Big Brave - Vital Honestly, this might be the most controversial spot on this list. At least the other more out-there sounds got decent critical attention elsewhere, while the biggest mention I could find for this one is a mention in The Quietus almost a full two months after the album came out. They were positive about it, mind you, but still, a smaller band without a lot of momentum, what kept this album in my mind? Big Brave has a very specific sound that I am always on the lookout for, a dark, loud, and brooding sound that nevertheless manages to distance itself from the screaming and metal that those adjectives might also describe. That doesn't mean it's entirely screamless -- Bonnacons of Doom, for example, another band in this niche, is almost gleeful in its inclusion of wailing and gnashing of teeth -- but here they're incomprehensible because there was nothing to comprehend at all but the existence of the vocals themselves. The abyss gazed back and I kind of liked what I saw. 5. Low - HEY WHAT Low is a pretty good example of the maxim, "As soon as an imperfection can be reliably smoothed away, their continued inclusion becomes of artistic note." This is a band that really wants to blow out a speaker, but in a fancy, controlled way. HEY WHAT is an album that requires very fine-tuned production to that specific purpose, to find the actual limits of listenability and going right up to that edge. Importantly, though, Low never crosses the threshold into experimental noise. Despite the presentation, it's still a conventional album, just one that demonstrates Low knows exactly what they were doing and are masters of their craft. Each song has this sound that I've outlined, yet none of them sound the same, each perfectly distinguishable from each other like picking out cartoon characters by their silhouette. 4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_D’S PEE AT STATE'S END 3. Bruit ≤ - The Machine is Burning and now everyone knows it could happen again These albums kind of invite comparison to each other, having been released on the same day, and with the latter band having been directly influenced by the former (though it's hard to find a post-rock who isn't influenced by GY!BE in some way), which is why I've grouped them together here. And yes, they're both fantastic. This is arguably the best Godspeed has been post-reunion (that's post-Yanqui U.X.O. for you newcomers, also hello to all newcomers this band rules), the band here continuing their more obvious anarchist political leanings first made clear in their release statement for Luciferian Towers (that is, they were always like this, they just made overt then), though, unlike that album, they've made a return to incorporating field recordings into their music-making. In addition to the Job’s Lament sequence that includes the following First of the Last Glaciers being a classic post-rock introduction, the final song, OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.) is absolutely heartbreaking. I'm hopefully seeing them in May, and I can't wait to see all this performed live. And yet, I ranked Bruit, the young upstarts, higher. If I'm honest with myself, it's really not close. I'm not talking about composition or album cohesiveness or anything like that -- there's not one thing that Bruit does better -- but if you asked me which album I'd like to listen to at any given moment, I'm almost certain to pick The Machine is Burning…. Industry is a very strong lead song, one stated by the band to be an attack on modern pop, though the nature of the album leads me towards a more systemic interpretation, and it leads perfectly into Renaissance, a lighter song fitting for such a name. Amazing Old Tree contains the only vocals in the whole album, detailing the fall from grace in the story Bruit has laid out through the medium of agricultural preservation, and The Machine Is Burning will, if you're like me, just floor you. My only wish is that it ended when its video does -- the album version goes a few minutes more -- but that's the most minor of quibbles. It's great and more people need to hear about it. 2. Lingua Ignota - SINNER GET READY Is it weird to say that this isn't even my favorite Lingua Ignota album? Like, no, I'm not kidding with either that statement or my placement of this album, and yet, it still feels like some amount of hyperbole. Lingua Ignota is just one of the best and most consistent artists out there, especially in her chosen genre of industrial/metal/noise/whatever you would call her. She even released an EP called AGNUS DEI this year, and it's also fantastic. In interviews, Kristin has talked about how, in the production process, she wanted to break a lot of rules (or at least traditions) she had set for herself in her three albums before this, the most prominent being her voice, which doesn't get as scream-y as it ever has, and certainly doesn't employ any effects in production (I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES is the exception that proves the rule here). It does a lot of work; the separation between past albums drawing on past abuses and this one about much more recent events is evident. The same goes for instrumentation, which is much more piano-heavy. Another theme in SINNER GET READY is the land in which it was written. Multiple songs take inspiration from rural Pennsylvania, most notably PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA, which is named after the Centralia Mine Fire, a man-made disaster that will continue to burn for at least several centuries, if not milennia. Even besides that, there is a "lapsed Christian" sound, like this is a place where there is only one church and everyone is there, but Kristen can't anymore. All this said, as much as the album is different from its predecessors, it's still very much the same Lingua Ignota. If you're into it, I think you'll be really into it. 1. Fucked Up - Year of the Horse If you've been around me since Act Four came out back in April, it was probably pretty obvious what album I was going to put here. Fucked Up's whole zodiac project has increased in ambition with every new entry (with a particular previous standout being Year of the Hare's choose-your-own music video (that's now been taken down rip)), and this one expands the traditionally EP-length songs to a full double album, with still not a weakness to be seen in any of it. The major theme of Year of the Horse is the fight against fascism, here represented by the supernatural power of King Sour, and each other character is a representation of how one can respond. You can exit the system entirely like Sheriff King, be an active agent like Bloody Lance, be complicit (knowingly or otherwise) like Drunken Kaye and the rest of the posse, or you can fight against it despite almost certainly facing death like Desert Rose. At the center of it all is Blanche, a young girl who has yet to decide. The horse, Perceval, is the conflict point, and whether directly through her flight through the desert or through the actions of those who seek to protect her, introduces a secondary environmental narrative as well. Even without the thematic reads (though, given Fucked Up's hardcore punk background, I'm pretty confident in mine), Year of the Horse is a compelling western story about death and rebirth, going through almost as many genres and guest musicians as there are scenes, yet still remaining wholly, if in a maximalist way, itself. Even if you don't like the album front to back, there is something to love here. I do love all of it, though. I love it all to bits. Alright, well, that's all I got. Like I said, let me know what you think or, even if you don't do that, I hope you find something you enjoy here out of the seventeen albums posted. Here's to 2022 being a good year in general, and, for the purposes of this post, for music especially. -r PS. If any of the links don't work or lead to unavailable videos let me know and I'll try and fix it, though it'll probably be the new year before I can be sure they work for as many people as possible. Edited December 29, 2021 by radio414 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
