10. An Evening With Silk Sonic – Silk Sonic
Smooth Soul
Key Track: Smokin Out The Window
The long-awaited collaboration between two modern masters of funk is a love letter to the genre, featuring sensual crooning and goofy spoken word, bombastic horns and unreal basslines, infectious grooves, and above all a focus on fun music. Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak are a perfect pairing, ad-libbing off one another flawlessly without either hogging the spotlight. At only 32 minutes the album is rather short, but still manages to perfectly encapsulate the charm of classic soul music.
9. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert – Little Simz
Conscious Hip Hop
Key Track: Woman
UK rapper Little Simz took a great leap forward in 2021 with Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, an expansive and bombastic album that nearly doubles the length of her previous release – 2019’s critically acclaimed GREY Area. Undaunted by the success of that album, …Introvert showcases Little Simz’s continued growth with more nuanced instrumentals, often taking on an orchestral tone but never fully discarding the UK Garage sound that influences her production. She uniquely synthesizes these sounds with other inspirations: afrobeats reflecting her West African heritage, as well as jazz rap in the vein of contemporaries like Kendrick Lamar. Despite the title, Simz does not shy away from self-expression in her art. Her trademark honesty is on full display, making herself vulnerable by tackling highly personal themes of family trauma and isolation. Still, the overall tone of the album is triumphant, as Simz is clearly confident in her musical talent–and rightfully so.
8. By The Time I Get To Phoenix – Injury Reserve
Experimental Hip Hop
Key Track: Knees
By The Time I Get To Phoenix is a heavy album both sonically and lyrically, carrying burdensome themes of worldwide political turmoil and deep personal tragedy. While the album was conceptualized as a way to capture the feelings of hopelessness amid the Covid-19 pandemic, protests against police brutality, and uncontrollable wildfires in the American west, the sudden passing of emcee Ritchie with a T’s stepfather became a major theme. Then, in the midst of recording, member Stepa J. Groggs died, leaving Injury Reserve as a two-piece group. The resulting music comes across as apocalyptic, incorporating glitchy, choppy samples and lilting, off-kilter beats. The band’s label even refused to release the album when it was completed in 2020, leaving the group to release the album independently when their contract ended. Despite its limited commercial success–to be expected given the abstract nature of the music–the album still garnered a positive reception due to its innovative production and stirring emotional content, and stands as a monument to Groggs’s memory as his final art.
7. Happier Than Ever – Billie Eilish
Alt-Pop
Key Track: my future
The enormous success of 2019’s When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? established Billie Eilish as one of the most recognizable names in pop music, but Happier Than Ever sees the young artist shedding her “Bad Guy” persona in favor of themes of self-reflection and growth. The music reflects this change in attitude as well, with calmer instrumentals (produced by Eilish’s brother, Finneas O’Connell) drawing from downtempo, bossa nova, and bedroom pop, among other styles. Lyrically, most of the album focuses on the struggles of a rapid rise to fame and Eilish’s own traumatic relationships. While some of the songs feature overtly sexual tones, it’s the insightful, self-aware nature of songs like “my future” that garnered this album its acclaim.
6. CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST – Tyler, The Creator
West Coast Hip Hop
Key Track: Sweet / I Thought You Wanted to Dance
Tyler, The Creator set an exceptionally high bar for himself with his previous two albums, having received near-universal acclaim for both 2017’s Flower Boy and 2019’s IGOR. Never one to stagnate, Tyler evolves once again with Call Me If You Get Lost, which–compared to his previous albums–comprises of shorter songs that skip between styles disorientingly. As usual, Tyler’s steady hand is present in all aspects of the music, from writing to recording to producing to performing. The overall effect is each track has less individual impact, but the work as a whole feels intricately linked together. By the time the album reaches the nearly ten-minute centerpiece “Sweet / I Thought You Wanted to Dance,” the atmosphere is so complete it’s easy to imagine swaying in the crowd at one of his shows.
5. Spiral – DARKSIDE
Downtempo
Key Track: The Limit
DARKSIDE represents the partnership of two forward thinking electronic producers: Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington. Spiral comes after a period of prolonged separation between the two artists, but the reunion is a brillinat one. The ambient soundscapes Jaar creates prove to be fertile ground for Harrington’s guitar work, which brings jazz and progressive influences. The music is often rooted in rhythmic basslines or Jaar’s idiosyncratic percussion, leaving plenty of space for Harrington to experiment with just how many different sounds can come out of a guitar.
4. To See The Next Part Of The Dream – Parranoul
Shoegaze
Key Track: White Ceiling
Parannoul is the pseudonym of an anonymous South Korean musician, whose identity is so well kept it’s not even clear whether this album was recorded with the help of others. Regardless, To See the Next Part of the Dream is an exceptional work in the field of shoegaze, bringing a unique lofi approach to the genre. The music somehow wordlessly communicates intense feelings of nostalgia and longing more typical of emo, as the vocals are drowned out more often than not. Everything else on the record sounds distorted, whether it be extreme compression giving the hyper-active drums an unnatural crunch or high-gain overdrive effects raking the guitar. The result is immense walls of sound, pierced occasionally by haunting melodies, that give way to delicate instrumentals in unfailingly cathartic fashion.
3. For The First Time – Black Country, New Road
Post-Punk
Key Track: Track X
The seven-piece British outfit Black Country, New Road debuted with For the First Time this year, a difficult-to-categorize album bringing together a wide array of influences. Cited among them are klezmer, free jazz, and math rock, which the band pairs with a distinctly post-punk approach and poetic, confessional lyrics. While only 6 songs in length, it’s clear a great deal of careful planning went into each track. The band masterfully coordinates their dynamics, tightly weaving between nearly ambient swells and anxious jams, and always keeping in sync despite none of the songs having a typical structure.
2. Mercurial World – Magdalena Bay
Synthpop
Key Track: You Lose!
Mercurial World is more than just another entry in a synthpop environment dominated by 80s-inspired nostalgia, as LA-based duo Magdalena Bay cites contemporary forward-thinking artists such as Charli XCX and Grimes as influences. The debut album also pulls from disparate genres like shoegaze, neo-psychedelia, and hyperpop for a futuristic fusion of styles that remain consistently catchy and danceable. What’s more, the music is expertly crafted with seamless transitions to ensure there are no interruptions on the floor.
1. Cavalcade – black midi
Progressive Rock
Key Track: Slow
When it comes to technical complexity, Black Midi are the tip of the spear. Conventional notions of songwriting are nowhere to be found on Cavalcade, an album that defies labels with its avant-garde blend of math rock, jazz fusion and noise. Initial receptions drew favorable parallels with In the Court of the Crimson King–a comparison that is not made lightly. But whereas their previous album Schlagenheim (2019) featured mostly improvisational elements with a dense and abrasive nature, this year’s effort features more consciously constructed songs with some quiet passages juxtaposed against their trademark explosions of sound. Said Guitarist Geordie Greep of the new approach, “People seemed to really like the debut album but after a while we all became pretty bored with it…So, it was like: this time let’s make something that is actually good.”
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