100 Favorite New Albums of 2021
2021 was a heckuva music year, full of promising debuts, great strides forward from up and coming bands, and experimentaion on a variety of fronts. As usual I listened to about 500 albums this year, reviewed about 200 of them, and now I have distilled from all those my Top 100.
As always, these are favorites, rather than a judgment on what is “best.” I’m one human being — not a magazine staff — so this list reflects my own tastes. (This year in particular, some of my utmost favorites flew under most critics’ radar entirely). The albums on this list are the ones I had to keep coming back to for more and more repeat listens. They insisted.
This was a great year for debut albums. It was a strong year for collaborations. It was a fantastic year for music from the UK, and a breakthrough year for UK soul and hip hop artists. It was an utterly incredible year for post-punk, with a number of new bands spearheading a move toward new ambitious and surprising directions for the post-punk revival. And it was the best year for guitar-driven indie rock in a long time.
All 100 favorites (and 3 EPs) are listed below, with brief descriptions, and a master list at the end. All of these albums are wonderful— even those at the bottom. I can’t believe how many great albums I didn’t even have room for!
- Allison Russell, Outside Child
This Montreal-born artist blessed some of the best folk and roots projects of the 2010s (like Our Native Daughters & Birds of Chicago), but her solo debut is her crowning achievement thus far. A musical chronicle of Russell’s real life self-emancipation from her abuser, and her journey toward healing, peppered with magical overtones and departures, is as inspiring and triumphant as music can be. Highlights: “4th Day Prayer,” “Hy-Brasil,” “Nightflyer”
2. Little Simz, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
Four albums and six EP’s into her career, the London rapper gives us an utterly epic, thematically rich, magnum opus of a hip hop album adorned by orchestral flourishess and dramatic interludes. The record feels larger than life, even as it focuses on celebrating an introvert’s prioritization of her own inner life. Highlights: “Standing Ovation,” “I Love You, I Hate You,” “Speed,” “Fear No Man”
3. Valerie June, The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers
A gigantic leap forward from an already fascinating artist, the Tennessee singer and multi-instrumentalist’s fifth album brings a transcendent, cosmic feel to her blend of Appalachian folk, blues and soul, the one-of-a-kind magic of her voice propelling the listener right into the stratosphere. Highlights: “You And I,” “Call Me A Fool,” “Home Inside”
4. Wolf Alice, Blue Weekend
An arena-sized indie rock studio album that manages to be emotionally engaging throughout, Ellie Roswell and her band’s third record would feel fresh and relevant in any of the last 5 decades. It murmurs, it rocks, and it soars in equal measure, shifting between modes and moods deftly and confidently. Highlights: “How Can I Make It OK?,” “Smile,” “Delicious Things”
5. Tom Rosenthal, Denis Was A Bird
Quietly one of the most talented songwriters of the last decade, London-based singer/songwriter Tom Rosenthal is no stranger to writing wise, reflective, heartfelt songs. Still his 5th studio album, reflecting on the death of his father, feels even more profound and somehow even more uplifting than usual. Highlights: “I Went To Bed And I Loved You,” “Denis Was A Bird,” “Little Joys”’
6. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, L.W.
