We haven’t done the whole Year End List thing for a while, but last year decided to do a list of our favourite songs from 2020 that we failed to cover. It seemed like a good way to share some of the things we loved but for whatever reason didn’t write about, and was hopefully something more constructive than the arbitrary rankings of most Year End lists.
We decided to expand things slightly this year, giving ourselves a chance to write a little something about the albums we wanted to cover but never got the opportunity. Albums which meant something to us at various points through 2021. The list was still incomplete, of course, and we were left with a big list of great songs from great records we didn’t get a chance to mention.
So here are some songs we really enjoyed in 2021. We hope you enjoy them too.
Arooj Aftab – Mohabbat
A take on a piece by Hafeez Hoshiarpuri, Aftab’s multilayered masterpiece is suffused with the patience, sadness and meditative inner wandering of Sufi devotional poetry.
Anjimile – Stranger
As fragile as sandstone, tougher than rock, ‘Stranger’ packages a nuanced assessment of identity as a folk pop hit of which Sufjan would be proud.
Bea Troxel – Getting Where
An empowered anthem for the introverted, slowly circling towards a more truthful self.
Ben Seretan – Cicada Waves 1
Measured and patient piano embedded within an organic field recording, ‘Cicada Waves 1’ plays like a slow day passing in all its quiet details, all its hidden weight.
The Bird Calls – Ritual Crash
With satellites falling from the sky and the burning underworld breaking the surface, ‘Ritual Crash’ presented the most tender, intimate end of the world you were likely to hear in the year of our Lord 2021.
Bria – Buffalo Ballet
Travel to Abilene, TX with this take on John Cale’s “European version of the Old West,” from an EP of covers that both subverts and celebrates country music.
BRNDA – Perfect World
Stable job, accolades, friendly dogs and affirmation. “You’re in the perfect world and doing ok,” sings Leah Gage, voice flat and sardonic as the track eventually tips sideways and falls into an unhinged sax outro.
Canary Room – Lake Effect
Bittersweet folk captured in its best setting, supported by warm lo-fi textures and an ambient embrace of birdsong.
Carson McHone – Hawks Don’t Share
The lid peeled off artistic collaboration, showing the tug of war tension underneath, as well as the lingering regret that results.
Daniel Davies – Spies
On streets as dark and foreboding as this, the question isn’t whether you are paranoid, but whether you are paranoid enough.
Doran – Old Moon
A new song cut from ancient cloth, like a small scrap torn from the drape of the heavens and earth and old moon itself.
Dusted – Not Offering
“I have given up. I’ve given enough,” Brian Borcherdt sings on this tender lesson in regret and letting go. “I was so sure. So it goes, I am not anymore.”
Etran de L’Aïr – Toubouk Ine Chihoussay
A suitably joyous number from Agadez’s premier wedding band, drawing you into its infectious momentum.
Fog Lake – jitterbug
A typically aching and overcast pop song from the master of them.
Frances Chang – eros the love creator dividing chaos
Cosmic spoken word which finds universes within interiors, a daydream transportation away from these sorry lands.
Fust – The Last Days
A song for hard times made warm by the fundamental fondness gained only through shared suffering.
JOHN – A Military Alphabet (five eyes all blind) / Job’s Lament / First of the Last Glaciers / where we break how we shine (ROCKETS FOR MARY)
Some latent thing awoken by our way of living, rising in the name of revenge.
Heka – (a) wall
Anger simmered down to a velvety caramel, coating the tongue on a slow walk through nocturnal alleys.
Hilary Woods – I
One of Hilary Wood’s wordless hymns, to be sung in dark chapels deep underground.
illuminati hotties – Pool Hopping
Working on the logic that slowing down might equal admitting truths or figuring things out, ‘Pool Hopping’ grabs you by the hand and runs.
Indigo De Souza – Pretty Pictures
“I’m always trying to embody a balance between the existential weight and the overflowing sense of love I feel in the world,” Indigo De Souza explains, capturing the bummed-out brightness better than we ever could.
Johanna Samuels – Sonny
With its long shadows and golden light, it’s not clear whether the sun is dawning or setting on ‘Sonny’, but it heralds a new day nonetheless.
JOHN (TIMESTWO) – Return to Capital / Šibensko Powerhouse
The reek of ozone as thunderheads slowly gather / The unleashing of the storm. “I see an opening in the sky, high, wide.”
