ILM’s Top 77 Albums of 2021

Fwiw, my friend is both friends with Aftab and also is admittedly frustrated that the music industry seems to have space for only one woman from that regional diaspora per year.

i'm sure aftab feels the same way!

I missed a few days!

Certainly didn't anticipate
Nala Sinephro being the most popular thing on my ballot.

Thanks again forksclovetofu, Moka and seandalai for all your work!

cool glad to hear the poll winner is totally bullshit compared to other more obscure artists or ppl's friends, excellent. good reminder why I never vote

that wasn't what i was saying - it was much more an 'okay, now try this if you want to hear something out of a parallel tradition that does impressive things with microtones' - there was no hint of calling the Arooj bullshit, it is very much a success on its own terms. I'll concede the timing may have been slightly off but my post really was a throwaway, for the eyes of the curious only

What's the last ILX poll winner to get > 1000 points?

The last three (and probably beyond, I can't be bothered to check) all got >1000: Jessie Ware, Weyes Blood and Low themselves!

yeah this year is just unusually low due to the unusually low number of voters, not unusually high

but it's usually Low that wins whether user numbers are low or high

Every album poll winner since 2010 (when records begin) has scored >1000 points. Black Messiah and To Pimp a Butterfly got over 2000.

Tracks poll alway has less consensus, there hasn't been a >1000-vote winner since 2016. All-time highest score was Inspector Norse with 1676.

Also btw the Maxine Funke LP was one of my biggest discoveries from the noms, even though it's not in the top 100. Very intimate record that's gotten a lot of play around the house. Ambient folk??

― change display name (Jordan), Friday, February 11, 2022 5:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yes that album is beautiful!

Checked out Ustad Saami. He's good, always appreciate a recommendation, but I def prefer Aftab (I had listened to her album when it was released but forgot about it til this poll).

Finally listened to the whole Low album and I liked it quite a bit in the end. Ironically, it's probably what I would have wanted from them 20 years ago.

the title track on the Mdou Moctar album is an utter ripper

it's going to take me a while to sort out what stuff from this year's poll will stick with me and what won't, but throwing the whole list on endless shuffle is a great way to vibe through the day, very little I'm finding outright skip worthy

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

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, 11 February 2022 19:19 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is a beautiful post

^^yes it is, and extremely accurate re: 00s emo lineage, which I'd never picked up on before.

I was busy last week so just going through everything now, so far really enjoying the rochelle jordan record that i missed completely last year and is right up my street

probably the song that makes chvrches' emo influence the most obvious is "bury it", it's always been a distinct part of their sound and set them apart from mere 80s pastiche.

chvrches were also my number one this year, such an unexpected triumph of an album. it's a synthpop/dance-rock classic that's completely up there with say, technique or violator. the first two chvrches albums were decent but pretty far from masterpieces and the third was pretty mediocre, so i really never expected something like this from them.

same - i liked a bunch of their songs before but was never blown away by their records. this album hit me like a ton of bricks. i didn't submit a weighted ballot but it would've been top 5 for me.

Great post Brad. I always thought the emo influence was obvious, considering two members of the band were involved in Aereogramme, a (very underrated) 00's post-hardcore band before they formed Chvrches. But yeah it's more noticeable on Screen Violence, and I agree it's their best album (also my #1 vote)

wow i had no idea there was a chvrches/aerogramme connection

oh Brad you make me want to still like goth shit but no

The Aereogramme connection is certainly alluring

the Robert Smith thing is a hard no

you’re a hard no

… sorry, reflex

lol accepted

The main thing I take away from the Robert Smith track is the relative lack of expressiveness of the Chvrches singer. Its kind of like W.C. Fields said about never doing a scene with a dog or a kid, because they'll steal the show. The equivalent for a goth singer must be never do a duet with Robert Smith. Even though his voice is far from the instrument it once was, it's still like saturated technicolor compared to the monochromatic palette of Mayberry. There is very little variation in it to my ears. Her lyrics when I can make them out seem interesting, but you get no sense she's singing about such dark stuff from the sound of her voice.

