Top Albums of 2021
It’s January here at Do You Know What I Love The Most?, and that means it’s time to sum up the last 12 months with Year End Lists! I’ll be devoting the rest of this month to rounding up and discussing the various media released in 2021 that meant the most to me — just like every other website on the internet! Isn’t that special?
Today it’s time for my favorite list of all: my top albums of the year! I know, I know, I usually save this one for last, and I skipped over books and movies, but those are a bit less urgent — I still actually wanted to get this list out in January, and part of that is because rounding up my top albums of the year is such an important tradition for me. 2021 was another strange year for me for music, not just because of the pandemic; throughout most of the year there were really only 4 new albums I listened to consistently, and those four will essentially be tied for first place at the end of this list. That said, there’s plenty of excellent new records to explore this year, and quite a few grew on me throughout the last few months of the year as I put together my 2021 Playlist.
As always, this list is subjective, based on my own taste in music and off of the 49 new releases I sampled this year; if you want something a bit more expansive or objective, I get it, but I like what I like and that’s pretty much that. Like last year, I’m not numbering my choices, but you can generally assume that the further down the list you get, the more I like the album, even if two albums right next to each other on the list aren’t necessarily better or worse than the other.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me. Hope you can find something here to enjoy, cause I love these records.
Dan Campbell — Other People's Lives
I genuinely consider Dan Campbell, of The Wonder Years and Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties fame, to be the best songwriter of my generation. The man’s just a tremendous storyteller, and those talents are front-and-center on his first solo full length, Other People’s Lives. This record began life as a series of commissions, songs created specifically for fans based off the details of their lives and relationships, so while every song owes a huge debt to their inspirations, Campbell also imbues each with his own personal touch, using pet themes like flowers, weather, and specific locations to bring each song’s unique story to lush, vivid life. Each song is a window into a different relationship, a different life, and those windows are just so damn romantic. This is an album that’s left me poring over liner notes and lyrics to learn more, and reduced me to tears as I saw myself in “In Love in Various Rooms.” What more could you want from a collection of songs?
Highlights: In Love in Various Rooms, My Break in the Rain, Flight No. 5
Turnstile — GLOW ON
How do I even begin to sum up GLOW ON in just one paragraph? Turnstile has somehow become the biggest band in hardcore — a genre entrenched in aggression and a sound that hasn’t evolved since the 80s — by embracing change and joy. There’s still the screams, the aggressive guitars, but there’s also slow parts, electronic flourishes, drums straight out of calypso songs; there’s a sense of “anything goes,” “let’s just try this cause it seems fun” to the songs on GLOW ON that’s just such a refreshing change of pace. Lyrically and musically these songs are a bit of an enigma, songs that feel more like haikus than stories, songs that zig when you’re expecting them to zag, and it’s absolutely fascinating to experience. GLOW ON isn’t just fun in the moment; the songs stick with you in unexpected ways.
Highlights: MYSTERY, T.L.C. (TURNSTILE LOVE CONNECTION), UNDERWATER BOI
Save Face — Another Kill For The Highlight Reel
If there’s one thing I admire about Save Face, it’s their ambition. Their first record, 2018’s Merci, was a multi-medium concept album, and singer/lyricist Tyler Povanda has said that for a while he didn’t think there would be a follow-up because he wasn’t inspired, because he didn’t want to make an album just for the sake of making an album. Clearly, inspiration struck in the form of Another Kill For the Highlight Reel, a record indebted to the legacy of My Chemical Romance and their love of the theatrical. Save Face turned every dial up to 11 while making this record; it’s got massive hooks like the best pop-punk, a sense of theatric drama like the best musical theater, and most important of all, it’s got an aesthetic it never wavers from for even a moment, using bloody imagery surrounding death and murder as metaphors to explore loss, regret, and revenge in really compelling ways. There’s unfortunately a few moments where Povanda’s powerhouse voice gets buried by the production and the sheer amount of stuff going on in these songs, but otherwise the ambition of Highlight Reel has made it an album not only worth checking out, but worth returning to over and over.
Highlights: GLITTER, A Song For Your Futile Heart, Bury Me (Tonight)
Hurry — Fake Ideas
Hurry’s music is the perfect soundtrack for taking a long walk on a beautiful spring day, the kind of music that makes everything feel a little bit calmer, and just a little bit better. Their latest effort, Fake Ideas, is a record chock-full of melody, of almost hypnotic bass lines, of guitar solos that shred more than they have any right to. There’s a real sense of introspection and nostalgia buried within its bittersweet lyrics, with songs like “Slogging Through Summer” transporting you back to your childhood or songs like “A Fake Idea” making you reconsider why you feel the way you do about anything, but it all goes down easy thanks to singer Matt Scottoline’s soothing, gentle voice. Fake Ideas may also be Hurry’s most varied album to date, exploring their full potential as a band even within their power-pop niche, including their very first full-on punk song (“Doomsday”)! It’s a damn good record, and more than worth taking the time to let it sooth you over and transport you somewhere new.
Highlights: Slogging Through Summer, Doomsday, A Fake Idea
Descendents — 9th & Walnut
9th & Walnut isn’t just a new album, it’s a “new old” album, and that’s incredibly exciting for Descendents fans. 9th & Walnut took unfinished, never-before-heard recordings from the Descendents’ original 70s line-up and released them into the world with new vocals from legendary singer Milo Auckerman, making this an event that will never again be replicated in the band’s history. Much of this record consists of the kind of fun, straightforward pop-punk the Descendents excel in, but its most fascinating tracks are the ones where you can see a band still in evolution, songs that bring in different styles or even just more youthful lyrics beckoning back to the teenagers they were when these songs were originally written. 9th & Walnut is the best combination of both modern and classic era Descendents — what a treat!
