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

The Notwist – Vertigo Days (Morr Music)

What we said: The record as a whole shows expansion. There are instrumental moments of grounding, and you can feel their history as a band. There are moments that are driving and big, dynamic and interesting…scoring films will do that to your songwriting. Yet despite the openness and exploration, a singularity to the band can be found in the vocals; listening to the melodies on “Where You Find Me” felt like it did when I was a teenager. Don’t get me wrong, The Notwist can do it alone, but sometimes it pays to have a little help from your friends.

Check it out, here

Nubiyan Twist – Freedom Fables (Strut)

We said: The Leeds/London collective fuse soul, jazz and global styles with uplifting accomplishment. There’s a joyful complexity in the musicianship which would be indulgent and irksome if it weren’t so purposeful and energising. Shot through with moments of hip hop, Latin, jazz and UK soul, the nine tracks on Freedom Fables defy you not to be optimistic, and – for the most part – not to dance.

Freedom Fables feels like quite the night out. It doesn’t just conjure up the gig we need and deserve. It brings a promise of the summer we need; the summer we deserve. 

Paper Kites – Roses (Nettwerk)

We said: The Australian folk/indie pop band The Paper Kites are musical icons and in ‘Roses’, their fifth album, they have crafted a breathtakingly beautiful album that has an indelible sheen and stature. This is a band that is simply getting better every release, and in this release the boundaries have been further extended by a coterie of exquisite and perfectly chosen female guest singers from around the globe.

The bedrock of the album are songs that ring like a clear bell – melodic, gentle and mesmerising filled with delicate mostly acoustic instrumentation that shimmers and glows. There is a gentleness and thoughtfulness that even on the most upbeat tracks – like the chiming ‘Steal My Heart Away – shine through like beams of sunlight in a darkened room.

The full review appears here

Peggy Seeger – First Farewell (Red Grape Music)

What we said: What is as clear as ever from this album, and from speaking to Peggy about it, is the she remains as passionate an advocate for change through music as she ever has and she has produced a gem of an album that will make any day better and more optimistic, and a bit more playful.

Read the whole thing, here, and an interview with Peggy, here

Penelope Isles – Which Way To Happy (Bella Union)

We said: Which Way To Happy is sprawling and multi-coloured and really, really big, though ultimately hugely friendly – maybe like the creatures from Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are made music and seen through an acid prism. It keeps coming at you in waves, floods your senses, in the best way; it’s not a shy record, not content to be modest. It has every colour of paint imaginable and it wants to action paint now, now, now. Actually, it also has rather a lot of that effortless pop purity of St Etienne, meeting a rawer, more sprawling American psych vibe. And really, I can’t quickly name a British guitar band who’ve successfully engaged with that level of dayglo ambition. On this trajectory, don’t bet against the day when they produce the kinda record that vies for a perfect ten. For now, have a quiet marvel at this.

Read it in full, here

Pom Poko – Cheater (Bella Union)

What we said: The pacing of the album is incredible also; something that I think a lot of musician’s fail to get a grasp with. Rather than load the front end of the album with everything and then tailing off at the end, it would appear the band have sat down and decided to map out where they want to take their listeners. 

Give everyone a moment of self-reflection? Great – let’s lift everyone again. That’s what marks a great album from a good album.

My biggest hope is people don’t sleep on this, because that would be criminal. Cheater is easily going to be in your end-of-year algorithm when that time comes.

Read the review as a whole, here

Poppy Ackroyd – Pause (One Little Independent)

We said: This album has a simple-yet-complicated purity and glimmer, worthy perhaps of Lennon’s Steinway on that endless white carpet in the “Imagine” video. Clear, airy, nuclear in the home and hearth sense, diaristic, it reminds me in effect and conceptual approach of saxophonist Samuel Sharp’s Patterns Various from February; they both zero in on the wonder and the beauty of the small things and espouse what I suppose we might now call a certain small-E Englishness, very much filled with a spirit of place and time in which they were written. It’s a lovely and meditative record, and if simple beauty executed with depth and talent and hard work move you, you should own it.

Read more, here

Portico Quartet – Monument (Gondwana)

It does seem that the broad sweep of electronic music has been having a moment recently. Maybe during the imposed solitude of the COVID period people took more time to listen, explore and uncover the emotional range disguised by hasty labelling. Perhaps the musicians themselves escaped the constraints of the cerebral and technical and, like the rest of us, broke out of lock down desperate to re-connect. ‘Monument’ in its bold, unashamed realisation is very much music of this moment. To cut to the chase- it’s a corker.

Read our thoughts, here

Quivers – Golden Doubt (Spunk / Ba Da Bing / Bobo Intregral)

We said: Golden Doubt has all the hallmarks of classic antipodean indie pop: celestial melodies, chiming guitars, swooning strings, heavenly melodies and vaulting choruses, all delivered with a lyrical poetry that has an indelible glow.

Read the whole thing, here

Richard Dawson & Circle – Henki (Weird World / Domino)

We said: Think of those records inspired by plants…Stevie’s sprawling ‘Journey Through The Secret Life of’, Edgar Froese’s pondering on ‘Epsilon in Malaysian Pale’, Genesis hailing a ‘Return of the Giant Hogweed’ or maybe the Cocteau’s glistening ‘Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops’. Judged sublime or ridiculous depends on your starting point but one thing is clear, the mix of botany and beat music is not an entirely natural field to cultivate. Then along comes Henki, the new album on Weird World/Domino from our treasured troubadour Richard Dawson and revered Finnish heavies Circle, a release that arrives with the strapline ‘the greatest flora themed hypno- folk- metal record you’ll hear this year’. 

For more, click here

Records 81-90