2021 seems to be divided in two. The first six months feel as if they belong to some other time, more like part of a long 2020. My habits reflect this division. Throughout the pandemic, my sources of solace felt intensely intimate. I felt isolated from the ordinary rhythms of life; so I held dear any moment of immediate connection and beauty. Poetry and music regularly provided me this solace. However, as 2021 wore on and life returned to this semblance of pre-pandemic life, it got a little harder for me to get swept up into these beautiful experiences for too long. Distractions and total decision exhaustion took their toll; I found myself enjoying an album but not giving it a second listen or having it on for hours without paying it any mind at all. Here are the ones that mattered to me:
Early in the year, I turned to two albums to get through some difficult times. When I listen to them now, they retain the intense charge of those days, for better and worse. The first is Josiah and the Bonnevilles’ Hotel Mayday. Putting aside for a moment my own experience with it, Hotel Mayday is a worthy entry in the tradition of trying-to-be-a-better-person folk music. For me, this album is now forever associated with a specific time and place. When I play it, I’m again on the road to Escondido, on a cold clear sunny winter afternoon, lost in that particular constellation of feelings. The second is Arlo Parks’ Collapsed in Sunbeams. I absolutely adore this album. She pulls you into her world of young love and life with all its trials and possibilities. Collapsed marries coffeehouse acoustic with trip-hop textures. It feels timeless, or perhaps more accurately, it feels ever-present.
In February, because it was mentioned in something I read, I revisited The La’s self-titled and only album, which was originally released in 1990. I thought I’d give it another go, unable to remember when and why I had decided I didn’t care for it. I was obsessed for several weeks. I still can’t put into words what I hear in it. It is idiosyncratic and wonderful, owing as much to Buddy Holly as it does to The Smiths. The Staves’ Good Woman also threads through these early months. On Good Woman, the Staveley-Taylor sisters give their harmony-driven folk flourishes of pop-sheen.
After the first few months, my listening habits started to drift. I made a lot of playlists and listened to a lot of albums, but not much stayed in my rotation for long. There are a few happy exceptions. In the lift and drag of spring, I often turned to Djourou, an album from the Malian kora-player, Ballaké Sissoko. It takes me to a place of peace and beauty. The sparse arrangements draw your attention to the beautiful ways Sissoko’s kora intertwines with each of his varied collaborators. From the world of indie folk, I loved Allison Russell’s stunning Outside Child, the self-titled album from Watchhouse (formerly known as Mandarin Orange), and José Gonzalez’s Local Valley, which is a comforting record that paints in brighter colors than his previous albums. More recently, Adia Victoria’s A Southern Gothic has caught my attention; it starts with the blues and creates something all her own. I also listened to Big Red Machine’s How long do you think it’s going to last? quite a lot. The Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) album is a community project with friends from all over the pop world (yes, including Taylor Swift) dropping in to bring life to the songs. Plenty of highlights on it, but I think the songs with Anaïs Mitchell shine the brightest.
One summer afternoon while avoiding work, I decided to explore the nominees for the 2021 Mercury Prize, the UK’s music award for the best British album of the year. The list is always interesting and eclectic and representative of the range of the UK music scene. I learn a lot whenever I check it out. While Arlo Parks deservedly took home the prize, I found several albums to love among the nominees: veteran Scottish post-rockers Mogwai’s compelling As the Love Continues; Hannah Peel’s ecology-inspired electronica, Fir Wave; and Promises, the collaborative album between Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders with the London Symphony Orchestra. Promises exists at the intersection of jazz, electronica, and symphony in a way that simultaneously feels as if it’s totally natural and unlike anything else. I won’t be surprised to see Saint Etienne’s I’ve Been Trying to Tell You and Elbow’s Flying Dream 1 on next year’s list of Mercury nominees. Saint Etienne’s album is a blissed-out, mellow affair that creates a beautiful atmosphere. And Elbow, leaning toward their quieter moments, have made an intimate album that, while only released a week ago, I suspect I’ll be returning to for a while.
The truly defining feature of my year-in-music began in January. I was having a beer with a friend on his patio talking about life and nothing, entering that rare space in which one could momentarily forget COVID and just be. My friend said he’d been thinking about listening through Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, which the magazine had recently revised in 2020. My friend likes projects, and temporarily liberated from care, I happily volunteered to listen along with him. Initial decisions were immediately made about how this would work. One album a day. Start at 1; end at 500. Skip greatest hits compilations and box sets. Etc. This turned out to be one of the better decisions I made this year. Sure, the list itself is absurd, and one can argue about placements, inclusions, and exclusions all day, but that is, I think, the point. The list’s virtue is that it created a structure to shape and motivate my listening to albums I’d never given time to and to revisit old favorites in a new context. A few new-to-me gems include Aretha Franklin’s Lady Soul, Bill Withers’ Just As I Am, The Pretenders’ self-titled LP, and just this week The Go-Gos’ amazing Beauty and the Beat. However, the best part of this whole project is the daily texts I exchange with my friend. I listen to each album thinking about how he’ll respond and looking for a way to sum up my own listening experience in a few words. I look forward to his outrage. I anticipate his shrug, “Why is this album even on the list at all?” Now around 400 albums in, I’m sad about its approaching end.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, Peter Jackson released his massive archival project, Get Back, that chronicles The Beatles’ recording of the music that would eventually become Let It Be. Clocking in at nearly eight hours, it will take me the rest of the year to make my way through it. I’m motivated though because I have a lot of affection for Let It Be and have been listening to it a lot since I caught an article on its 50th anniversary late last year. The “Super Deluxe” reissue, out this October, is a sprawling deep dive. The remix of the album itself sounds beautiful. Most of the outtakes are curiosities, worth a single listen and then put aside, but they deepen the context of the album and solidify my appreciation for it. I might not have dwelt on this here, but I recently learned that my affection for the album is having an effect on those around me. My kid told my wife the other day that “Let It Be” was his favorite song in a tone as if this was an obvious fact. Fair enough. When it comes on in the car, he goes quiet, stares out the window, and listens intently. He’s more likely to sing “One After 909,” but “Let It Be” is his favorite. I think I deserve +2 points for excellent parenting in the category of music education. Hopefully, that helps balance my parenting ledger to keep me out of the red.
Albums Mentioned:
Josiah and the Bonnevilles, Hotel Mayday
Arlo Parks, Collapsed in Sunbeams
The La’s, The La’s
The Staves, Good Woman
Allison Russell, Outside Child
Watchhouse, Watchhouse
José Gonzalez, Local Valley
Adia Victoria, A Southern Gothic
Big Red Machine, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?
Ballaké Sissoko, Djourou
Mogwai, As the Love Continues
Hannah Peel, Fir Wave
Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders, Promises
Saint Etienne, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You
Elbow, Flying Dream 1
Aretha Franklin, Lady Soul
Bill Withers, Just As I Am
The Pretenders, The Pretenders
The Go-Gos, Beauty and the Beat
The Beatles, Let It Be (Super Deluxe Edition)