ILM’s Top 77 Albums of 2021

Think I voted for everything in the top ten so far.

After lowering my expectations for the Billie album based on the singles, I ended up loving it more than the debut.

God today's rollout is making me depressed

yep

I think it's been mentioned by other posters on other threads, but I agree that it's bemusing how Eilish's debut is massively popular and Grammy-winning when the EP and the second album are much better.

I'm assuming Arooj Aftab and Floating Points make it into the top 5 from here?

I do think the need to state "why would you listen to female-fronted pop music when you could listen instead to this guy farting into a tuba for 4 hours" is an impulse worth interrogating

Nala Sinephro made it! Had no expectations of that one placing, but I'm stoked others recognize how gorgeous and well produced it is. Definitely play that one on your best system/cans sometime

The Floating Points record is one where conceptually it should have been one of my favorites, but it just left me empty and it didn't even make my ballot. I'm sure it makes top 5 though...

table/imago otm

do think the need to state "why would you listen to female-fronted pop music when you could listen instead to this guy farting into a tuba for 4 hours" is an impulse worth interrogating

― castanuts (DJP), Friday, February 11, 2022 1:52 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

You tell that cloud!

https://i.imgur.com/ceZ1atL.jpg
5. Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World
559 points / 17 votes / 1 #1 vote
Video from the album: “Secrets (Your Fire)”
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=110343

Mercurial World the only album on this list i truly love

maybe i just don't like music anymore

Honestly, in the context of what's to come, too low. I wasn't completely impressed with the whole, but I was VERY impressed with parts. I think they have greater in store. They're a sort of music I expect and demand ILM to champion.

can't believe birthday ass made top 4

This list has been 50% 50 year old rockers and 50% instrumental introversion and some posters still have the gall to complain about a few pop albums showing up.

No way Floating Points is in the top 5, although from the discussion on the album thread there would be riots.

Lots of alternative rock music today, huh.

Love this album, also my personal #5.

I'm think we might need a goon-style rolling thread where me/table/imago/Raymond can just talk about noise/free improv/sound art/field recordings without having to constantly butt our heads against the Jepsen Actuallys

I swear every pop singer sounds exactly the same nowadays (well, the men all sound alike and the women all sound alike), don't know how ppl aren't sick of it by now *shakes fist at cloud*

https://i.imgur.com/kbjLYK7.jpg
4. Cleo Sol - Mother
587 points / 20 votes
Song from the album: “Promises”
Sault - What's the story?

And there's always a build up to a I'M STILL SINGING THE SAME WAY BUT NOW I'M LOUDER chorus

Jepsen rocks! Magdalena Bay are v much in that upbeat lineage, albeit with a few bells and whistles. The ubiquitous...vibes are more what I object to; none of these artists are bad on their own but together they create a Vibe don't they

Inflo Industries are thoroughly plugged into said Vibe

do think the need to state "why would you listen to female-fronted pop music when you could listen instead to this guy farting into a tuba for 4 hours" is an impulse worth interrogating

― castanuts (DJP)

I like female-fronted pop music but I want to heard this guy farting into a tuba album, please.

After having very few votes place the first few days, I voted for a lot of today, including what I'm assuming are the top 3...Arooj, Floating Points, Low. Cleo Sol was on my long list and has grown on me a lot.

Guess I'm going to have to revisit that Wolf Alice album!

But yeah, the lack of variety within pop (and only secondarily, lack of variety of genre and lack of interest in music that decidedly WILL wake the baby) is as ever the issue, not the fact of pop, which is ILM's primary Cause after all

I'm think we might need a goon-style rolling thread where me/table/imago/Raymond can just talk about noise/free improv/sound art/field recordings without having to constantly butt our heads against the Jepsen Actuallys

― Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note I'm (Whiney G. Weingarten)

You mean something like Rolling weird music // time travel // unclassifiable 2021 ?

the consensus picks go to the top that's just math ???

glad to see Cleo here after all!

cleo sol album brings "vibes" the same way that riperton's come into my garden does. it's a cohesive collection of beautifully sung and performed songs.