I would argue pretty strongly that the contrast between the timbre of her voice and the subject matter of the lyrics are intrinsic to CHVRCHES' appeal

also how is Robert's voice "far from the instrument it once was"?

OK maybe "far from" is too harsh, but just the usual effects of aging, particularly on the upper register. He reels it back in when in the old days he would have gone for it.

Well yeah, Robert is not Dennis DeYoung or anything

surprised the Lindsey Buckingham and Poppy albums didn’t even crack the top 100. both had pretty vocal support in their respective ILM threads. i loved and voted for both (although i will admit the second half of Lindsey Buckingham drops off p hard)

Subset of ilmers who vote in this poll is not representative of the whole board for a bunch of reasons

I don't think I'll bother next year tbh.

Brad, did you listen to the Rachika Nayar album that should have placed in this poll? It has some affinities with emo, it's a really lovely album.

It is here, if you haven't listened to it.

i voted for the poppy EP which was much better than the album but her 2020 album only just made the 77 so not too surprising

I wish I liked a band today as much as I liked The Cure

i actually preferred the poppy album to the ep, but i gather im in the minority. i thought the new stuff was a big step up from the 2020 album. less zany genre switching but way stronger hooks

Dan S, have you heard FACS?

https://wearefacs.bandcamp.com/music

^Weirdly, I ended up seeing them open for Metz (w Preoccupations) next door at the one gig I've seen in two year during this brief window between lockdowns in December. They were p good.

I don't think anyone else posted an Apple Music playlist. Here is one, a bit late but perhaps still useful to some:

https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/ilm-top-77-albums-2021/pl.u-WabZZqafvvXWxV

back from a lovely holiday and time to resolve some cognitive dissonance that's arisen due to my listening choices on the way home - ah, reality, etc

so this CHVRCHES album then

i have given it the most open-hearted listen i possibly can. i have read the breathless praise by numerous ilxors whom i respect and who clearly listen to plenty of music. i really want to like it. but it's a magic-eye thing and i haven't got the knack. to me, this is track after track of midtempo minor-key 'drama pop' with each melody as predictable as the last, every vocal delivered in exactly the same affectless manner, and every production choice geared towards a sort of shiny synth-rock soup that, over the course of forty minutes, diminishes markedly in impact.

what's wrong with me? what am i missing? should i not have preceded it with the new Black Dresses and thus given it an impossible level of pop intensity to live up to? is ILM a deep cell of CHVRCHES superfans? is there a recipe for pop that CHVRCHES have perfected, but a recipe that only a certain sort of pop gourmand would truly understand? idk help me here, because we're gonna keep running into this wall

You could always just not listen to it

lol DJP otm, see also

Can You Force Yourself To Like A Record Through Blunt-Force Repetition?

it's my fault for calling imago out i guess, i regret it

i will add

that 'nightmares' has a good coda

it's not something i would have really expected you to love, it's just impeccably made pop-rock but not something that's going to seem interesting or exciting to someone who isn't already sympathetic to what they're going for

it occupies fairly similar territory to the 1975 really, just more focused & more goth. there's even the blue nile tribute track i've been wanting the 1975 to make forever

I salute your trying, imago. Sometimes it’s just impossible to get there.

(I don’t think I’ve ever heard the band in question. Eventually.)

but the 1975 at their best gain power from being stylistically all over the place, and making these big sprawling unpredictable albums that work pop-rock angles in hypermodern, unusual ways

are CHVRCHES doing...that too? just in a way that's subtler?

as I say I am massively sympathetic to some of their ingredients (the cure and aereogramme being associated acts, and garbage, whose first album is absolutely my shit!) and How Not To Drown is indeed really good, but I can't bring the rest into focus...yet

not really, which is why i wouldn't have expected you to love it

If anything about this debate was useful for me it was when Brad highlighted their emo influences so matter-of-factly—a connection I'd never made myself—which explains why I like almost nothing about them. Not that I needed a reason, but it bothered me not to have one.