ILM’s Top 77 Albums of 2021

I am having a reaction of both "I love or at least really like this album but it didn't make my top 25" (Deafheaven, Richard Dawson & Circle, Jazmine, Weather Station, Insides, Flock of Dimes, Jane Weaver, Spellling, the Kabza de Small / DJ Maphirosa / TRESOR album, Saint Etienne, Yu Su, Bicep, Howie Lee, Doja Cat, Eris Drew) and "I was not aware that this existed" more frequently than usual - not sure what this means in terms of fragmentation tbh. It's like the more frantically I try to stay across things the more unrealistic that aspiration becomes.

― Tim F, Wednesday, February 9, 2022 6:36 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

+1.

Listening to the Deafheaven...really nice. Would have never checked this out if not for the comments in this thread. Thanks ilm.

https://i.imgur.com/JLNZbRW.jpg
28. CFCF - Memoryland
256 points / 9 votes
Song from the album: “Self Service 1999”
cfcf - liquid colours

re: LUM

I prob should've voted for this even if I was going to give it like 8 pts. Im a little bit leery of the whole 'kiddie Folk Implosion' vibe of the whole affair--feels like an annoying trend just waiting to happen--but this really does have tunes: "discard" slams, "headboard" reminds me of Polara, & "would you open up a window?/ it's getting cold in here" is exactly the right kind of indie cleverness...

didn't enjoy this as much as Liquid Colours, I must say. The concept was cool but I didn't think the execution really shone through

Ok this LUM album is sounding great. If dude is looking for career advice from me, I would say maybe consider changing your stage name?

CFCF always sound intriguing on paper to me and then the results are repulsively sterile

Love Memoryland; Liquid Colours was great but this is massively my favourite of his. Played it over xmas and was getting crunchy Ellen Allien Berlinette vibes from it - sort of cosily dystopic and reassuring.

lol so apparently you can buy all 28 Lil Ugly Mane releases on bandcamp for $8.70

LUM has experimented with a whole bunch of different stage names (bedwetter, vudmurk etc), but went with this one as a kind of warts-and-all thing I guess

gr8 interview, where the amazing origin of the songtitles is revealed: https://rateyourmusic.com/feature/sonemic-interview-lil-ugly-mane/

Lol did not expect Lil Ugly Mane to be indie. I thought it was hip hop.

This and Deafheaven are subverting my expectations.

he def started his career as a rapper but he experiments with everything these days

i'll give the ugly mane project a shot but "headboard" is a drab nothing that makes me think the bar is a lot lower for indie rock made by "rappers" than it is for indie rock made by rock musicians

try 'styrofoam', which stills my heart & is everything the caretaker could have been, lol

okay really feeling track 2 of this lil ugly mane album ' with iron & bleach & accidents' then straight into some DJ shadow type beats for track 3. loving this.

lol "styrofoam" has indeed convinced me that the album isn't all drab indie

https://i.imgur.com/RxGRami.jpg
27. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
262 points / 8 votes
Song from the album: “Bug Eggs”
Dry Cleaning

help there's bug eggs in my dry cleaning!

congrats to lil ugly mane, can't wait to see where al jolson places

didn't enjoy this as much as Liquid Colours, I must say. The concept was cool but I didn't think the execution really shone through

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin)

Totally agree. Liquid Colours was one of my favourite discoveries from our 2019 poll and I expected to love this just as much.

Dry Cleaning are definitely one of the better bands of this whole post punk spoken word scene (what are calling this again?), but I couldn't take a whole album of them.

There's a new music taking over the country and it's called sprechstimme

now Dry Cleaning, that's an apt stage name

this whole post punk spoken word scene (what are calling this again?)

podcrust

brexiphone

brexit-core

first track on this dry cleaning consists of what appears to be jo brand droning over a franz ferdinand b side

U used to call me on my Brexitphone device at night

I'm patiently and diligently working my way through all of these, and so far it's all been good (surprisingly so with Doja Cat and Hayley Williams, for whom my skip button was primed). Spelling/Emeka Ogboh/Eris Drew is a great run, and Eris Drew sounds sublime, my favourite thus far.

I thought it was sprechsgesang?

they're interchangeable afaict

Finishing up this Deafheaven album and was thinking 'Other Language' sounds like the heavier songs on Paramore's s/t, e.g., 'Future' and now see Justin Meldal-Johnsen produced this record, too

Can't get into Dry Cleaning. I really like the LUM album sonically, but thematically it's just too much self-pity for me to stomach.

oh or,

Though sometimes used interchangeably, Sprechgesang is directly related to the operatic recitative manner of singing (in which pitches are sung, but the articulation is rapid and loose like speech), whereas Sprechstimme is closer to speech itself (because it does not emphasise any particular pitches)

Ah, okay! I did go away to look it up but on a tired skim I didn't note the difference.

Sund4r is saying that actually sprechstimme and sprechsgegang are being horribly misused and we should feel bad, or something

https://i.imgur.com/Xonh5xE.jpg
26. Sons of Kemet - Black to the Future
279 points / 13 votes
Song from the album: “To Never Forget the Source”
London jazz wizard Shabaka Hutchings: Sons of Kemet / The Comet Is Coming / Shabaka & the Ancestors

nice

Voted for "To Never Forget the Source" in the tracks poll; didn't vote for the album here but I do enjoy it. Just nice grooves.

this whole post punk spoken word scene (what are calling this again?)

smokore

i did not vote in the poll but i love the dry cleaning album, while not really getting into most of the other british talk-singing indie rock bands. they are much better musically than the rest of the pack, with actual musical hooks to carry the interest without vocal hooks. but i prefer the chilly/abstract vibe of their singer to the "OI I'M ON THE DOLE AND LONDON IS RUBBISH" thing that a lot of these other bands are doing. the line "I've been thinking about eating that hotdog for hours" still cracks me up every time.

Yeah, I've not heard the whole Dry Cleaning album in full yet but their guitarist knows his onions

good to see SoK. have we passed a vote threshold or was this a low-enthusiasm choice for many?

Yeah, I've not heard the whole Dry Cleaning album in full yet but their guitarist knows his onions

― imago,

Green even!

Dry Cleaning are right at the top end of the sprechcore spectrum for me (with Yard Act right at the bottom end).

n/a otm

https://i.imgur.com/WmmKpIr.jpg
25. Erika de Casier - Sensational
283 points / 13 votes
Video from the album: “Drama”
Erika de Casier - Essentials

This one is sensational.

I think I enjoy this one even more than the first, but both are great. Her songwriting is a bit sharper here.

agreed with those upthread that the guitarist for dry cleaning makes them worth hearing, even if i don't have much time for them

this whole post punk spoken word scene (what are calling this again?)

Gabber

this whole post punk spoken word scene (what are calling this again?)

one-tone

I keep getting Dry Cleaning and Wet Leg confused. It doesn't help that the Dry Cleaning album also has "Leg" in the title.