This is basically what Billie Eilish/Olivia Rodrigo sound like to me

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/6206b40052985-ilx-poll-winners-2021.php

that might just be your tinnitus

Soft Sounds From Another Planet did place in our 2017 list Indexed, but much lower down. In the 40s I think?

― kitchen person, Friday, February 11, 2022 12:22 PM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah cool. Still like that one as an album more than Jubilee. Psychopomp is dream pop ear candy, too.

I get the same vibe from Cleo Sol that I do from Riperton, and, sure, I have moments when they bore me despite liking their albums (I top twentied Sol).

I liked the Wolf Alice album because it functioned as a sampler of most alt-rock styles since 1992.

After having very few votes place the first few days, I voted for a lot of today, including what I'm assuming are the top 3...Arooj, Floating Points, Low. Cleo Sol was on my long list and has grown on me a lot.

Guess I'm going to have to revisit that Wolf Alice album!

― Indexed

Two of those are correct, the other is Ms. Musgraves

https://i.imgur.com/9tsvSaZ.jpg
3. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra ‎ - Promises
592 points / 18 votes / 1 #1 vote
Fan Video from the album: “Movement 6”
Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders and London Symphony Orchestra - Promises (2021)

I'm amazed Cleo Sol landed so high, I thought it was quite a drop off from her last one

whaaaat no Arooj? Come to think of it i was surprised how few track votes she got, on the spreadsheet (wasn't in top 77)

Oh maffew.

I also liked Cleo Sol’s previous one a whole lot better, but this one is perfectly good as it is. Wont complain at the high placement, really enjoyed this one for a couple of months.

sadly mirroring the Obama situation where he was apparently all about her in the summer but a fake friend at year's end

https://i.imgur.com/U5DPTwu.jpg
2. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
639 points / 18 votes / 2 #1 votes
Live from Joe’s Pub with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily, 2019
Arooj Aftab

:tears of joy:

what a run. thanks pollrunners!

And of course to surprise of absolutely noone in the board:

https://i.imgur.com/ZnHq8zv.jpg
1. Low - HEY WHAT
1114 points / 30 votes / 5 #1 votes
Video from the album: “Disappearing”
Too LOW: ILM Artist Poll #111 - Low - RESULTS
Do You Know How to POLLtz?: ILM Artist Poll #111 - Low

they sort of deserve it this time

Deserving winner. Thanks to everyone running the poll.

the chvrches record was instrumental in me realizing i'm a woman, so, like how the deafheaven record is impossible to extract from how depressed i was last august, it is impossible for me to separate screen violence from that realization. also horror movie tropes are very smartly employed as metaphors throughout the record, there was no way i wasn't going to like a record that did that. regardless: synth-pop revival isn't free jazz or harsh noise i guess but i always thought chvrches provided a very original vision of it, always a little faster and crisper than it should be, like it was being blinked out by an overclocked processor, and the melodies never recalled anything of '80s vintage for me, they were definitely written by someone who fucking loves jimmy eat world and other early '00s emo. surprisingly they are the only band i can think of who spliced these two things together. and instead of any contemporaneous synth-pop act they might be associated with, they remind me most of garbage, who also made pop-rock that sounded as if it had been fed through something and come out almost unrecognizable and partially-to-totally danceable on the other end

so if screen violence is their best album, which i think it is, it's because they further darkened and fragmented their sound by incorporating goth pop guitars, breakbeats, and a total confidence in these choices that contrasts with the pools of anxiety the lyrics keep melting into, that it provides indelible hooks to latch onto even as it clings to the cliff's-edge of sanity, even as it is surrounded by threats and double-standards that do not abate but reinforce themselves and gradually suffocate the atmosphere, like something determined to remain itself no matter what it has to survive

it's also totally hypocritical to love the sayonara wild hearts soundtrack and not give chvrches the time of day, imago