Best Albums Of 2021

I loved Lord Huron’s album, Long Lost. Great melodies. Easy to listen to. I played it a lot in the house. This album never got old for me. I can turn it on any time, any day, and love it.

One of my favorite albums of the year is Sons Of Kemet, Black To The Future. Track one is great, but it’s an outlier sonically, so get to at least track 2 before you judge it. It’s ska, jazz, traditional african, hip hop -- all mixed up in a really fresh and appealing package. I’ve never heard anything quite like it.

One of the best albums of the year is Low’s Hey What. As I said in an earlier email, I was lukewarm on it until Hunter told me to give it another chance and it honestly blew me away when I returned to it. It’s just unreal that this band is still pushing boundaries at this stage of their career. This album is both beautiful and jarring. It's a total original too, which is rare.

Surprisingly, to me, I loved the Killers album, Pressure Machine. I haven’t even listened to any of their albums since Sam’s Town and I had sort of forgotten they existed. Pressure Machine is about Brandon Flowers's small hometown in Utah. It’s about broken marriages, struggling with poverty, drugs, and reconciling an idealized religious optimism with being left behind economically and socially. Track 2 is pretty terrible, so skip that one. The rest is either pretty good or great.

I also loved the Floating Points / Pharoah Sanders album Promises. It’s a very weird mix of a symphony orchestra, a free jazz saxophone, and some ambient elements. I think it’s brilliant.

Damien Jurado’s The Monster Who Hates Pennsylvania is excellent, I think. If I remember correctly, I'm the only Jurado fan here so YMMV, but I really like it.

My daughter forced me to listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s album and I’m really glad she did. I think it’s fantastic. So much heartbreak! So much teen angst! I love it.