On their third volume of microtonal music, Australia’s most exciting indie rock band add in a greater diversity of rhythm and times signature to an already exotic sound while, and it’s still more danceable than anything you’d expect from psych rock. Highlights: “Static Electricity,” “O.N.E.,” “See Me,” “Ataraxia”
7. Snapped Ankles, Forest of Your Problems
Rhythmically complex, mystically inclined, irresistibly danceable post-punk made mostly with synths, bass guitar, and drums, this London band’s third album swings between sociopolitical urgency and groove-driven playfulness. Highlights: “The Evidence,” “Shifting Basslines of the Cornucopians,” “Xylophobia”
8. Mdou Moctar, Afrique Victime
An increasingly prominent Tuareg singer, guitar virtuoso and bandleader from Niger, Mdou Moctar’s first album on Matador Records buzzes with life. Like most Saharan desert rock, it is protest music, and also full of joy and celebration. Highlights: “Chismitten,” “Tala Tannam,” “Afrique Victime”
9. Amyl and the Sniffers, Comfort To Me
The Australian punk band’s second outing is a straight-up instant classic. Amy Taylor and her band channel all their anger into potent, exuberant, even joyful anthems of empowerment. Even the more playful, frisky, less political songs pack a wallop. Highluights: “Guided By Angels,” “Choices,” “Laughing”
10. Black Country, New Road, For The First Time
With their innovative debut album, this six-piece London band explodes their post-punk center to make loosely structured, elaborately arranged post-rock compositions that combine indie rock, jazz and bursts of klezmer in fascinating ways. Highlights: “Track X,” “Science Fair,” “Sunglasses”
11. Genesis Owusu, Smiling With No Teeth
On this Ghanaian-Australian hip hop artist’s debut, rap shares the stage with punk, funk and a mixture of classic and alternative R&B. It’s daring, emotionally engaging, and full of soul. Highlights: “The Other Black Dog,” “Gold Chains,” “A Song About Fishing”
12. Squid, Bright Green Field
Forming a bridge between the mainline UK post-punk revival and its more experimental edge, the debut of this Brighton-based band makes satisfying, long-form heavy art rock out of sharper moments of angular, manic revelry. Highlights: “Narrator,” “Pamphlets,” “Paddling”
13. Elbow, Flying Dream 1
The band’s lushest, warmest, gentlest effort to date is a late (mid?) career highlight, as they mostly remove the reverberating electric guitars, relying on piano, acoustic guitars, synths, drums, and Guy Garvey’s exceptionally clear voice. “Flying Dream 1,” “Calm and Happy,” “What Am I Without You”
14. Parquet Courts, Sympathy For Life
Springboarding from 2018’s funky, danceable Wide Awake!, the Brooklyn post-punk band continues to broaden its horizons, with more electronics and a spacious atmosphere, on a freewheeling, yet still existentially inquisitive 7th album,. Highlights: “Walking at a Downtown Pace,” “Black Widow Spider,” “Just Shadows”
15. Idles, Crawler
The Bristol post-punk revival giants give us their most experimental album to date without losing any of the punch. Crawler amps up the complexity of their sound and often slows way down, but also frequently delves further into noise and grit than ever. Highlights: “The Wheel,” “Beachland Ballroom,” “Crawl!”
16. Tune-Yards, Sketchy.
Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner’s soulful, challenging, activist indie pop reaches a new zenith of anthemic revelry even as they deepen into jagged rhythms and sophisticated melodies on their exhilarating 5th album. Highlights: “make it right.,” “hypnotized.,” “be not afraid.”
17. Laura Mvula, Pink Noise
The Birmingham-born soul singer’s third album evokes the anthemic drama of synth-soaked 80s pop music and earns every bit of that grandeur with her impassioned vocals, while balancing that pop sheen with sophisticated melodicism. Highlights: “Conditional,” “Golden Ashes,” “Got Me”
18. Sons of Kemet, Black to the Future
Activist jazz from London, Sons of Kemet is the fiercest and generally most frenetic of saxophonist and bandleader Shabaka Hutchings’s projects. This is still true, but their still very political third album is more playful and nuanced. Highlights: “Pick Up Your Burning Cross,” “Hustle,” “Let The Circle Be Unbroken”
19. Baiuca, Embruxo
Irresistably danceable, amped up folk fusion from the northwestern most province of Spain, producer Baiuca celebrates the sounds and the language of the Galician people on a vital, melodically intricate, transporting second album. Highlights: “Luar,” “Veleno,” “Conxuro”
