What I Listened to This Week returns not only with a review of one new (and new-ish) album, but also with part one of my countdown of the top 20 albums of 2021. Read my first two reviews, and you’ll realize why I had to dig through that list this week…

The New Stuff:

Sick! – Earl Sweatshirt

I’ll just come out and say it: I don’t really get Earl Sweatshirt. I was able to appreciate Some Rap Songs for it’s bleary eyed stream of consciousness, but never heard the genius that so many people insisted was present. I’m in the same pickle with Sick!, which feels even more disjointed and splattered than Some Rap Songs, so lacking in hooks or a discernable vocal rhythm that I begin to wonder what, exactly, the point of these songs are. I’d like it much more if the rest of the album sounded like lead single “Titanic,” which takes Earl’s slurred rhymes and places it on a purposeful, eerie instrumental, but so many of the beats on this album feel too open ended and just leave me trying to find something to grab on to. I feel like on one level this is supposed to be like the rap version of Guided by Voices or 2nd Grade, a deconstruction of the rap track that’s pared down to its essential elements. But at least those artists write hooks! Earl Sweatshirt, in contrast, just seems to write fragments he tries to place on a beat and then call it a song.

Recommended tracks: “Lye,” “Lobby (int),” “Titanic”

The Old Stuff

Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night – Bleachers (2021)

Before last week’s Saturday Night Live, I had know idea that Bleachers, the solo project of pop superproducer Jack Antonoff, was another Bruce Springsteen homage project (I did know, however, that the Boss himself is featured on “Chinatown”). It turns out the reason I didn’t know this, despite the synths, saxophones, and Jersey bonafides, is because Antonoff has neither the charisma nor vocal talent to pull it off. All of the ingredients are there, but the special sauce that makes Bruce Bruce (and all of the Bruce imitators credible pretenders) isn’t. Part of it is the lack of any effective hooks, but a bigger factor is that it’s just very tough to make Antonoff, who’s co-written scores of hits for the likes of Taylor Swift and Lorde, sound like a swaggering, desperate everyman. Instead, he sounds like a theater kid playing out a rock star fantasy. Which, if we’re being honest, is almost exactly what he’s doing.

Recommended tracks: “Chinatown” feat. Bruce Springsteen, “Secret Life” feat. Lana Del Rey, “45”

The Top 20 Albums of 2021 (Part 1)

20. An Overview on Phenomenal Nature – Cassandra Jenkins

Back in college, my sister and I used to make fun of the darkly dressed, constantly smoking kids who would hang out at American University’s liberal arts building and try to shoehorn in references to whatever philosophical text or Marxist theory they were studying that week (we called them Battelle-core, after the building – another acquaintance of mine uncharitably labeled them “Battelle freaks”). At her worst, Cassandra Jenkins sounds like a less political, more New Age version of these people. Her sophomore album is filled with deep ruminations and intricate metaphors, and its centerpiece is the wretchedly pretentious “Hard Drive,” which, with its references to therapy, sculpture, and organic LA restaurants, makes me want to move as far away from my fellow Millennials as possible. That said, most of the other deep ruminations explored on this album are intriguing, and most of the metaphors apt, to say nothing of the gentle, atmospheric mix of rock, folk, and ambient music that accompanies Jenkins’ whispery vocals. It might induce a few eyerolls, but it’s worth wading through the sage smoke to find the good parts.

Recommended tracks: “Michelangelo,” “Crosshairs,” “Ambiguous Norway”

19. Pressure Machine – The Killers

The Killers managed to find their way out of the creative wilderness in 2020 with the release of Imploding the Mirage, an album in which Brandon Flowers seemed to make peace with the idea that the closest he would ever come to being Bruce Springsteen is by being a poppier version of better bands that can be more credibly called the next Bruce Springsteen (Like The War on Drugs, which Imploding the Mirage rips off of). But while Imploding the Mirage demonstrated that they were still capable of making a good album, Pressure Machine demonstrates that they may someday make a great album. Speckled with field recordings from Flowers’ native Nephi, Utah, Pressure Machine makes a bid to become The Killlers’ Nebraska – an intimate portrait of working class Americans trying and failing to escape their bleak fates, in some cases literally killing themselves to leave town. Flowers’ songwriting isn’t always elegant, and the misery can sometimes be a little too much to bear, but it’s probably one of the best storytelling albums to be released over the past five years, and a promising release from a band everyone thought was washed up.

Recommended tracks: “Quiet Town,” “Cody,” “In Another Life” 

18. Things Take Time, Take Time – Courtney Barnett

Once feted as some kind of slacker-savior, Courtney Barnett has since fallen out of the critical conversation, likely owing to her underwhelming sophomore full-length Tell Me How You Really Feel. Things Take Time, Take Time, may not be quite as good as her earlier releases, but it is a welcome return to her janglier, more chilled out origins. “Rae Street” proves that she can still write the hell out of a scene, while “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To” demonstrates that her pop sensibilities are still intact as well. If Tell Me How You Really Feel was Barnett gripping too hard on the steering wheel, trying to wring more hits out of what seemed like an exhausted songwriter, than Things Take Time, Take Time is a strategic retreat to something softer, and even a little hazier, like crashing with your parents for a few weeks while you try and figure out your next life move.

Recommended tracks: “Rae Street,” “Sunfair Sundown,” “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To”

17. True Love – Hovvdy

If you know me, you know that I have a love/hate relationship with Alex G. I think he’s capable of writing some of the most beautiful indie pop and folk-influenced indie that I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, he’s also committed to exploring some of the most obnoxious sounds ever known to man. This tender, intimate album from Texas duo Hovvdy is more or less the answer to my Alex G-related prayers – a country-influenced collection of intimate-yet-atmospheric love songs that’s independent minded, but never falls into experimental wankery. Its warmth and purity feels almost out of place amidst the scores of anxious and exhausted music that’s been churned out in the pandemic era, but that’s a good thing. Too many modern singer-songwriters want to console us with their own misery. Hovvdy wants to wrap us in the glow of their love.

Recommended tracks: “True Love,” “Around Again,” “Hope”