I lowered the bar a little bit this month to make the playlist a more suitable length, as it seemed like the tide of new releases finally slowed up a bit as we approach the end of the year. I’ll post best of 2021 album and song lists later this month, probably the week of the 13th but possibly the week after that, depending on how busy I am with prospect calls. As always, you can find the playlist here if you can’t see the Spotify widget below.
Charli XCX featuring Christine and the Queens & Caroline Polachek – New Shapes. This is hands-down one of the best pop songs I’ve heard this year. I’m not a big Charli XCX fan, but she chose the right collaborators on this track, and each of them gets a distinctive verse to show off their vocal skills.
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak – Fly As Me. I didn’t love the Silk Sonic album as much as I expected to, but this song is a perfect mix of ’70s funk and ’80s R&B. Paak sure sounds a lot like Skee-Lo on that second verse, though.
Foals – Wake Me Up. These guys are good for one solid banger every album, but singer/guitarist Yannis Philippakis has promised that the next LP will be more rave-influenced like this track is, so gird your loins.
CHVRCHES – Screaming. The “director’s cut” of Screen Violence adds three more tracks and runs nearly an hour; this is the best of the additional songs.
The War on Drugs – Harmonia’s Dream. I Don’t Live Here Anymore is my favorite TWoD album, and it seems like the critical consensus is that it’s their best. I still think the songs are too long, but that’s just who they are. There’s just more here this time around: stronger melodies, more energy, more prominent drum and bass lines, even some better lead guitar work.
Chime School – Radical Leisure. Chime School is San Francisco musician Andy Pastalaniec, mixing jangle-pop sounds of the 1980s and some elements of Britpop. It’s sunny and bright and takes me back a few decades every time he opens a verse with “Tell me what it’s like…”
Potty Mouth – Not Going Anywhere. An ironic song title for a band that just announced they’re breaking up. At least they’re going out with a few bangers on this final EP.
Gang of Youths – tend the garden. I’ve never heard a band remind me so much of U2 without explicitly sounding like U2. There’s a little something in the singer’s laconic delivery that reminds me of Bono’s quieter moments, but otherwise I can’t pinpoint a specific connection. I’m a fan based on their last few singles.
English Teacher – Good Grief. This Leeds quartet is rather unapologetically English, with that certain style of sing-talked vocals and witty lyrics by lead singer Lily Fontaine. I’m kind of a sucker for bands like this when the lyrics are strong.
The Wombats – Everything I Love Is Going to Die. A bit morbid, I suppose, but this is how Matthew Murphy rolls.
Bob Vylan – GDP. I am not a fan of this kind of artist name, riffing on a more famous musician but changing one letter or sound, but this rap song with metal riffs behind the rhyming is actually pretty strong, and I can’t argue with the sentiment.
Frank Turner – Miranda. This song is based on the true story of Turner’s parent Miranda, who came out as transgender at the age of 72.
Bloc Party – Traps. They’re back – the band’s sixth album, Alpha Games, their first since 2016, is due out in April. “Banquet” is a forever track for me, so anything they do in that vein is right up my alley.
Yard Act – Payday. Yard Act are another of those post-punk sing-talk British bands I just can’t seem to get enough of. It doesn’t hurt when the song beneath the lyrics has a solid groove to it, and the chorus has me shouting along. “We all make the same sound when we’re mowed down” is grim, but rather well sums up our dystopian experience.
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – It Don’t Bother Me. Plant and Krauss’s second album together, Raise the Roof, came out this month … and it’s kind of tame. I was hoping for more of Krauss’s bluegrass roots to show through, but it’s a muted affair throughout.
Cate Le Bon – Moderation. I’m contractually obligated to put a Welsh artist on the playlist whenever possible. Le Bon’s sixth album, Pompeii, comes out on February 4th. Wikipedia calls her music “baroque pop;” I hear a lot of Roxy Music here.
Aeon Station – Fade. Aeon Station is three-fourths of the indie band the Wrens,butall I hear here is Arcade Fire, in a positive way.
IDLES – The Wheel. Critics love IDLES; I don’t entirely get it. I don’t hear the hooks or the energy I want from a punk band. This song, however, has all of that. I’m in by the end of the first measure.
Tony Iommi – Scent of Dark. The iconic metal guitarist returns with this menacing, instrumental doom track that always sounds like it’s about to turn into a vocal track, like there’s a verse just around the next beat, but instead it sludges forward with Iommi’s trademark detuned riffing. Not bad for a 73-year-old who’s been playing with prosthetic fingertips for a half-century. Iommi’s former band, Jethro Tull, also released a new song this past week, and Ian Anderson’s voice hasn’t held up as well as Iommi’s fret hand.
Porcupine Tree – Harridan. I assumed Porcupine Tree was done, at least as a recording act, but their eleventh album Closure/Continuation comes on next June. It’ll be the prog-rock band’s first record in 12 years. I mostly know of them through their association with Opeth; he co-produced Blackwater Park, which I would probably rank as the best metal album of all time, certainly the best extreme metal album, as well as Deliverance and Damnation, all of which showed Opeth moving in a more progressive musical direction.
Animals as Leaders – The Problem of Other Minds. This instrumental trio’s album The Joy of Motion made my top albums of 2014 list, but they’ve only released one album in the intervening seven years. This track and its B-side Monomyth (are B-sides even really a thing any more? The term seems like an anachronism) are the first from the band’s Parrhesia, due out on March 25th.
Cynic – In a Multiverse Where Atoms Sing. Another band I assumed was through, with co-founder Sean Reinert and longtime bassist Sean Malone dying in 2020, although Reinert had left Cynic in 2015. Anyway, Cynic just released Ascension Codes, its first album in seven years, last week. It’s just their fourth album in over 30 years under the name, with singer-guitarist Paul Masvidal the only remaining founding member.
Mastodon – Sickle and Peace. Hushed and Grim cameout early in November and it’s a mammoth record, running almost an hour and a half, with some incredible guitar work and huge changes in style and tone. I almost went with “Gobblers of Dregs,” but that track is eight and a half minutes long, and I prefer the guitar riff in this song anyway.
Toundra – El Odio, Parte II. One more instrumental metal track to wrap things up this month, this one another monster track from this Spanish metal act, whose sixth album Hex comes out on January 14th.