Favorite Vocal Albums of 2021
I am no longer pretending that my year-end list contains the "best" of 2021. And I’m certainly not going to impose a narrative on my list that imagines my personal taste somehow magically reflects the current zeitgeist. But these albums are good, and favorites of mine, and are how I will remember the year.
1. Anthony Joseph: The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives (Heavenly Sweetness)
A Trinidadian living in England, Anthony Joseph collaborates with the cream of England's new generation of jazzers (including Shabaka Hutchings) for a moody and profound album of keenly observed and emotionally devastating poems with music that is great on every level. My college friend Andy Long passed along this song and the Pitchfork review of this album because he thought I would like it. That's what friends are for.
2. Liz Phair: Soberish (Chrysalis)
Phair's first album in eleven years is a return to form. She has long been adept at penning lyrics that conceal depths of psychological insight behind seeming simplicity and then wedding them to music that is insistently catchy or disturbingly moody; Soberish contains some of her best examples of each.
3. Irreversible Entanglements: Open the Gates (International Anthem)
Poet Moor Mother and her jazzy friends gave us another stunning album. How long before some Republicans scream "Critical Race Theory" and try to get it banned from libraries because it makes them feel bad? The words make me think about others' experiences, which is what libraries are for sharing, so I hope this LP ends up in lots of libraries. And the grooves make me feel good, so I will be deejaying this.
4. Sandhya: Innocent Monster (s/r)
It has become easier this century for non-full-time musicians to get their music out into the world, and the second solo release by this Baltimore-based singer/pianist is one of the greatest examples I've heard. Sometimes the songs are complex and jazzy, sometimes throwbacks to '70s rock, often packed full of clever lyrics but sometimes devastating pronouncements. Here's hoping Sandhya (who released an earlier, jazzier album as Sandy Asirvatham and also co-fronted a jazz version of Dark Side of the Moon) can find her way to releasing albums more frequently than one per decade.
5. Vision Video: Inked in Red (s/r)
When I first heard "In My Side" on a Spotify Coldwave/Post-Punk playlist, I assumed this was decades old. Nope, this is the debut album from an Athens, GA quartet. Many tracks have a classic male/female harmony vocal thing going on. Goth lives!
6. Blue Orchids: Speed the Day (Tiny Global)
Tiny Global does a great job of documenting the nooks and crannies of England's underground bands. Blue Orchids are justly one of their better-known acts, led by Martin Bramah (ex-The Fall). The great melodic psychedelic post-punk here includes a dark cover of Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4."
7. Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime (Matador)
This Toareg singer/guitarist (born Mahamadou Souleymane) has been known to aficionados of the style but didn’t break out until Matador surprisingly issued his fifth studio album. Fans of Tinariwen and elliptical guitar solos will dig this.
8. NTsKi: Orca (Orange Milk/EM)
Imagine a Japanese hybrid of FKA twigs, Bjork, and The xx and you'll have an idea of the sparse-arrangement/wispy-vocals aesthetic operating here, but even that only hints at the delicacy of this Kyoto-based artist who's been releasing singles for a few years but waited until 2021 to make a full-length album.
9. Tori Amos: Ocean to Ocean (Decca)
There's supposed to be a concept to this album, but I haven't discerned it. Doesn't matter to me, since I'm sufficiently enchanted by the textures -- most of all her distinctive vocal stylings, of course, but also the richness of the arrangements.
10. Too Much Joy: Mistakes Were Made (People Suck)
My favorite reunion of 2021. Their hooky and humorous punk-pop has always amused; now, older and perhaps a tad wiser, under the humor is a deep layer of Everyman empathy.
11. Juliana Hatfield: Blood (American Laundromat)
Hatfield has put together a hugely underestimated solo career over the past three decades. A recent proclivity for artist-themed tribute albums aside, her work has been getting musically grittier and more lyrically challenging the whole time, culminating (or not; she's fully capable of topping this on her next album) in this hook-filled album full of words vehemently rejecting every major pop-song trope.
