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Pointed lyrics: Yard Act, featuring frontman James Smith
Debut album: Following various singles including Fixer Upper, a set of newer sharp, funny, talky, wordy and witty post-punk-funk debut LP by the Leeds quartet, filled with ironic observation about Britishness, echoing some delivery elements of the Fall and Sleaford Mods
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Elvis Costello’s classic sound on The Boy Named If
New album: Classic Costello, with a vigorous new LP that rolls back the years, recalling all the the sharp, fast, clever punk-pop of the late-70s, 80s and 90s albums with the Attractions, including old friends Steve Nieve on keyboards and Pete Thomas on drums
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Niffit’s debut album Fuse
Debut album: Fabulous crash-bang post-punk from the Japanese underground scene in this debut LP by the quartet from Nagoya with stop-start rhythms, sharp, gunslinging guitar riffs and witty, shouty vocals that unleash a ball of electric energy
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Favourite selection part 2.
Favourite albums of 2021 – Part 2: Welcome the second instalment, following Part 1, which can be found here. A huge number of excellent releases, of which again this is just a selection many of which were written during, and about lockdown, but also saw many outstanding voices emerge as well as innovative sounds developed
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Take your pick. Are your favourites here? Also check out Part 2 coming soon.
Favourite albums of 2021, part 1: Another difficult year for everyone, but from soul and jazz, electro-pop the experimental and avant-garde, an outstanding one for music releases, perhaps in part because out of diversity comes great art. Also feel free to explore Part 2, which is now available to view here.
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Deap Vally’s Lindsay Troy and Julie Edwards
New album: Full of feisty swagger, and rich, fuzzy guitar grit, the Los Angeles pair of Lindsay Troy and Julie Edwards return for a fourth album of rock-rich irony, fun, sweary sneering, sex-talk, anger and meaty riffs, and one of best yet
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IDLES return with their fourth album, CRAWLER
New album: ‘Are you ready for the storm'?’ There is much expected blood and thunder in the fourth LP by the Bristol band, but also an expanded range of sounds, feelings, painful, angry and tender moments in this viscerally brilliant new work themed around addiction
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Geese’s debut album Projector
New album: Dynamic and brilliantly experimental debut LP by the very promising young post-punk Brooklyn band brimming with intricate guitars, changes of pace, vaulting from the abstract to the intimate
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Sympathy For Life by Parquet Courts
New album: After 2018’s acclaimed LP Wide Awake!, the Brooklyn band return with a sharp collection of post-punk intermingled with dance music that mixes funk, electronica, psychedelia and krautrock with improvisational energy
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I Will Not … Behave Myself
New album: The Wirral’s Louisa Roach and co return after the acclaimed 2018 LP Revolution of Mind with stirring, feisty, rebellious songs that rally against injustice, celebrate society’s outsiders, filled with seething, articulate anger about everything from food banks to the patriarchy
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Gustaf’s debut album
New album: Caustic, witty, jagged post-punk by the Brooklyn band with this sharp debut marked by drawling dry delivery of talk-singer Lydia Gammill over driving, tight bass, guitar and drums
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Memory Device is Baba Ali’s debut album
New album: A catchily eclectic debut by the singer-songwriter drawing on his Nigerian heritage, his adolescence absorbing hip hop and new wave in New York, the techno scene in Berlin, and now disco, punk and electronica in his London base
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Sleater-Kinney’s surviving members Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein
Album review: This fine 10th studio album by Tucker and Brownstein was recored in Portland the summer of 2020 and rails against a backdrop of social unrest, devastating wildfires, and pandemic with a sound that has echoes of Steely Dan to Talking Heads and B-52s
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Black Midi’s Cavalcade album cover looks as it sounds
Album review: The British quartet’s second album after 2019’s Schlagenheim continues their boundary-pushing direction of frenetic, eclectic mix of the avant garde – jazz, funk, prog in a skilled delirium of wonderful compositions
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Squid’s full debut LP Bright Green Field
Album review: A bold, expansive, experimental and exciting full debut by the postpunk Brighton five-piece, with songs full of musical adventure and dynamic changes, combining krautrock, prog and even a dash of jazz
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Flat White Moon
Album review: The eighth LP from Sunderland brothers Peter and David Brewis brings together a wealth influences and accessibility, cleverly marrying pop, funk and postpunk with echoes of the Beatles, XTC and Todd Rundgren
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor: G_d’s Pee AT STATE'S END!,
Album review: The Montreal post-rockers return with their seventh and among their best to date, expressing the all the doom and the defiance of recent times, using field recordings, atmospheric orchestration, drone sounds, swingtime crescendos, and rich layers towers of distorted clarion sound
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Dry Cleaning
Album review: Dry by name, extra dry by delivery, the post-punk south London band’s debut LP, laced with the spoken word vocals by Florence Shaw, is darkly hilarious fusion of stark guitar and stream-of-consciousness sardonicism
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OH NO …
Album review: This 12th album by the Californian experimental electro-pop, postpunk band led by Jaime Stewart may be the most unusual of year, an oddball set of diverse duets with many guests that sometimes has the melodramatic quality of later Scott Walker
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David Balfe
Album review: Moving, passionate, angry, grief-stricken and tender, this mix of beats, samples and striking spoken word lyrics by the Dublin performer and producer David Balfe is a powerful tribute to a lost friend
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