In this week’s column, we take a look at one of the most talked about albums of the year, an eccentric release from last year, and Part 2 of our Top 20 Albums of 2021.

The New Stuff:

Dawn FM – The Weeknd

If I’m being completely honest, I’ve never really understood the massive appeal of The Weeknd. “I Can’t Feel My Face” and “Blinding Lights” are catchy enough, but I’ve always felt that Abel Tesfaye has never been a font of charisma, and his fans’ insistence that he’s the second coming of Michael Jackson always grated on me, which, through little fault of The Weeknd’s own, made me begin to resent his ubiquity. In other words, I was not looking forward to listening to all 51-minutes of Dawn FM, already the most talked about album of the year.

So imagine my surprise when I pressed play and found this album to be an incredibly pleasurable and rewarding experience. It’s easy to view modern pop albums as either loose collections of radio-refined signals or overlong attempts to game Spotify’s streaming algorithm, but Dawn FM is a coherent work of art, a simultaneous tribute and reimagining of the pop, funk, and R&B that so many people were over eager to declare The Weeknd the standard bearer of. Its lush, dreamy synths and solid electronic beats (no pesky trap triplet 808s to be found!) call to mind not only the classics of Jackson and Stevie Wonder but also retro-electro acts like Chromatics and their Italians Do It Better labelmates, reimagining the world as one, big pulsating cyberpunk club. Even when Tesfaye does rely on simple pop hooks like that of “Take My Breath,” the songs are bolstered by truly thrilling instrumentals that transport the listener into their 80s car of choice, hurtling down a dark, slick road to sex, drugs, and louche synth-pop.

Dawn FM isn’t a perfect album – its ballads drag, and whenever Tesfaye sings about sex, it always feels more technical than sensual – but it is one hell of a headrush, and one that offers up the same blend of nostalgia (the record features spoken word tracks from Jim Carrey and Quincy Jones) and futurism that made Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories a stratospheric hit ten years ago.

Recommended Tracks: “Gasoline,” “Take My Breath,” “Sacrifice,” “Less Than Zero”

Optimism – Jana Horn

If there’s one thing about the wave of confessional, hyperliterate female singer-songwriters who have dominated indie rock over the past five years that bothers me, it’s how they’ll occasionally sacrifice songcraft in favor of storytelling by tacking their lyrics onto barely their instrumentals without a hook or engaging rhythm and letting their words sprawl all over the place with little form or structure. 

Jana Horn’s debut Optimism may not be catchy, but it is economical, keeping all of its songs under five minutes and punctuating her earthy voice and spare guitar parts with horns, organ, and a gentle rhythm section. This is an album that calls to mind Half Way Home-era Angel Olsen, but without the bloat and occasional meandering, a singer-songwriter album that remembers to place care and attention on the “song” part of the equation. Lyrically, it feels more like a conversation than a bloodletting, and musically it borrows from country and chamber pop with equal deft, making it one of the most fully realized debuts in recent memory.

Recommended Tracks: “Time Machine,” “Changing Lines,” “A Good Thing”

The Old Stuff:

… EP – Mandy, Indiana (2021)

Contrary to their name, Mandy, Indiana isn’t from the American Midwest – instead, they’re a British trio consisting of vocalist Valentine Caulfied, producer Scott Fair, and drummer Liam Stewart who seem intent on making the least Midwestern sounding music possible. Their debut EP exists at the intersection of dance music and war chants, a percussive, deceptively groovy collision of noisy production, muscular drumming, and talky French vocals that sounds like a collaboration between The Liminñanas and Sleigh Bells. It’s certainly not for everybody, but if you find yourself able to surrender to the pretension and abstract aggression on display, you’ll find in the mindset to both run through a brick wall and dance all night in a sweaty underground club.

Recommended Tracks: “Bottle Episode,” “Nike of Samothrace,” “Alien 3” (Daniel Avery Remix)

Best of 2021, Part 2:

Check out the last column for Part 1 of our belated countdown of last year’s best albums. 

16. In Heaven – Strand of Oaks

Nostalgia has always been a feature in Timothy Showalter’s songwriter, but on prior Strand of Oaks records his tendency to look backward has felt like a crutch, a way to distract himself from the crises that were consuming and threatening his life at the time. On In Heaven, Showalter has finally reconciled his past with his present and, in the process, given himself a reason to live for the future. This record is still full of loss and heartbreak, but rather than stay mired in regret, Showalter uses his pleasant memories as fuel for building a better life and his starry-eyed heartland rock compositions, ultimately concluding that heaven is a place where there’s always a chance to hear a new record or reconnect with an old friend – in other words, a place that looks a lot like earth. 

Recommended tracks: “Galacticana,” “Somewhere in Chicago,” “Jimi & Stan”

15. Let Me Do One More – illuminati hotties

2021 was the year illuminati hotties finally clicked for me because it was the first time I realized that project mastermind Sarah Tudzin writes for music people like me – indie rock fans who are tired of the genre’s increasingly dour disposition and on the lookout for upbeat music with a more varied emotional palet. Tudzin accomplishes this task by dipping into the punk and surf influenced rock that was popular in my college radio heyday, but this isn’t a sunny, cheerful lark. Instead, it’s probably one of the most emotionally complex records of the year, because it allows itself to play with as many feelings – from so-drunk-in-the-summer-fun whimsy to stark melancholy – as it does genres, like Orville Peck-style country pop/rock and herky-jerky post-punk. Tudzin’s music goes wherever her spirit takes her, and it’s a delight to sit in on the ride.

Recommended Tracks: “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA,” “Knead,” “Kickflip,” “Cheap Shoes” 

14. Mirror II – The Goon Sax

Most Australian indie rockers who have made it big in the States recently – your Courtney Barnetts, Rolling Blackout Coastal Fevers, and the like – are cool because they’re uncool, a restless coalition of shaggy slackers and middle class weekend warriors trying to turn their rock and roll dreams into a reality. 2021’s Aussie breakouts The Goon Sax are the exact opposite – featuring a literal descendant of Oz indie rock royalty, this moody trio injected a refreshing sense of arty, gothic ennui into a modern scene increasingly defined by the scruffy everyman. But for as chilly and detached their shoegazing guitar and chintzy dream machines can sound, The Goon Sax are still full of aching and yearning. It’s just a sexier, more vampiric version of aching and yearning that gives all of the other, more homely bands something to aspire to.

Recommended Tracks: “In the Stone,” “Psychic,” “Desire”

13. Cooler Returns – Kiwi jr.

Comparing anyone to Bob Dylan is a tricky proposition because he’s held in such rarefied air, but I can’t think of another way to describe Kiwi jr. singer Jeremy Gaudet’s metaphor and allusion-heavy lyrics that take place in a world full of modern day hucksters and rapscallions. But if Gaudet writes like Dylan, he sounds like Jonathan Richman, deploying a similar, nasal talk-singing style that his bandmates accompany affinity for a jangly, more dynamic version of punk and new wave that finds this neurotic (and occasionally resentful) singer trying to navigate the peculiarities of mainstream life in this sarcastically charming hipster picaresque.

Recommended Tracks: “Maid Marian’s Toast,” “Only Here for a Haircut,” “Nashville Wedding”