Highlights: Mohicans, I’m Shaky, It’s My Hair
Justin Courtney Pierre — An Anthropologist on Mars (EP)
Motion City Soundtrack frontman Justin Courtney Pierre was prolific in 2021, releasing three solo EPs. While the latter two got a bit too experimental for my taste, drifting away from Pierre’s wheelhouse in ways that didn’t appeal to me, An Anthropologist On Mars is practically perfect in every way. All five tracks are absolute bangers, full of fast guitar, fun synth, and the kind of witty, introspective, self-deprecating, and intensely relatable lyrics that are Pierre’s calling card. Each song has at least one stand-out moment that sets them apart, with special credit going to the call-and-respond bridge of “Footsteps.” Most full length albums can’t make the kind of impression on me that An Anthropologist on Mars does in just 13 minutes, and that’s quite a feat.
Highlight: I Hate Myself
We Are The Union — Ordinary Life
There’s a somewhat paradoxical truism I’ve found when it comes to lyrics: the more specific they are to the songwriter’s experience, the more relatable they become to listeners. I don’t know if that’s ever been more true than it is on Ordinary Life, an album that serves as We Are The Union’s singer/lyricist Reade Wolcott’s coming out as a trans woman. The record digs deep into her experiences with dysphoria, with coming out, with the fears of what she’d have to leave behind to live the life she wants, and even with her ADHD and other struggles with mental health in ways that are intensely personal and yet also intensely relatable; I’m not trans, but I see so much of myself in these songs, especially in the astounding closing track “December,” which eloquently captures the unsustainability of life in the closet and the bittersweetness of having to kill a part of yourself in order to become who you’ve always been meant to be. The fact that this Ordinary Life is also one of the catchiest, best-produced ska-punk albums out there, period, is just the icing on the cake.
Highlights: December, Ordinary Life, Morbid Obsessions
Cheekface — Emphatically No
Emphatically No is Cheekface’s best collection of songs yet. I’ve described Cheekface to friends as “punk rock Cake,” and the comparison certainly tracks in when it comes to their practically spoken-word vocals and bass-heavy music, but also when it comes to their senses of humor, with Cheekface filling each and every song with silly, subversive tongue-in-cheek witticisms. Some tracks are just fun, while others are fun and relevant, taking our greatest fears about the world around us and making them something that, even if only for just a few moments, we can laugh at and dance to. Emphatically No was consistently a source of joy throughout a difficult year, and I’ll always appreciate that.
Highlights: “Listen to Your Heart.” “No.”, Best Life, Don’t Get Hit by a Car
Tiger's Jaw — I Won't Care How You Remember Me
I was lucky enough to see Tiger’s Jaw perform this album live from front to back in October, and that incredible show drove one fact home for me: I love every single song on I Won’t Care How You Remember Me. This record finds Brianna Collins taking on a larger singing/songwriting role with the band than ever before, and her heavenly voice plays a pivotal role in its success (it’s practically revelatory when paired with the unusually upbeat guitar of album-highlight “Cat’s Cradle”); together, she and other lead singer Benjamin Walsh also create some absolutely gorgeous harmonies. While previous Tiger’s Jaw albums sometimes had a tendency to get a bit sleepy, droney, or repetitive after a while, every track on Remember Me feels urgent and has something unique to offer; Teddy Robert’s propulsive drum beats are especially noteworthy, as my air-drumming can attest to. The lyrics have this observant perspective I’m so jealous of, pin-pointing with devastating clarity where a relationship went wrong (“Commit”) or the way an ex has changed beyond recognition (“Body Language”). This is just, hands down, Tiger’s Jaw’s best album, I will hear no debate.
Highlights: Cat’s Cradle, Body Language, Commit
The Dirty Nil — Fuck Art
Fuck Art pulls off this really neat trick where it usually has something interesting to say, yet never takes itself too seriously, undercutting its own points without ever invalidating them. Album opener “Doom Boy” is this tongue-in-cheek jab at hardcore/metal guys looking for girls who “like Turnstile” to take on dates in their mom’s Dodge Caravan, yet it also indulges in some truly gnarly hardcore riffs; “Done With Drugs” plays its message entirely straight, even while having no real reason for giving drugs up other than just being bored and looking for new things to do (like origami or jujitsu); “Elvis ‘77” claims that the greatest downside of fame is not calling your mama enough. There’s just this off-kilter perspective to all these songs that I find fun and fascinating in equal measure, all perfectly complimented by the actual music itself. I often call Dirty Nil frontman Luke Bentham the last true rock star, and while his showmanship shines brightest in their live shows and music videos, it certainly carries over into the actual tunes themselves; these songs shred, plain and simple. This is just a damn good rock and roll album, the type of which you don’t see all that often anymore. Thank god we have the Dirty Nil keeping the flame alive.
Highlights: Done With Drugs, Doom Boy, Possession
Do You Know What I Love the Most’s “Best Of 2021” series:
2021: A Playlist
Top 10 Newsletters of 2021
Top Television of 2021
Top Comics of 2021 (Part 1)
Top Comics of 2021 (Part 2)
Top Albums of 2021
My Books of 2021
My Movies of 2021
And for more, check out last year’s “Best of 2020” series!:
Top 10 Newsletters of 2020
Top Television, Podcasts, and Movies of 2020
Top Books and Comics of 2020
Let’s Talk About Substack
2020: A Playlist
Top Albums of 2020
Previous “Top Album” Lists:
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!