Jeremy's 13 Favorite Albums of 2021

Oh, hello friends! What is this? Jeremy's writing this intro and first two entries of this list for the second time because Wix is literally the worst web hosting platform on the internet and Jeremy never learns his lesson with this stupid site and just continues to putting off designing an actual site and paying for it like a regular human being with a job and no kids to pay for? Yeah, this happened. So now I have to rewrite entries 13 & 12, hopefully they get better with a little second touch up here. Anyway, here is my list of my thirteen favorite albums of 2021. Usually this list is a bit longer, but I spent the first half of my year with computer speakers that just did not sound right, no matter how much adjusting and equalizing I did. It was literally making me insane. Thus my musical input lessened a bit during that time. I've since replaced those monsters with smaller red speakers that seem to be doing the trick. Plus I have had a job for the second half of the year, which gave me lots of commute and headphone time for listening to stuff. All in all, we got thirteen albums, check them out.

Also, I once again apologize for how messed up the formatting on this website is. Wix destroyed everything, just a wasteland. It just adds in lines at the ends of some of the sections, it unaligns my headers with the tops of the images, it is freaking insane.

Honorable Mention

13) Darkside - Spiral

This first one is being listed as an Honorable Mention, not because it is not part of the actual list, but more because while I thoroughly enjoy it, I have not given it the amount of time and dedication needed to actually move it up higher. I made the decision this past year to take the big wooden display stand for my CD cases and cover that bad boy up with as many stickers as I can, we got Indianapolis Colts helmets on there, a Yeti sticker, and right on the side facing me right now, I have a sticker of the album artwork for this Darkside album. I actually had that sticker before I even heard the album because the record store I go to had them for free the week the album came out. Spiral is very similar to Darkside's first full length release, Psychic. Lots of empty space, darkness, stark vocals popping out into the mix like tendrils on the top of a campfire, burning into the night and then disappearing. Spiral eschews most of the ambient passages from Psychic, but other than that change, Spiral is a much welcome continuation, one I didn't know if we'd ever get, as Darkside seemed more like a one off collaboration between Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington, but I'm happy to have these smoldering new grooves.

Song: Liberty Bell

The Nice Stuff

12) Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine - A Beginner's Mind

Over the last two or three years, Sufjan Stevens has put out a pretty steady stream of collaborative albums, almost one a year since 2017. And they're mostly pretty midlevel and themed, one was a themed album about the planets, one was an instrumental collab with his step-dad, and another was a soundtrack for a ballet. None of them have ever really gained any traction with me (although there are a couple good bangers the instrumental album, Aporia), so I also did not really pay much attention to this album when it came out. But that was a mistake. Turns out this cheeky little project, where Stevens and De Augustine would watch a movie and then loosely write a song based off of it, would turn out to be the closest thing to college-era Sufjan that we would get in a long time. Some of the standouts are Back to Oz (based off of Return to Oz), which has some great electric guitar in it, The Pillar of Souls, which is as spooky and sparkly sounding as you'd think of a song based off of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, and my favorite song on the album, Lost in the World, based off Australian movie, The Last Wave. It is haunting and beautiful.

Song: Lost in the World

11) Noga Erez - Kids

This past summer Jackie and I went to Lollapalooza to see Brockhampton, which ended up being a smart move because it's going to go down as Brockhampton's last Chicago show. But anyway, once we bought the tickets, I started looking at the other people who were going to be playing that day so we would have people to go see, and Noga Erez ended up being the one long term win from that process. Erez is an Isreali singer, her songs generally have sick ass beats, sometimes she raps during them, the beats are often electronic of some sort, she wears big jackets. Her songs have been a hit in my family playlist.

Song: End of the Road

10) Kero Kero Bonito - Civilisation

The placement of this EP is kind of misleading because, if I'm being honest with myself, I would probably put Civilisation at 5 or 6 on this list, if all were fair and equal. But all is not fair and equal. Civilisation is a six track EP, compiled of two other three track EPs: Civilisation 1 and Civilisation 2. I had C1 on my best of list last year, so I didn't really think it made sense to put this EP any higher, since half the songs have already been rated, and there are only six songs as is. These six songs are really good though. All of them have an environmentally conscious message throughout the lyrics. There's lots of messages about The Mother and Gaia and Well Rested is all about humans surviving apocalypses. The beats on these songs are as bold as ever for KKB, they are definitely sunnier sounding songs than their much darker previous album, Time 'n' Place. This might be my favorite overall KKB project, can't wait to see what is next.

