11 Albums You Might've Missed In 2021

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  Little Simz: Sometimes I may Be Introvert
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=hxfGQ2AJHGk
  
  
  
  Disclaimer: in case you missed this one, you probably weren't paying attention. The 65-minute sprawling multi-genre opus from London rapper Simbiatu "Simbi" Abisola Abiola Ajikawo, a.K.A Little Simz, ranked high on a couple of year-end lists, and its bombastic and probing opener “Introvert,” got a big boost soundtracking a grandiose Civil War combat scene in the final season of Dickinson. It's easy to hear why it works. To start the epic suite, Simz lets huge brass and marching-band snare drums set the scene. While she enters spitting bars a minute later, she paints a portrait already hinted at by the action-ready musicality: "There's a war indoor, I hear battle sobs she says. For the next five minutes, "Introvert" does everything it could to undermine its own title: Even as she ruminates ("I sabotage what we are attempting to build / 'Cause of feelings I keep indoor, Simz emboldens herself to speak as loudly as she can nevertheless it's about time to reveal"). And this is just track one. From then on, the album dips into silken R&B ("Woman"), vintage grooves ("Standing Ovation"), pop-single dominance ("Speed"), as well as a series of interludes that actually justify the ever-expanding runtimes of albums in the streaming era. Sometimes I may Be Introvert, Simz's fourth album, is a undeniably British one — there's even an interlude called "The Rapper That Came to Tea" — nevertheless its message is universal and transatlantic. Its imposing, rather orchestral sound is designed to fill concert halls wherever Simz might travel. —Patrick Hosken
  
  
  
  
  



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  JMIN: Homecoming
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=yDxVbi9GpSA
  
  
  
  “Everywhere I go, I just feel so trapped,” JMIN states at the best of his debut EP’s beginning track. “I been really fucked up / I can’t go back.” The want to look forward, find freedom, and in the process find himself is the red thread of the K-hip-hop newcomer’s debut project, Homecoming, an electrifying snapshot of the life of a young artist on the rise as he searches for balance between past and present, mind and matter, and residence and homeland. “I used to bе nothing, I only caused trouble / Mama, I'm sorry I caused you this pain,” he admits on “You and Me.” “I'm gеtting the cash, it's coming in bundles / Remember those days I would sit in the rain?” In a brief 18 minutes, Homecoming packs a strong punch. Effortlessly ebbing and flowing between topics like mental health (“Don’t Worry”), ambition (“Dedication”), love lost (“Tryna Find Your Love”), and successfulness noticed (“Want Me,” “Wave”), JMIN expresses the messy, complex, ever-changing feelings of a 21-year-old just attempting to figure his shit out, and he does so by putting pen to paper. At the crux of its being, his music is just that: storytelling. Homecoming tells the starting of JMIN’s story clarity, brevity, and also a whole lot of dedication. —Sarina Bhutani
  
  
  
  
  



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  Arooj Aftab: Vulture Prince
  
  
  https://youtu.Be/iRZ98HX1MO8
  
  
  
  Vulture Prince opens with “Baghon Main,” a reinterpretation of a folk song Brooklyn’s Arooj Aftab first recorded for her 2014 debut album, Bird Under Water. Where the Pakistan-born composer’s earlier rendition was a sprawling arrangement of groaning accordions and drum flashes, this update is stripped of its more fancy embellishments, down to soft violin sobs, twinkling harp, and Aftab’s precisely sustained intonations. It’s a haunting touchstone for a sublime variety of sparse tracks that have been hollowed out by grief. Named for a Parsi funeral rite where bodies are left out to be consumed by scavengers, Vulture Prince is serious about Aftab’s younger brother Maher, who passed away whenever she was recording the album. Although in its minimalist attention to detail, there really are occasional moments of surprise that surmount the mournful tension, as Aftab pulls elements from Western jazz and the customary ghazals of her homeland; a Rumi love poem, as an example, finds a unlikely residence atop a reggae beat on “Last Night.” Lingering during is the diligent intensity of Aftab’s voice: Even as soon as singing about a sadness so wonderful it can swallow the stars (“Mohabbat”), she obtains the strength to move forward. —Coco Romack
  
  
  
  
  



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  Inhaler: It Won't Routinely Be Like This
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=kQ7TeO4VP_k
  
  
  
