Movers and shakers in our Top 20 albums of the year
Unknowns put it up to Sheeran and Coldplay
Ihope you had a great Christmas and if you are in recovery-mode on this fine St Stephen’s Day then whatever excesses you’ve permitted yourself, you’re allowed – you deserve it. The menace of Covid hung over 2021 as it did the previous year but you don’t need me to tell you that. With most musicians denied any meaningful opportunity to tour, certainly in this country, artists have focused mostly on recorded output. Musical giants returned to the fold – Adele, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay among the most notable – but I feel only one of them produced one of the year’s best. Taylor Swift continued to re-record her early albums, the original masters of which had been acquired by music industry maven Scooter Braun. This year’s reimagining of 2012’s Red benefits from not only 20 rerecorded versions of the songs from the original Deluxe Edition but also six previously unreleased tracks. It’s a great album and she gets her financial dues but it’s not a new album as such so I didn’t consider it for the albums of the year, although I wholeheartedly endorse it!
N.O.A.H, Robert Casey, True Tides and Kynsy were among those Irish pop acts who were virtually unknown at the beginning at the top of the year and who have made great strides in 2021. New rock acts such as Klubber Lang, Bullet Girl, Scattered Ashes, Naked Lungs, Floor Show and Undercover Martians are among dozens I could namecheck as greatly pleasing these ears this year.
In the burgeoning Irish MOBO scene, Denise Chaila and Tolu Mackay led the way. More established acts such as God Knows, Reggie Snow, Jafaris and Loah continue to progress. Londoner Joy Crookes whose father is Irish, made Skin one of the albums of the year.
For those involved in the live scene it was stop-start, on-off, like a form of Chinese water torture, not unlike having to watch the video for Daniel O’Donnell’s Down At The Lah De Dah on repeat (once seen, you can’t unsee it). But seriously (only joking, Daniel) the protocols for staging a gig made some promoters and venue owners think, sadly, that it wasn’t worth the effort anymore. I’m no laissez-faire affirming libertarian but I would suggest it will now have to come to the personal choice and responsibility of each concert-goer. Open the venues and keep them open. If staff have to wear a mask, wear a visor and sometimes gloves to work, give the punters the choice to do the same if they want to or don’t. But, open the venues. Get a vaccine, once, twice, three times, a booster, as Lionel Ritchie might have sang or listen to Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend in Trinidad and believe that
can’t unsee: Daniel O’Donnell’s Down At The Lah De Dah video!
you can become impotent from the vaccine.
If 50,000 people all roaring at the referee, the players, each other or the GAA gods at Croke Park isn’t a superspreader event for 70 minutes then neither is an enthusiastic but responsible audience in the Balor Theatre or the Button Factory. Open the venues or maybe just allow them to become derelict and later developed into hotels. Hotels are the new Starbucks – every street in the capital seems to be incomplete without a hotel. ‘Can you put a live venue in your new hotel?’ ‘Eh… no…’
What if the virus NEVER GOES AWAY? What if this circulates like the common cold and is never eradicated? It seems that the live music industry and certain other parts of the hospitality industry will be left to die. I wonder what those many thousands of younger people who let off steam at the hundreds of gigs that (used to) happen every week in Ireland will do? True, they’ll be safer in small numbers on street corners and darkened alleys and down by the riverbanks, keeping a responsible distance apart, waiting to interact with whoever they encounter:
Omicron’s Droogs, now there’s a good name for a band, or a street gang, or a movement, if they happened to have read A Clockwork Orange. Have you?
Sorry, I was having a nightmare… It’s all good, we’re nearly there. Keep your chins up.
MY ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 1. Wolf Alice Blue Weekend
From the defiant quasi-rap of Smile to Last Man On Earth, which goes from a whispered confessional to an emo power ballad in the course of four and a half minutes, this is a band at the top of their game. They’d already scored a Mercury Award win and Grammy nominations for their
2015 debut My Love Is Cool. Emboldened, unafraid to power into any sonic avenue they choose and come out the other side with aural treasure. My album of the year.
2. Arlo Parks
Collapsed In Sunbeams Tipped as one to watch after starting to upload songs to social media platforms in 2019, the London singer delivered on that promise in January with her excellent debut. The influence of Portishead, Sufjan Stevens and Eliott Smith is evident. But tracks such as Caroline and Black Dog reveal an original and compelling artist. Collapsed In Sunbeams deservedly won the Mercury Prize in September.
