Welcome to Part 2 of favourite albums of 2021, following Part 1, which can be found here. A huge number of excellent releases, of which again this is just a selection many of which were written during, and about lockdown, and came in a huge rush in the hangover of 2020 as live shows enjoyed an easing of restrictions and record shops were able to open.
Thematically the ongoing pandemic inspired much of the material, ranging from self-questioning to emancipation, from relationship roles, to gender and identity. But this year there also emerged a wide spectrum of newer talent with outstanding voices, particular in the soul genre, harping back to earlier styles and decades, as well as further innovations in production and electronica. Strange times, but all very inspiring music.
Feel free to add your own or respond to these choices in comments below.
Self Esteem: Prioritise Pleasure
Rotherham’s Rebecca Taylor returns with a second LP under her liberated moniker after Compliments Please with an even greater triumph of darkly humorous and caustic honesty topped with glorious gospel harmonies, big drums, orchestration and a celebration of emancipated womanhood
Joy Crookes: Skin
After three EPs, the 23-year-old south Londoner of Irish-Bangladeshi descent launches her debut LP with songs of high quality and consummate performance, joining the likes of Celeste and Arlo Parks as as potentially huge soul stars
She Drew The Gun: Behave Myself
The Wirral’s Louisa Roach and co return after the acclaimed 2018 LP Revolution of Mind with stirring, feisty, rebellious songs that rally against injustice, celebrate society’s outsiders, filled with seething, articulate anger about everything from food banks to the patriarchy
Kit Sebastian: Melodi
A magical, mesmeric second album by the London-based French and Turkish pair of Kit Martin and Merve Erdem is a unique fusion of vocals, jazz, funk, psych, featuring zithers, harpsichords, congas, bongos, bulbul tarang, balalaikas, organs, and saxophone
audiobooks: Astro Tough
Wonderfully eccentric, humorously droll and inventive second album by the highly original duo of producer and instrumentalist David Wrench and artist and vocalist Evangeline Ling filled with pathos as well as energy
Hamish Hawk: Heavy Elevator
Theatrical, wittily delivered and filled with wonderfully literate and emotive narratives and images, the new album by the Edinburgh indie singer-songwriter is a gem
Spencer Cullum: Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection
An exquisite album, hauntingly beautiful by the London singer-songwriter and pedal steel guitarist re-located to Nashville is reminiscent of Nick Drake with added, electric guitar, organ, keyboards, flute and light percussion with a Tennessee twang
Liz Lawrence: The Avalanche
Superbly full-bodied, catchy, lyrically wry electro-indie-pop LP by the singer-songwriter and guitarist from Stratford-on-Avon whose songs have a wonderful juddery momentum enhanced by her strong, deep voice
KUNZITE: Visuals
As groovy-funk-psych-pop as it gets. As with many featured here, a single, in this case Frosty was previously a Song of the Day, and now this cosmos-themed album by by producers and multi-instrumentalists Mike Stroud (from Ratatat) and Agustin White (White Flight), follows keeps the fun, and the standard high
Ballaké Sissoko: A Touma
The Malian kora master returns with a new album of exquisite acoustic solo beauty with a title that translates as “now is the moment”
Low: Hey What
The follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed, revolutionary Double Negative is another mesmerising work of brilliant sound distortions and beautiful vocals by Minnesota couple Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk
Amyl and The Sniffers: Comfort To Me
Fabulous LP from Amy Taylor and the Melbourne punk band that again captures their incomparably energetic live shows, here with a mix of humour, anger and some very frank and fertile self-analysis
Little Simz: Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
London’s Simbiatu Ajikawo returns with her fourth album, a triumph of intelligent, tough-attitude socio-political lyrics and charisma, backed with epic orchestral soundtrack with old friend and longtime producer Inflo, the man behind Sault’s albums
Lingua Ignota: Sinner Get Ready
An astonishingly intense, beautiful but at times disturbing journey into the heart of extreme Christian faith by Kristin Hayter who explores puritanism via relocation to rural Pennsylvania, expressed through the prism of piano, organ, Appalachian strings, drone, and above all, her extraordinary voice
Desire Marea: Desire
The singer and African queer artist icon from Durban and founder of the FAKA collective offers something truly different with this startling LP mixing operatic voice, disco and alternative, experimental electronica with Zulu language
Yola: Stand For Myself
The title track was a splendid previous Song of the Day, and the rest of this second album by the equally stands up as excellent soul and funk by the singer and songwriter Yolanda Quartey from Bristol
Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever
The teen queen of dark, teenage bedroom pop returns with her second LP, astonishingly mature, with supremely low-key, close-mic intimacy, and innovative songs about inevitable concerns - stardom, the difficulty of privacy and relationships and all their associated dangers
Joel Culpepper: Sgt Culpepper
With an impressive, extraordinary vocal range, especially in falsetto, the south-east Londoner’s debut LP feels like an instant soul and funk classic, bulked great bass and brass, and shored up with a team of top-notch producers
L'Rain: Fatigue
This second album by the Brooklyn-born multi-instrumentalist and singer Taja Cheek is an entrancing mix of keyboards, synths, and haunting vocals, a woozily wonderful and unique style of dream-like delicacy
Kojaque: Town's Dead
An original, distinctive voice in hip hop in this ear-catching second LP by Kevin Smith from Dublin, filled with dark corners of drugs, gentrification, difficult relationships and city soundscapes, an edgy New Year’s Eve and articulate, heavy accented anger
Lucy Dacus: Home Video
Supremely sharp, personal and candid, this third solo album by the Virginia singer-songwriter and Boygenius member is a series of brilliant detailed diary entries with a dark, homicidal twist, and filled with ironic, killer lines
Hiatus Kaiyote: Mood Valiant
This wonderful third album by the Melbourne band is a free-flowing beauty - like a butterfly garden of jazz, soul as well as Brazilian influences from time spent with veteran composer Arthur Verocai and Amazonian indigenous Varinawa communities
LoneLady: Former Things
A wonderful new LP by Manchester electro-pop artist Julie Campbell, created in the 18th-century Somerset House shooting range studios, with sparkling numbers that perfectly combine influences from Cabaret Voltaire to Neneh Cherry
Japanese Breakfast: Jubilee
This third album by the American alt-pop singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner is full of tasty textures and ethereal melodies, inspired by the likes of Bjork, with songs, as she says “about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood”
Lord Huron: Long Lost
Serene, dreamy, beautifully melodic alt-country-folk by the Michigan-bred, LA-based group, their fourth and perhaps best yet album is awash with road imagery, rich cinematic inserts and classic retro guitar sounds
black midi: Cavalcade
The British quartet’s follow-up to 2019’s Schlagenheim continues their boundary-pushing direction of frenetic, eclectic mix of the avant-garde – jazz, funk, prog in a skilled delirium of wonderful compositions and musicianship
Dave: We're All Alone In This Together
Second LP by the much lauded Mercury-winning David Omoregie for his first, Psychodrama, shows his talent for diversity of rap styles through social commentary and relationship themes, comprising R&B, Afrobeat, gospel, electronica and piano-led melancholy
LUMP: Animal
With a suite of exquisite sounds from flutes to the soft thunk of bass and ethereal vocals, the second album by Laura Marling and Tunng’s Mike Lindsay is a little more stripped back than the first, but still brings otherworldly beauty
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: Carnage
"A brutal but very beautiful record nested in a communal catastrophe” is how Nick Cave describes this Covid-19 lockdown-inspired release with his longtime Bad Seed collaborator, and so it is
Lana Del Rey: Chemtrails Over The Country Club
Evoking big, wide landscapes with a slow, melancholic, wistful, nostalgic and semi-fictional narratives, the New York singer-songwriter’s eighth album is of uniform style and slow pace, but rich in powerfully strong melodies and memorable lines
Silk Sonic: An Evening With Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak)
Something of a perfect pairing – two superstars come together with a shared niche passion for 70s funk and soul, and with guests including bassists Thundercat and Bootsy Collins, this brings rich, scintillating results
IDLES: CRAWLER
‘Are you ready for the storm'?’ There is much expected blood and thunder in the fourth LP by the Bristol band, but also an expanded range of sounds, feelings, painful, angry and tender moments in this viscerally brilliant new work themed around addiction
Penelope Isles: Which Way To Happy
A bright, sparkly blend of wistful, ethereal dream pop, space rock, some French disco and electronica by Brighton’s core of siblings Jack and Lily Wolter and a fine follow-up to the 2019 debut LP Until the Tide Creeps In
Marta Del Grandi: Until We Fossilize
This delicate, beautiful debut by the Italian singer from Milan with a jazz background infuses her songs with folk and classical and eastern elements in an LP inspired by the Greek myth of Amethyst who defies the patriarchy
Eris Drew: Quivering in Time
Engaging, inventive, wonderfully odd and at times insanely catchy, this album by the Chicago-based DJ and producer channels her self-described Motherbeat with this clever selection of nine dance tracks
Gustaf: Audio Drag For Ego Slobs
Caustic, witty, jagged post-punk by the Brooklyn band with this sharp debut marked by drawling dry delivery of talk-singer Lydia Gammill over driving, tight bass, guitar and drums
To see Part 1 of this year’s favourites, visit here.
And to peruse other albums, which are all recommended for exploration, see the main section here.
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