Keith Secola – Intaglio
Just one of the portals on Keith Secola’s latest record. Looking to the heavens, rooted to the ground, tied to everything in between.
Lael Neale – Blue Vein
“Guardian angel / Gather my losses / Keep them all safe / ‘Til I come to my cross”
Le Ren – Dyan
As warm as a mother’s hand, with all the clarity of an empty room.
Lewsberg – The Corner
Perfectly minimal, just guitar, percussion, and incense-scented violin. All backed up by monologue-like vocals that ring with pure patience.
Loretta’s Museum – The Rodney Ave Garage Sale
Instrumental folk and the ambient sounds of a garage sale combine to evoke one of those perfect glittery springtime days when the sky is blue and the leaves are green and the sun isn’t yet too hot to bear.
Lucie, Too – スーパームーン Super moon
A slice of big, radio-ready indie pop from a Japanese duo that seem destined to blow up.
Mal Devisa – Deja playing guitar
With slow guitar and lilting rhythm, a track which isolates the tenderness and patience within loneliness, yearning for connection with plainspoken charm
Marie/Lepanto – Gramps and Grandma
Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster on reliably emotive form with the picture of familial love and heartbreak, and Jason Isbell shows up to shred some guitar for good measure.
Maxine Funke – Quiet Shore
A quiet meditation on the mundane aspects of a traumatic moment (a tea tray, a snatched umbrella, a slammed door) that illustrates the potency of memory and how a whisper is often louder than a shout.
Merpire – Heavy Feeling
Has an anxiety attack ever felt so cathartic?
Midwife – God is a Cop
“Am I heartless, or am I soft?” The pressing question at the heart of a track suspended between earnest confession and violent conflagration.
Myriam Gendron – Poor Girl Blues
Gendron combines a traditional Québecois folk song with an old blues one to distil their shared meaning, a lament for the lost, lonely and displaced.
Ovlov – Baby Shea
A 97 second eulogy to Brooklyn’s Shea Stadium played at breakneck pace.
Quivers – Gutters of Love
Ageless Aussie pop that’s a little bit 80s, a little bit 2010s, and a whole lot of joyous reassurance that heartbreak passes and things will be just fine.
Reiko and Tori Kudo – The Deep Valley of Shadow
A soft soliloquy on isolation grows quietly unsettling as warped strings whisper at the edges like anxious thoughts.
Sand Duney – Shadow Outside
Ramshackle country-tinged psych pop built on layered backing tracks thats equal parts meditative and energetic.
Space Mountain – Night Sky
A slacker jam.
Spread Joy – Kanst Du
Just one no wave pop nugget from a record that’s full of them, like pulling a weird sweet and sour German candy from a bag of pick ‘n mix.
Talons’ – Vampire
Talons’ tackle the experience of living through the pandemic in typically raw fashion, centring on an anxiety dream of being maskless in ALDI “between the meat, the fake meat and the gluten-free.”
Tiny Deserts – Wild Mt. Thyme
This beautifully unfussy and intimate take on an old Scots/Irish folk song captures that uniquely summertime feeling where the slow sunny evenings feel at once sorrowful and jubilant.
Trace Mountains – Eyes on the Road
The sound of a late-night self-reckoning while flying down the highway
TV Priest – Lifesize
A slurred and snarling assault on the patriarchal “strongmen” of politics and culture.
Typhoon – We’re In It
A band known for orchestral maximalism hone things to a razor edge in this emotional gut-punch on isolation, drifting friendship and, ultimately, persisting.
Valley Palace – Patch
Sky-blue guitar pop washed in hazy nostalgia that will have you dreaming of summer.
Weakened Friends – Quitter
A very nineties marriage of confession and catharsis, confronting fears over life’s direction by attaching heart to sleeve and blazing on ahead.
World Record Winner – Pockets of Nature
An honest-to-goodness ode to the joy of rooting around in the dirt and leaf litter away from worries and cares.
Wormy – Hungry Ghost (feat. Samia)
A whirlwind tour through the banal and heartbreaking details of life, gathering enough momentum to convince yourself everything might just be alright.
Yellow Ostrich – Timothy
“What’s a man? I’m just as soft as I can be” sings Alex Schaaf on this rumination on connection and the fallacies of masculinity.
If you enjoyed anything on this list, you may also be interested in our list of albums we missed in 2021. And of course, there were lots of amazing songs that we did write about in the last year, so have a look back through our Reviews and Previews sections to find more.