EPs
1. Schola Cantorum/Hörður Áskelsson: Kom Vinur: Two Choral Works (Sono Luminus)
This ten-minute CD contains two absolutely gorgeous choral works by Icelandic composer María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir (who has played with Sigur Rós). She expertly deploys dissonance to lush effect via expert voice-leading.
2. Lycia: Casa Luna (Lycium/Avantgarde)
Longtime darkwave faves Lycia have been putting out a new album about every three years since their 2010 reactivation, and made this new music with John Fair back for the second straight release alongside founder Mike VanPortfleet and long-time members Tara VanFlower and David Galas. Dreamy and on the richer-textured end of their spectrum, Casa Luna is everything fans could hope for.
3. Tong Tong: Tong Tong Greatest Hits (Sasanoha)
An unexpected side of Ayumi Ishito: a loving parody of/tribute to '90s Japanese kawaii synth-pop in the persona of Tong Tong, a female singing panda. It’s goofy and charming and hilarious but also, even with deliberately "pitchy" vocals, full of brilliant earworms.
Biggest Disappointment
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Barn (Reprise)
I have been a huge Neil Young fan since the day in the mid-'70s when I bought On the Beach stupidly thinking that an album with that title would include a song I'd liked on the radio, "Cowgirl in the Sand." Duh. (Still, what an amazing introduction to his eccentric musical vision!) But his lyrics in the past two decades show him moving far from the enticingly poetic grace of his classic material in favor of bluntly preachy diatribes, banality, and frequent, heavy-handed deployment of country/farming tropes, while his fetishizing of first-take freshness has here descended into lazy sloppiness. Not until the penultimate track, "Welcome Back," does some of the old magic return, and the closing "Don't Forget Love" continues the uptick in quality -- but not enough to save this largely shoddy album.
Conflict of interest section:
Here I breach the great taboo of journalism: I promote my own work. The next five albums I issued on ESP-Disk'. But I put them out because I like them, not the other way around, and they really are favorites that I’m still listening to for pleasure months after I put them out.
ATTITUDE!: Pause and Effect (ESP-Disk')
Whether mercilessly skewering racist and sexist attitudes or celebrating activism, Rose Tang pulls no punches; instrumentally, playing slide guitar in a style that recalls some post-punk/no-wave exemplars, or acoustic piano in a side-long ruminative free-jazz improvisation, she exhibits instinctual musicality (she also adds a little tuned percussion). Her instrumental partners, prolific saxophonist Ayumi Ishito and versatile drummer Wen-Ting Wu, add edgy textures and rhythms that accent Tang's poetic fervor.
Bridge of Flowers: A Soft Day's Night (ESP-Disk')
The unique lyrical vision of frontman Jeff Gallagher drives this band, but the other members of the quartet are also crucial to a sound unusual even by underground indie-rock standards. It’s sort of like David Berman fronting a harmolodic version of the Velvet Underground; guitar parts sometimes suggest a sort of non-Euclidean musical geometry of unexpected polytonality.
OPTO S: Human Indictive/Live (ESP-Disk')
Something of a Brooklyn supergroup, with all three members in multiple other bands, including the great Pelvi$. The mix of synth, bass, guitar, and drums may be noisy and a bit Suicidal, but there are hooks galore. I compiled this LP from two lo-fi concert recordings, so there's no unnecessary studio sheen, just exactly what you'll hear if you go see them play one of their killer sets.
William Parker: Patricia Nicholson: No Joke! (ESP-Disk')
Like other albums on several sections of this list, No Joke! is unapologetically political, facing down injustice and inequality and other "in"s with artistic integrity and "outside" music. There are those who say there's not good protest music coming out lately; I say that it's being deliberately marginalized by the media.
The Red Microphone: And I Became of the Dark (ESP-Disk')
TRM added guitarist Dave Ross to its roster and went into the studio with Ivan Julian (guitarist of punk icons Richard Hell & the Voidoids). A few other veterans of the downtown NYC jazz scene joined in to help accompany the provocative, political poetry of John Pietaro, who doubles on voice and drums.