  On "My Trustworthy Face," 22-year-old Elijah Hewson is troubled in speaking his truth. He's listing excuses as to why, yet one feels most accurate: "There's just a certain culture as soon as you're young." It’s an inexpensive, boyish cop-out, nevertheless it's also not; there really is a certain weightlessness to being young and freewheeling life, before you realize just how capable you are of harm, to others and to yourself. "Why does it hurt me so much?" He questions on completely begging of a failing relationship. It’s like the pain is happening for the initial time, like you've realized that life isn't so weightless anymore. However Inhaler’s It Won’t Routinely Be Like This, a loud, raucous indie debut, also is aware that some days, you just have to let shit go — that the heart-tearing cycle of losing and finding yourself gets better at time. The album's best track, "Who's Your Cash On (Plastic Residence is a shameless ask for a second chance immediately after a full ego death. "I'll put myself on the line," Hewson proclaims, admitting he wasn't ready the initial time, still knowing their "plastic residence is add onto sand." It's boldly asking, even as soon as the thing is doomed to hurt, to try again anyway. —Terron Moore
  
  
  
  
  



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  Jodi: Blue Heron
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=qqbE2QWCgaM
  
  
  
  "Does this party stress you out?" Nick Levine asks near the starting of Blue Heron, the debut LP from their rootsy and earthy Chicago project Jodi. It fits: Blue Heron is a spare album. Broadly speaking, its 12 rustling tracks fall into the minimal country/folk categories, and ghostly pedal steel drifts in and out of frame like a swaying bough. The mood Levine operates in will be familiar to fans of their former musical group Pinegrove and the work of Phil Elverum. What this collection requires isn't so much patience nevertheless stillness — a try to quiet yourself to receive what singer-songwriter Levine presents in pastoral songs titled "River Rocks," "Hawks," and the gorgeously unspooling title tune. The reward is a singular voice spanning the ache of all four seasons ("It's wintertime / Time to be able to see all your buddies / Where'd everybody go?"), The perils of purely feeling low ("Tonight I'm a slug / Lay around and get stepped on"), and requests that might as well be directed at the world at large ("Can we go slowly?"). On the lean Blue Heron, small moments rapidly become events: A fuzzy guitar chord sounds like a thunderclap, and organic imagery — excellent blue heron in the lake swimming" — is rendered in crystalline clarity, like the massive bird tattoo on Levine's back that marks the album's cover. —Patrick Hosken
  
  
  
  
  



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  Vince Staples: Vince Staples
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=4fiyUR9N_uk
  
  
  
  On Vince Staples’s dreary, drawling fourth album, all his companions are dead or in jail. So he’s obsessed with own demise: His city burns, shots are constantly ringing out, and no quantity of cash, sex, security, or faith can satisfy the looming threats. "I could perish tonight, so today, I'ma go and get paid," he decides on "Sundown Town." The idea that Staples is a world-famous rapper is irrelevant. He’s still from Compton; we are usually and forever products of our environments. Opener “Are You With That” masterfully mixes the inevitability of death with the guilt of survival, however maybe he states it most simply on “The Shining” any time once he says, "We dying broke and survive with damaged hearts." These realities of growing up in this concrete jungle aren't to be glorified, nor are they to be pitied. They just are. And maybe there's sadness in that resignation, nevertheless there's strength in it, also. —Terron Moore
  
  
  
  
  



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  Cassandra Jenkins: An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=eW8XoovSlsM
  
  
  
  Clocking in at just under 32 minutes, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature proves you don’t require a Red (Taylor’s Version) running time to pack an emotional punch. Habitually leave your listeners wanting more; that’s exactly what Cassandra Jenkins accomplishes on her second album. The seven songs are cold however cozy, familiar like a heartbreak. The third track in the collection, “Hard Drive,” which best sums up the album’s mood, serves Suzanne Vega vibes with its spoken-word storytelling and meandering, sparse, jazzy sound. The closer, “The Ramble,” is an aural Xanax — serene although sweeping, brilliant for a solo winter hike through nature or because the soundtrack to a Terrence Malick movie. The song ends with birds chirping, welcoming a new day, reminding us, as another stressful year comes to a close, to look to the sky, and as Jenkins offered on "Hard Drive,” to close your eyes and “just breathe.” An Overview on Phenomenal Nature is indeed phenomenal. —Chris Rudolph
  
  
  
  
  



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  Huron John: Cartoon Therapy
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=YGm6PuQ84pk
  
  
  
