100 albums of 2021 you shouldn’t miss, plus playlist

10 000 Russos – Superinertia (Fuzz Club)

We said: Following on from 2019’s Kompromat and tour-dates around the UK, Europe and Mexico in support, the Porto-based band describe ‘Superinertia’ as a record addressing the “state of inertia that humans live in the West nowadays. It isn’t a record about the past or future. It’s about now.” This inertia, they say, is one deeply-rooted in the Western condition – in which ‘common sense’ masquerades political impotence, culture is largely dominated by pastiche and nostalgia and life itself is reduced to an endless cycle of work-consume-repeat.

This album is simply brilliant and you should go and listen to it – loud – and then go and see them live as soon as you can

Read More, here

A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Invisible Cities (Artificial Pinearch Manufacturing)

We said: Invisible Cities is an intriguing and challenging accompaniment to a work of the same nature and qualities. It’s also a cracking album, which pushes on, is beautiful and textural and also genuinely rousing and thrilling in passages, and proves that A Winged Victory for the Sullen are not content to sit inside the pocket of modern composition to await their tribute from their courtiers; but wish to push onwards, much further onwards. 

Womb music? Forget it.

Read it all, here

Aerial Maps – Intimate Hinterland (Self Released)

We said: Intimate Hinterland’ is an instant antipodean classic: an essential and vital piece of expressive art that captures the widescreen, cinematic and endless horizons of the Australian landscapes and infuses them with raw and honest vignettes of a mundane life – sometimes filled with pathos, sometimes hilarity but at all times compassionate and kind. In that mundanity, it becomes breathtaking beautiful: honest and poignant.

Read it in full, here

Afternoon Bike Ride – Afternoon Bike Ride (Friends Of Friends)

We said: Afternoon Bike Ride’s debut album is so much more than the sum of its parts. There’s so many bands out there who wear their eclecticism somewhat heavily, but Afternoon Bike Ride tiptoe anywhere and everywhere they wish like ethereal sprites and don’t seem to care to shout just how multivalent they are. It’s pop, but pop as it could be, as it should be, maybe as it will be; weird and otherworldly and maybe too good for this world. And I think that fulfils all the criteria of magical, right? An essential purchase

The review in full is here

Alan Vega – Mutator (Sacred Bones)

We said: Mutator is the first in a series of archival releases from the Vault that will come out on Sacred Bones Records. It was recorded with his longtime collaborator Liz Lamere and discovered in the vault in 2019 by both Lamere and his close friend and confidante Jared Artaud (The Vacant Lots). Soon after they mixed and produced the songs into the visionary album that was lurking within those tapes. 

The mere mention of Vega’s name invokes reverence and the emergence of a lost album left many nervous as to what it contained – they needn’t have worried, it’s as pure as the rest of his catalogue and just as brilliant.

Find out more, here

The Allergies – Promised Land (Jalapeño Records)

We said: The Bristol pair have pulled together artists not content with phoning in their contributions and a band on a hot streak, huge melodies, big arrangements and a goodtime vibe that’ll help you forget the troubles of the times.

Read on, here

Anna B Savage – A common turn (City Slang)

What we said: Across all ten songs there is a brittle emotional openness (“It has been said that I am strong, and they’re not entirely wrong… but I ran, I ran, I ran’”) and a simplicity and candour about female sexual pleasure, mental health, and relationships (evident on the new single, ‘Baby Grand’) which generate the album’s sense of honesty and intimacy. At times, on tracks like ‘Chelsea Hotel #3’, there is a Jeff Buckley-esque bombast, and if the album reminds me of anything else, it might be his ‘Grace’. 

“For the last three years, focused and re-energised” Savage has been writing this album. Has it been worth the wait? Hell yes. This is in no way the mediocre album she might have feared. It is a most uncommon turn, an album you’ll reach for years from now; a voice you’ll long to hear in both the dark and light times.

Read the full review, here

Arlo Parks – Collapsed In Sunbeams (Transgressive)

What we said: If you’ve loved discovering Arlo through her ground-breaking singles you’ll know what you are getting with ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’ and you will be absolutely fine with that. Not samey, …but definitely moreish. Get it on in your car the moment the silent internal violence of lockdown ends and drive through the night on your own, as far as you can, in a hypnotic and melancholic euphoria.

Read it all, here

Balladeste – Beyond Breath (self released)

We said: In my humble opinion, this album should have been one of the Grammy contenders for the World Music /Classical category, and I for one would like to invite the listener to celebrate this truly magical and masterful release .

Read more, here

Ben Chasny – The Intimate Landscape (Drag City)

We said: The Intimate Landscape is more than just an intriguing excursion into library music, although it has that layer of functionality too; it’s a simple, almost rustic record of fantastical tales and incredible guitar styles, but so harmonically complex. It’s got warmth; in plain speaking, ma’am, it’s just really very pretty, and why ask any more than that? If Eli Winter and John Fahey, William Tyler and Gwenifer Raymond are icons in your personal pantheon, then this record you oughta own; are gonna love spending time with.

Read in depth, here

Records 11-20