20. Pom Poko, Cheater
The Norwegian band’s second album offers a singular blend of colorful power pop (thanks largely to Ragnhild Jamtveit’s vocal melodies) and heavy art rock — some math-rock, some noise, some post-punk — with intense and intricate guitar work. Highlights: “Like A Lady,” “Look,” “Body Level”
21. Richard Dawson + Circle, Henki
This collaboration finds a Geordie folksinger backed by a Finnish experimental rock band. The album’s thematic glue is loose — songs about botanists and plants — both the music and the lyrical style make it feel like the loftiest of concept albums. Highlights: “Silene,” “Methuselah,” “Cooksonia”
22. Shame, Drunk Tank Pink
Even more invigorating and more urgent, but also more sophisticated than on their debut, the South London post-punk band’s full-throttle attack is sharpened by the advanced rhythms and song structures they utilize here. Highlights: “Nigel Hitter,” “March Day,” “Snow Day”
23. Dar Williams, I’ll Meet You Here
Since I was a teenager, Dar Williams has been a voice of wisdom and of hopeful reassurance. This reaches a new zenith on this warm and uplifting folk album about aging and the passage of time. Music to open your heart to. Highlights: “Sullivan Lane,” “Today and Every Day,” “Little Town”
24. Illuminati Hotties, Let Me Do One More
Seriously leveling up on her third album, audio engineer turned indie rockstar Sarah Tudzin harnesses an irrepressable punk energy with sonic artistry and studio wizardry on her most cohesive and compelling record to date. Highlights: “MMMOOOAAAYAYA,” “Knead,” “Kickflip”
25. The Coral, Coral Island
Both a double album and a concept album, the truly remarkable thing about this easy-going but adventurous psych-folk-garage-rock album full of sweet, inviting harmonies, its its ability to feel like an old friend, even from the first listen. Highlights: “Lover Undiscovered,” My Best Friend,” “Golden Age”
26. St. Vincent, Daddy’s Home
A musical futurist pivots toward the past. Annie Clark explores her roots, on an album full of Bowie-esque tributes to gospel- and R&B-tinged 70s rock, and on which she uses her father’s return from prison as a thematic center. Highlights: “…At the Holiday Party,” “Down,” “Down and Out Downtown”
27. Bedouine, Waysides
Sweeter and more soothing than ever, Azniv Korkejian’s third album recommits to the kind of warm, intimate, gently strummed folk music with which she debuted, but retains the breeziness of 2019’s Bird Songs of a Kill Joy. Highlights: “The Solitude,” “Easy,” “You Never Leave Me”
28. Beautiful Chorus, Movement
This double album is full of simply arranged songs driven by lush vocal harmonies, all of which center around the affirmations and meditations at the heart of this quartet’s spiritual focus. Highlights: “Infinite Universe,” “Pachamama,” “The Waves We Give”
29. Bomba Estéreo, Deja
Having started as a solo project, this primarily cumbia- and salsa-infused Colombian indie electro-pop outfit is a profoundly international 8-person ensemble for the purposes of this engaging and colorful 6th album. Highlights: “Como Lo Pedi,” “Conexión Total,” “Tierra”
30. Yola, Stand For Myself
A British singer/songwriter who cut her teeth making American country-soul music in Nashville, Yolanda Quartey’s second album is an utterly timeless, elegantly produced pop album with some unforgettable songs. Highlights: “Stand For Myself,” “Diamond Studded Shoes,” “Be My Friend”
31. Bruno Pernadas, Private Reasons
On the whole this is a brilliantly composed, complex and unpredictable multi-lingual art-pop album from Portugal with a heavy jazz component and orchestral flourishes. Highlights: “Lafeta Uti,” “Jory II,” “Step Out of the Light”
32. Bonnie “Prince” Billy & Matt Sweeney, Superwolves
By turns warm, wise, unsettling, and heartfelt, the 16-years-later follow-up to singer/lyricist Will Oldham and guitarist/songwriter Matt Sweeney’s cult classic Superwolf is a seamless collaborative sequel. Highlights: “Resist The Urge,” “Hall of Death,” “Not Fooling”
33. Turnstile, Glow On
Invigorating east coast hardcore punk with metalcore-ready guitar work, this Baltimore band’s third album is a gritty, high energy thunderstorm, with occasional synths and surprise Latin drumming. Highlights: “Don’t Play,” “T.L.C.,” “Wild Wrld”
…Or, check out my Highlights of 2021 playlist! This year I simply put all 12 of my highlights-of-the-month playlist, and dragged 13 of my favorites to the beginning, so the design of the whole thing might not be quite as elegant as some years. Anyway, feel free to go Follow that playlist, and read on…