Albums of 2021

For the past couple of years, I've kept a record of the best albums that I've listened to throughout the year. In a time where we appear more at odds than before with our various "wrapped" playlists as composed by the streaming sector, it's more important than ever to redefine this behaviour and develop our own relationships between music and events. I pick out 7 albums that I can tie back to time; performing echolocations against the street. Only a couple of these are 2021 natives, sat apologetically among the melodies of lighter years, coded by the presence and absence of their music alike. But each and every one is my choice, a declaration of independence against someone else's view of my year, against favouritism, against bad graphic design and against the morbid generalisation of everything, for everyone.

1. Plans by Death Cab for Cutie

    I start in the coldest place, a good album for January. Wintery walks in the lead-up to my return to London, going against Government advice to collect a chair that I am receiving from... the Government. I felt a disservice and dissatisfaction with my own behaviours and so I dulled it with Death Cab for Cutie, a band named for the only cover track from The Beatle's Magical Mystery Tour. Plans is long in the tooth now and it's a portent for landfill indie, but I'll be damned if it isn't a good one. The opener, Marching Bands of Manhattan, corrals entire weather systems for the sake of some 00s angst. It sets the bar, really, because the album's remainder, through Soul Meets Body, to Different Names for the Same Thing, to (of course) I Will Follow You Into the Dark is all drawn in the thick blood of melancholy. Plans makes sense when it is dark at 4pm. Plans makes sense when your neighbourhood has its own brand of anxiety. Plans makes sense when there are people everywhere you miss. 

2. No Blues by Los Campesinos

    Let's jump out of 2005 and into 2013, where No Blues is sitting there, wearing a football shirt, asking me to love it. I do love it, but I don't want to tell it. Los Campesinos are defined by their lead, a man called Gareth who could be the biggest and indeed the saddest sadboi known to man. But I am sadboi too, obviously, so I can get behind Gareth, especially with lyrics like these. It's simple, really, but "I'll be gloomy 'til they glue me, in the arms of she who loves me" on the so-named Glue Me is one of the most fun couplets I've heard. Also see an entire song called "Cemetery Gaits". On this basis, the Campesinos! aren't singing much different from Death Cab, but deprived of half their members, and shot through with an incomparable sense of longing, they were a really good listen for me this year, while I was waiting for things to open up and see my friends again (weren't we all?)

3. Civilisation by Kero Kero Bonito 

    Ah, now, curveball here, this number came out this year, and it's also almost impossible to fit into one genre. Is it psych pop? Dream techno? Weeb-adelica? All I know for sure is, a lot of boys with bad facial hair seem to like ol' KKB, because I went to see them in concert this year. The venue was bad, and the boys were sweaty, but watching Sarah Bonito open on Battle Lines waving a massive white flag was one of the best theatrical gig experiences I've ever had. The album is thematically sound throughout, a shift away from KKB's more eclectic, meme-esque releases from their early career but also less individual than the tracks of Time and Place. This is an album about collective struggle and solidarity. When the Fires Come is a folk story of climate change: "All around the world they weep now they know it's true, true, true, true, The sun's returned to send us home to earth". Well Rested is a hymn for the planet in similar terms: "The resurrection will come...only when Gaia requires it. It will not come soon, if we care for our mother". But The Princess and The Clock - a beautiful piece about power and responsibility, and how to shake it off - really hammers home how KKB have moved from irony to poetry. A springtime mood. Good.

4. Fever Dreams by Villagers

    This album came out in the throes of spring. My flatmate arrived after 6 months in absentia and we set about living together. Among other things, this meant one coming home blistering drunk and holding a deep theoretical conversation with the other. More than once, in these moments, I would play First Day of Your Life from this album. It has a beautiful build and a slightly ethereal feel that's perfect for the end-of-the-night settling-down-to-bed feel. After I'd hooked myself to that one song, I dipped my audio-toes into the rest of the pool-album and wasn't disappointed. Circles in the Firing Line is particularly good, a song of regretting and resenting that feels apt against an antibacterial backdrop. But perhaps why I particularly like this album is because of the logic that led it's development: Villagers (Conor O' Brien) said that he just explored ideas, took upon the riffs that came to mind, and sculpted them into an album. No cause for finding the particular single; no need to schedule around a tour, build upon the last album, or appeal to old fans. Every Villagers album is a little bit different. Just like every year is a bit different.

5. Heaven to a Tortured Mind by Yves Tumor

    I'd never listened to Yves Tumor until my flatmate recommended them to me earlier this year. Or rather, I walked into the living room and Gospel for a New Century was on and I lost my mind. I'd go early never heard anything like it, this art rock psychedelia with hip hop and blues influences supporting one of the most interesting vocalists (and lyricists) of the... well, of the century. There's also Kerosene, which is so crowd pleasing you could very reasonably put it on a party playlist, and a whole gamut of other songs, which, for lack of a better world, all have ssspppunkkk. Yves Tumor gets a spot on this list for a more important reason, though: it was being introduced to them that led me to think, actually, yes, there is a lot of music that I am missing. Corners of the sonospheres only populated by fringe elements and fringier instruments. But what if I want to hear songs that are just played off barcodes? What if I want to hear a pop jingle that's really about trans-ness? What if I want to hear a track where a man acknowledges, above all else, that he is a Shoreditch twat? It was Yves Tumor that helped me think such things possible, and luckily, they are.

6. Pinback by Pinback

    I walked in on this one too. All I saw was the big Spotify screen, and two men, both of whom had guitars and one of whom had a small beard. It was honestly the most beautiful rhythm-led rock music I'd ever heard. Like the guitars were drums, creating thousands of possibilities through a series of riffs. At least, they just sound like riffs. But when you listen to Pinback and try and find anything else that's as clever, as subtle, as effortlessly background-able, you'll fail. Only Pinback may Pinback. Tripoli is a good place to start. Then the album. Heck, the whole discography is a master-work. 

7. Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino by Arctic Monkeys

    While I was producing a particularly mediocre YouTube video this year, I found myself referencing the Arctic Monkeys a whole bunch of times. So I was compelled, not for the first time, to give them a royal old listen. What surprised me wasn't how much more I liked their entire catalogue than I used to, but that I also liked their latest record, Tranquility Base, which left me cold on its release in 2018.

    In fact, I liked it a whole lot. The first tune - Star Treatment - has an entire line where vocalist Alex Turner just says "What do you mean you've never seen Blade Runner?" He's not even singing. He's just vibing. Sure, it's a bit of a 70s pastiche in many ways, but the fact that it's aware that it's a bit of a 70s pastiche is what makes it. The Arctic Monkeys deserved to become self-aware by now, especially when Alex Turner freely admits that their first album is a bit cack. This one has plenty more imagination, anyhow; I give it a solid Four Stars out of Five (that's unheard of!)

    So those were my 7 favourite albums from the past year. Whether or not you also think Alex Turner is a sexy jeb end, I'm sure you can come up with your own distinctive, deliberate list to top the likes of Spotify Unwrapped. An auto-curated playlist is all well and good, but in the cold light of day, it's you and I who are best placed to decide which music means the most to us.