Song: Well Rested

The Real Nice Stuff

09) Badbadnotgood - Talk Memory

Badbadnotgood is an instrumental jazz band. Their last album, IV, was essentially an instrumental hip hop album, all of those songs, while obviously working on their own as comprehensive enjoyable album, could very easily be sampled and rapped over. This is not a ground breaking concept from me, the album BBNG made before IV was a collaborative album with Ghostface Killah called Sour Soul. But after the departure of founding member and keyboardist Matthew Tavares, Talk Memory sees the group actually take a step away from "hip hop through jazz" and spread their creative tendrils into many different genres. The opener, Signal from the Noise, is loaded with fuzzed out electric guitar, but this is followed up by Unfolding (Momentum 73) which is significantly lighter. It's a saxophone showcase for Leland Whitty, with not only a repeated fluttering sax note as the background of the whole song, but his sax then bursts forward and acts as the lead for the track. It's followed by City of Mirrors, a song led by its string section (arranged by guest Arthur Verocai, who handles all the string arrangements on this album) and by Alexander Sowinski's drumming. Beside April starts lowkey with more strings and drum, but halfway through the song, a No Doubt-esque funky guitar solo takes over the proceeding and warps the whole track. I could go through the whole tracklist and do this. If you would have told me that BBNG was taking a step away from making beat tapes (essentially) and move to a more varied, possibly less chaotic version, I don't know if I would have been excited, but they definitely pulled it off, making Talk Memory a different beast than IV, but I think a superior one.

Song: Unfolding (Momentum 73)

08) Liars - The Apple Drop

I wrote this band off, left them for dead, I thought it was all over. Let me explain: Liars put out an album called WIXIW that was my favorite album of 2012. Two years later, they released Mess, an album that most (not me however) like even more than WIXIW. Then 1/2 of the remaining members of the band peaced out and the only remaining member, Angus Andrew, spent the next five odd years making two albums under the Liars name that were mostly nothing like Liars, and mostly I did not enjoy at all. But then this album, The Apple Drop, came out last year, and it is mostly a throwback to the old albums. It's missing a bit of the experimentation of the old Liars albums, like the edges are a little sanded down, but it's still an album with real songs, songs that have structures, songs that kind of sound like Radiohead a little bit, but still enjoyable songs! I don't really have anything specific to say about the structure of the album, it's a mixture of electronica and indie rock, typical Liars fare. It's just really nice to know that there might be more.

Song: Slow and Turn Inward

The Good Stuff

07) Turnstile - Glow On

I've been on the Turnstile train since they put out the Move Thru Me EP in 2016. I saw them at Riot Fest in 2019, and now they have blown the F up. This new album has gotten near universal praise, with its mix of hardcore, thrash, and also more chilled out melodic areas. This has actually been the album that I have been dreading writing up the most because it's basically just a progression forward from the last album, which is not very detailed for the reader. Everything has just gotten a bit better: the song writing's better, the playing is better, the production is significantly better. When they threw keyboards on the last album, it sounded good but sort of rinky-dinky, the keys on this album are produced much lusher, integrated much better into the sound. Also, this album and album #6 could have easily been interchanged, I was having a hard time with the order, moved things around a whole ton. The album in the 5 spot was in the 12 spot like two weeks ago.

Song: Blackout

06) Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee

I've tried a couple times to get into Japanese Breakfast; her first album I just wasn't in to, but her second album had some good hits on it, I especially liked Road Head. And actually the first time I listened to Jubilee, I felt the same way, pretty unenthused. But I was wrong, of course, and I eventually started getting into the songs beyond the lead single, Be Sweet. Jubilee is like a mish-mash of all of the best parts of indie music. She's got the bright horns usually heard on a Sufjan Stevens album on two songs, she has the dirty saxophone of the 80's on this album, she has an instrumental string section leading into a piano and drum slow song. Alex G provides a collab on Savage Good Boy, and you can tell from the pitched up vocals at the beginning (an Alex G staple). Kokomo, IN has the chilled out energy of a Postmarks song. Like I said before, just an exquisite corpse of indie rock staples.

Song: Tactics

05) Joy Orbison - Still Slipping, Vol. 1

I heard about Joy Orbison for the first time in an episode of What's in my Bag? starring Disclosure, in which one of the dudes from Disclosure showed that he was buying The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow, a single released by Joy Orbison, on vinyl. That song is awesome and ever since, I have checked every couple of months to see if Joy Orbison had finally released a full length, and this mixtape is that first one. It's great, lots of house beats, plus JO added in little audio snippets of his family and friends. I need more time with it, but the little time that I have already spent with this mixtape has been a treat. It reminds me a bit of a sunnier version of Burial's big debut album, Untrue. Like I said earlier, this was originally in the 12 spot, but I spent a full four days dogsitting and doing a puzzle and listened to these thirteen albums on repeat, and I have learned to adore this album so much that it catapulted all the way up to number five.

Song: Bernard?

