If you traveled off the beaten path, you came away with an embarrassment of music riches.
Best of 2021
The best entertainment of 2021, as chosen by Vultures critics.
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If you traveled off the beaten path, you came away with an embarrassment of riches.
10.Halsey,If I Cant Have Love, I Want Power
10.
Nails tart, synthetic grooves provide the perfect base for Halseys tense, personal writing and cathartic vocals.
The singer is perfectly capable of matching the producers tuneful darkness.
9.Kacey Musgraves,star-crossed
9.
8.Hiatus Kaiyote,Mood Valiant
8.
That delicate balance comes thanks in part to Nai Palm, a powerhouse vocalist and deft guitarist.
Hiatus occupies a crawl space adjoining funk, soul, rock, and jazz sounds from around the world.
The sound is playful but accomplished, adventurous but always rewardingly so.
7.Tyler, the Creator,CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
7.
Its wish fulfillment here.CALL MEis a bookend to the hunger and struggle of 2009sBASTARD.
Impressively, success and comfort havent sapped his drive as a performer.
6.Mach-Hommy,Pray for Haiti
6.
On cuts like No Blood No Sweat, hes a dyed-in-the-wool East Coast technical rhymer.
Stick with the record and youll hear him try out a few different styles.
Kriminel balances tight flows in English with lyrics in Creole.
5.Madlib,Sound Ancestors(Arranged by Kieran Hebden)
5.
Loose Goose dabbles in dub; the title track is a burst of free jazz.
Sound Ancestors is a fantastic point of entry for new listeners into a daunting catalogue.
4.Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra,Promises
4.
Each party pushes the others past their comfort zone.
And Floating Points, who delivered busy beats and airy synths on 2019s Crush, plays the peaceable host.
3.Esperanza Spalding,Songwrights Apothecary Lab
3.
Esperanza SpaldingsSongwrights Apothecary Labis more than an album.
Each of the albums 12 compositions was created with a different aim for the edification of the listener.
If the science seems intense, the music is visceral and engaging.
Coming up with a program of sound to bring peace to her listeners has made Spalding a tighter musician.
2.Low,HEY WHAT
2.
Lowis a grand experiment in minimalism, in letting go of everything that is inessential in life.
Hey is a dirge made of shimmering waves of sound.
Days Like These piles distortion onto the voices until you’re free to no longer make out words.
The sound is stark.
The subject matter is dire.
But onHEY WHAT,it sounds like this band has never had more fun in its nearly 30-year run.
1.Jazmine Sullivan,Heaux Tales
1.
Pick Up Your Feelings is a classic Sullivan breakup tune.
Put It Down celebrates a man who can throw down in bed.
The Other Side pines for the financial windfall a rich boyfriend could offer.
Bodies - Intro frets over the dangers of drunken hookups.
This happens in just over half an hour.
Many of those selections appear above in his top 10 picks.
Like the early Wu-Tang classics, this music pulls from way beyond hip-hop and maintains an almost experimental starkness.
He keeps a low profile.
His songs arent radio-friendly.
But theyre wise master classes in the craft.
They dont make em like him anymore.
The breakdowns remain powerfully heavy; they just come with intriguing production flourishes and stylistic detours now.
Mystery is a catchy rocker whose grooves hit harder thanks to the hip-hop syncopation on the drums.
Underwater Boi submerges a sweet shoegaze tune in cartoonish atmospherics.
None of these excursions undercuts the power and intensity of the record, though.
OnGlow On, Turnstile stretches out but never softens up.
She also recorded one more album, her 32nd full-length and her first in nearly a decade.
They know just what to do with Wanda;Encoreunderstands her wheelhouse.
Pub-rock rubs elbows with the blues, country, and rockabilly.
It Keeps Right on A-Hurtin, a perfect country weeper, calls back to her mid-60s trad-country era.
Last time, the beats were dark, and her voice was the clearing.
Flows are gobstopping rare is the modern rap album where the marquee artist eats all his guests alive.
The balance is alluring.
As background music, its pleasant.
Lean in, andVince Staplesgoes for the jugular.
For extra credit,I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dressesmakes this seem easy.
The comics songs have finally grown to match his trenchant observations about people.
Nothings off limits, not even the man himself.
Sleepy Hallow,Still Sleep?
but their records feel radically different.
Sheff goes for the gloomy, gothic sounds, but Sleepy takes the weirder, quieter ones.
OnStill Sleep?, the 21-year-old rappers debut studio album, the trademark drill sound is dissected and deconstructed.
Brash samples loop up over beats that drop drums unexpectedly, the better to center flows.
Chicken is the lyrical showcase.
2055, with its molasses-thick guitar licks, is the earworm.
Equal is the reflective rags-to-riches jam.Still Sleep?is packed with gems.
A subsequent visit would yield Tequila Does, a single from Lamberts 2019 albumWildcard.
Gone are the polish and the Frankensteinian hybrids of perfect takes a major-label studio album entails.
Theyre blowing off steam, making mistakes, and having fun.
Even the saddest songs feel strangely relaxing and freeing.
Godspeed You!
Black Emperor,G_ds Pee At States End!
Montreal post-rock legendsGodspeed You!
Black Emperorarent songwriters so much as cartographers.
We saw the world unravel.
We touched the precipice of doom.
We lived to tell the story.
WithAt States End, we mourn and we celebrate.
This year,Chemtrails Over the Country Clubpicks up whereNormanleft off.
The result is the bands best work in at least a decade.
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