3. Dry Cleaning
New Long Leg Florence Shaw of London quartet Dry Cleaning intones seemingly random statements as her bandmates surround
her dispassionate vocals with a type of cultured indie guitar sound reminiscent of nineties giants Garbage. ‘I’ve come here to make a ceramic shoe and come to smash what you made’ she declares on Scratchyard Lanyard. That it repays constant listening is the surprise here. This could have been an indie rock novelty record, instead it is a profound, affecting and, yes, occasionally funny record.
4. For Those I Love – For Those I Love
David Balfe memorialises his friend, poet and fellow member of North Dublin’s Burnt Out collective Paul Curran on a wondrous debut. Though the beats are danceable, songs such as Top Scheme and Birthday/The Pain are grim but I Have A Love and Leave Me Not Love speak of hope while encircled by quashed ambitions. Even if Balfe never records again he has produced an album that will stand with any Irish album of any era and was the best Irish album of 2021.
5. Olivia Rodrigo Sour
Given Olivia Rodrigo’s profile as a star of various Disney Channel shows the teenager’s debut album was bound to attract attention. However, when the striking Driver’s License
dropped, followed by the Taylor Swift-indebted Déjà vu then Good 4 U anticipation of Sour reached fever pitch. When it opened with the punkish mosh of
Brutal, she was already halfway to being Gen Z’s new IT girl to whom everyone can listen.
6. David Keenan What Then?
Another year, another album by David Keenan that is among the year’s best. Home and hinterland is never far from the well-travelled Louthman’s thoughts. He rocks up with the almost title track What
Then Cried Jo Soap shouting about ‘law and disorder on the border in the rain’. His parents’ part in making him the man he is, for better or worse, are laid bare on the raw Peter O’Toole’s Drinking Stories. The wistful Grogan’s Druid closes this epic follow-up to 2020’s brilliant A Beginner’s Guide To Bravery.
7. IDLES Crawler
Being as prolific as their four albums in five years suggests is one thing; consistently making albums that are among the best in each of the years they were released is another thing entirely. IDLES were always more than agitpunk noiseniks, as
early songs about the stillbirth of singer Joe Talbot’s child and the positive effects of immigration attest. The Spectoresque centrepiece The Beachland Ballroom could have been dismissed as pastiche. Instead it has broadened their scope and appeal at a stroke.
8. Sam Fender Seventeen Going Under
The South Shields Springsteen proved with Seventeen Going Under that Hypersonic Missiles was not beginner’s luck with an even more impressive sophomore offering. From the motorik Aye to talking to his teen self on The Leveller and the future Fender on Dying Light he displays maturity and a grasp of the dynamics to make his songs memorable and an artist to whom others may soon be measured against.
9. St Vincent Hello Daddy
St Vincent aka Annie Clark’s sixth album is unashamedly Seventies- (and early Eighties-) indebted. The title – if not all of the album – is inspired by her dad’s release from jail. The influence of Sly & The Family Stone and Pink Floyd is clear on a more louche affair than 2018’s Masseduction. Recognising that
the track My Baby Wants A Baby sounded so similar to Sheena Easton’s 9 to 5, Clark gives its composer Florrie Palmer a cowriting credit.
10. The Fratellis
Half Drunk Under A Full Moon
The Glaswegians who brought us 2006’s classic rabble-rouser Chelsea Dagger would have been an outsider to deliver one of the albums of 2021 but this April release has proved to be that. The production and instrumentation lends a strong Seventies feel to an album on which the title track and The Last Songbird are standouts. I thought it was kitsch on first hearing, I now think it an undervalued classic.
10. Sleaford Mods Spare Ribs
Jason Williamson and
Andrew Fearn’s beats, blips and Sprechgesang attack on society’s ills and ‘the system’ was as potent as ever in 2021. Introducing guests for the first time was a smart move, especially those of the calibre of Amy Taylor of Aussie noiseniks Amyl and the Sniffers as well as musical fellow traveller Billy Nomates. Jason Williamson making his impressive acting debut in the excellent HBO/Sky Atlantic drama Landscapers was
even more unexpected.
12. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Raise The Roof
13. Mick Flannery & Susan O’Neill In The Game
14. Billie Eilish
Happier Than Ever
15 John Francis Flynn
I Would Not Live Always
16. Orla Gartland
Woman On The Internet
17. Invaderband
Peter Gabriel
18. Adele
30
19. Lorde
Solar Power
20. Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth
Utopian Ashes
There are so many that are worthy of honourable mentions such as Barn from Neil Young and Little Simz’s great in parts Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. There’s Easy Life’s summery Life’s A Beach and those by Irish acts Saint Sister, Soda Blonde and Paddy Casey but we would have needed a bigger boat. Again, Happy St Stephen’s Day and I will be back with you for the first column of the new year looking at what is due in ’22!