2021 was a spectacularly immense year for music. It felt like all of the bands who weren’t able to tour last year spent 2020 writing and recording new albums. Then this year, they released them.
With such a flood of new music, it’s worth noting that almost every year end list I’ve seen looks entirely different. Many publications that I could usually predict with decent accuracy (NPR, Pitchfork, etc) listed dozens of albums that I never even heard of. I listened to more music this year than ever before, but I’ve never been so aware of what I was missing. Many albums that I would have/should have liked were released to widespread acclaim (i.e., Quicksand, Every Time I Die, Low, Maybeshewill, Failure, the list goes on) and yet I watched them go by, my attention already stretched to its limits.
In any case, here are the records that really grabbed me this year.
A few months ago, I realized that despite years of guest features, tours with bands I love, and general cultural osmosis, I had never actually knowingly listened to Manchester Orchestra.