  At the center of Huron John’s sophomore effort Cartoon Therapy is noise — cute, blinding, and baffling noise. With synthesizers, vocoders, and kitschy samples at his disposal, the Chicago-based indie artist blends an expansive base of musical influences – including Tyler, the Creator, whom he shouts out on “Trapped in a Lava Lamp” — to create music that speaks to the world wide web generation. His new record finds its lyrical roots in quarantine, heartbreak, mental health, youth, and nostalgia, living at the intersection of what it’s like having to exist lost in all the above at all times. Opener “Common Ground” sets the tone with a deceivingly chill beat supporting self-deprecating jabs before he rapidly assures us, “I’m alright” on the groovy “Huron Disko” (which begs the question: “Do you think that Harry and Draco ever attempted to stop the beef?”). He has his crying-at-the-party moment (“Troy Bolton”), goes existential on “Cosmic Opera (Death Isn't the End),” gets lost in a disco memory on “Arthur,” and finds closure on “Children of the Sun,” never forgetting his tie-dyed, neon-soaked lens. All I’ve got to mention is, “Yo, Huron! Did you've got to go that hard?” —Carson Mlnarik
  
  
  
  
  



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  Parannoul: To Visualize the Next segment of the Dream
  
  
  https://youtu.Be/gb9Qqt75rzg
  
  
  
  The underground sensation surrounding Parannoul has been stoked in part by the indie Korean artist’s bid to remain mostly anonymous. One story is that they're a student living in Seoul, making crunchy shoegaze late at night from their bedroom, though they’ve disclosed little else in faceless interviews or musings published to Bandcamp, where their lo-fi music was shared before going wide on streaming platforms earlier this year. The gaps in their biography might be filled by To Visualize the Next piece of the Dream, their dreamy sophomore collection, which was written about a “active loser” who aspires to be a rock star, despite the fact the 21-year-old character can’t sing or play guitar. An insecure delivery feels apt for a narrative like this; the atmosphere Parannoul conjures is all haze and mist, with murmured, paired-back vocals like a shy musical instrument in the sweltering noise. They mumble hopelessly about youth wasted, as on the standout opener cute World," yet it's easy to lose yourself in the analog textures between the fizzing guitars and math-rock drums, the background chatter and the nostalgic rumbling of train cars, just as it may be tempting to give in to melancholy. The sounds here may be unknowable, although the themes are well-trodden: the emotional pulls of youth, the pain of wanting something more. —Coco Romack
  
  
  
  
  



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  PinkPantheress: To Hell With It
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=0Szr5Dcwn4Y
  
  
  
  If 2021 really was the year any time we couldn't stop looking back, imagine 20-year-old London artist PinkPantheress an emissary for time travel. Nostalgia is one of her most potent weapons, and on a usual song, she pulls a snippet of something from the past — mention the twinkly guitar part from Linkin Park's "Forgotten" — for a minute or two of sheer celebration. Imagine it a digital bath, a sonic immersion in a familiar sound fine-tuned just enough to give it new relevance. She doesn't linger; the songs are over before the reference point becomes stale, and her gentle vocals are the best vessel for the soft ache of her lyrics ("I'm obsessed with you in a way I can't believe / as soon as you wipe your tears, do you wipe them just for me?"). Piece of the formula for her success is this brevity of form (unsurprisingly, her music traveled far on TikTok) and the fact that To Hell With It, her debut mixtape, requires only 19 minutes of your time to totally experience it. Yet across its brief runtime, the collection's excursions into jungle, drum and bass, and other glitchy and beloved British subgenres help propel it out of the realm of novelty to be transformational. The nostalgia is real — the cover art for "Passion" is the iconic Windows XP rolling landscape background — yet these songs are not gimmicks. Even as she evokes indelible '90s residence landmarks, PinkPantheress sounds like no one else. —Patrick Hosken
  
  
  
  
  



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  Mariah the Scientist: Ry Ry World
  
  
  https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=Tgu3RayqsE8
  
  
  
  "Who's your preference girl?" Mariah the Scientist asks at the close of Ry Ry World's first track. Then: "I wish I may would be her." This longing to position yourself closer to someone openly doing you wrong is the crux of her second full-length album, a brisk 28 minutes of spacey synths and twittering trap drums as she floats through a galaxy of undeserving boys, seeking a safe place to land. "And I dream to be a fool," she wails on "RIP," one of the only times her voice rises above humble self-contemplation, "that way you wouldn't know that I knew what you do." She considers every option: debating her motivations on "Brain," finding new fuckboys on "Walked In," murdering her ex on "Revenge." Yet the through-line is the loneliness of struggle love, the isolating feeling of not being enough, the vital need to feel a little bit more respected and also a little bit far less alone. Ry Ry World is often attempting to accept pain as romance, although on "2 You," she's burying the past to find her own peace. “Look at what we made,” she sweetly declares of the wreckage, perhaps to him, although mostly to herself. “Sure was beautiful.” —Terron Moore