That Good Good Stuff

4) Squid - Bright Green Field

It's been a good couple years for post-punk bands making their name, this year we saw the breakthrough debut album of Black Country, New Road, we saw everything come together for Shame on their new album Drunk Tank Pink, and we had Squid release their debut full length, Bright Green Field. This album goes a little of everywhere, the opener GSK is a spirited indictment of GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical company (they make my toothpaste!), opening with the lines, "As the sun sets on the GlaxoKline/Well, it's the only way that I can tell the time/Bright neon bikes on the hillside/Mosquito nets, they cover the buildings." Boy Racers breaks down halfway through to a mechanical robot breakdown, similar to the chaos on the second half of Pink Floyd's Sheep. Global Groove is like one song mixed on top of another, with the drums and singing (both by Ollie Judge) moving quick and groovy over a slow, slow burning saxophone from Laurie Nankivell. This album will make you dance, it will make you bang your head, and it will make you shout along with the lyrics at 4AM when you are awake but literally no one else in your building is.

Songs: GSK

3) Brockhampton - Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine

This album was supposed to be the first of two that Brockhampton put out in 2021. Instead we got only this album and then at the beginning of 2022, we got the announcement that Brockhampton was breaking up this year after Coachella. Luckily we splurged on Lolla tickets and saw them perform what will be (for now) their last Chicago show. Jackie almost died during it. I bought the physical CD of this album, and when you did so you got to pick from a bunch of different but similar album covers, each one showing one of the performing members of BH and each one a different color. I picked the blue one with Matt Champion on the cover because Matt is the best, so that's the cover I am putting here. Also, since I got the physical copy, I got a bunch of extra songs on the end of the album, jams too, good addition. As far as the actual music on this album, it's definitely a step back towards the darkness of Iridescence and away from the glory of Ginger, but overall, it's still basically a Brockhampton album. They all come in different shapes and sizes but you can still feel that Brockhampton sound running through them all. I will miss BH, hopefully some of the solo projects that come out of it can be just as good, I'm sure we'll still see a lot of the same production teams working on those solo ones, but who knows?

Song: Windows

2) Jpegmafia - LP!

Jpegmafia was another person we saw at Lollapalooza this year, but I actually had known who he was prior to buying the tickets (unlike Noga Erez). This concert was insane, every beat was pumped up to the point of distortion, white dudes were fucking losing it all over the place. I'll never forget the image: Jpegmafia is on the stage that is off in the trees, so Jackie and I are sitting off to the back in the left, he yells out, "This next one is called Thug Tears" and 500 white dudes in their mid 20's lose their minds like The Beatles just took the stage at Shea Stadium. There are two different versions of this album: there is the inferior version (the "Online" version) that you can find on all the streaming services because Jpegmafia couldn't get sample releases for a couple songs, and there is the better version (the "Offline" version) that is available on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and YouTube. The Offline version has Hazard Duty Pay! on it and the sample on that song is killer, so I imagine that was probably the big hold up, but I'm glad he still put it out in the Offline version for us folks that don't care about or use streaming services. Jpegmafia's production has always been pretty aggressive and abrasive, which it still is here on LP! but there's definitely more warmth to the sound palette of this album than his previous projects. Despite the warmth, the majority of the songs in here are littered with threats, Jpegmafia leaves none of the vitriol behind. Plus there are tons of good samples on here, not just samples of old music, but also of conversations (similar to the Joy Orbison album) and of random stuff from TV, including an actual clip from a wrestling announcer saying "Strong words there from Jpegmafia" after he had appeared in a wrestling promo. This whole album is a masterpiece, I love it.

Song: Rebound!

The Best Stuff

1) Shame - Drunk Tank Pink

It was a tough decision picking between Jpegmafia’s album and this new Shame album, but in the end I went with Drunk Tank Pink. As I mentioned earlier, it was a good year for post-punk. I think over the last four and a half years, I have come to realize that my favorite types of rock music are post-punk and post-hardcore (which is actually short for post hardcore punk, so very similar thing going on here). It’s an improvement on their previous album, Songs of Praise, which I did enjoy, but it was a bit unmemorable. Drunk Tank Pink is faster, tighter, heavier, and catchier. I don’t really have a ton to say about the sound, Shame is a rock band, they tend towards heavier sounds than a punk band, your typical post-punk kind of thing. My favorite song on this album is Snow Day, a song about sitting on top of a hill thinking about love, and how when looking inside whurveying this snowscape, he thinks of her. This album came out in January so I already have a full year of loving it under my belt.

Song: Snow Day

Well, thanks for reading this list about music from a year that ended over two months ago. Hope you listen to some of this stuff, and maybe you’ll enjoy it! Peace out, 2021!