I hate to always start these with a gloomy intro paragraph, but I’ll be real; 2021 has been hard. In some ways, harder than 2020. While many of us spent last year hunkered down and reeling from a global pandemic, this year has been far more undefinable. We’re nearing a million dead from COVID here in the US, and the government response has essentially boiled down to a shrug. At least last year, it felt like we were all in this together.

For me, 2021 has been a year of breakups, burnouts, and overall bummers. As we sit on the brink of another outbreak with collective “pandemic fatigue,” I’m beginning to think that we’re never getting out of this. It seems that, when faced with two options, most people will opt for the one that helps them and them alone. Either that or people are so far down their individualistic rabbit holes that they can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s been a debilitating and demoralizing season, but I’m still here, and so are you.

As with most other years, music was a shining bright spot in my life that helped me through each and every day. Whether consoling, comforting, or just helping me forget about the outside world for a few minutes, there were plenty of albums this year that I found peace in. These albums have been my oasis. The safe space that allowed me to weather the storm and make sense of it all. They’ve soundtracked moments of joyous exhilaration and crushing loss. No matter what they sound like, these are the albums that have helped me through a very dark, very long, very hard year.

Despite how dour I sound and how paralyzed I feel, I am thankful to be here and grateful that I get to experience works of art such as these. Here are my 15 favorite albums of the year.

15 | Wild Pink - A Billion Little Lights

For the better part of the last decade, Wild Pink have been carefully fleshing out their own corner of the musical world with loving brushstrokes. Sometimes those brushstrokes would be long, vibrant streaks like 2018’s Yolk in the Fur, and other times they would be shorter dispatches like an EP here, or a random Taylor Swift cover there. Throughout 2021, the heartland indie rockers seemed hellbent on adding more onto their canvas than ever before. Released in February, A Billion Little Lights is a searching album that conjures the awe-inspiring feelings of a drive through America’s heartland. The sun shines down upon you as you feel the wind in your hair and take in the vast expanse before you. The amber-coated fields of grain contrast the cloudless blue skies, and you feel at home, even though you’re hundreds of miles away from everything you’ve ever known. That’s what listening to A Billion Little Lights is like. Supported throughout the year by a tour, an EP, some covers, a live album, and capped off by an excellent single, there has never been a better or more rewarding year to live within the world crafted by John Ross & co.

14 | The Antlers - Green To Gold

Some albums capture the frigid landscape of winter. Others embody the celebratory warmth of summer. While I love those types of albums, I’ve never heard a record capture the transition between seasons quite like Green To Gold. With dreamy lounge piano, vibrant steel guitar, and expansive instrumental stretches, The Antlers’ sixth studio album (and first in seven years) sees the band at a transitionary period too. Conceived and written almost entirely in the morning hours, the band’s latest is, as lead singer Peter Silberman puts it, “the first album I’ve made that has no eeriness in it.” He went on to elaborate, “I set out to make Sunday morning music.” Despite this aversion to darkness, everything about Green To Gold, from its title to the songs contained within it, is about the liminal spaces of life. And when you really think about it, aren’t those in-between moments are more compelling anyway? It’s easy to paint life with binaries, but the truth is more often somewhere in the middle. What’s really telling of who you are as a person is what you do to swing out of those periods and move between them. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? For The Antlers, the answer lies within this record.

Just as Green To Gold soundtracked our world’s unthawing, the recently-released Losing Light captures our yearly withdrawal. Slower, darker, and released at the perfect time in the depths of November, the EP is a worthy addendum to the band’s latest record that makes it feel like a living, breathing piece of art.

13 | Good Sleepy - everysinglelittlebit

everysinglelittlebit begins like a dream. As the album’s introductory track unfolds, it feels as if you’re making your way through a dense, moss-covered forest. Thick fog fills the air, carrying disembodied voices that swirl around the outer reaches of your perception, and suddenly everything drops out at once with “suffokate.” It’s like one of those trapping pits where hunters cover the opening in branches and leaves. You set foot onto it, shift your weight, and suddenly find yourself in a freefall. The song hits you like a punch to the gut, combining jittery guitarwork with a tight rhythm section and weighty shout-along vocals. Despite this bombastic sequencing, the tracklist does a good job of giving the listener a chance to catch their breath every once in a while, only to sap it away with the next track. Good Sleepy spend the duration of their debut album grappling with overwrought emotions, complicated relationships, and the idea of emotional self-sustainability. The instrumentals are tight and punchy, settling in at a middle ground somewhere between Stars Hollow and Ogbert The Nerd. The end result is an album with the nervous energy of speeding down the highway while chugging a Red Bull on your way to a basement gig. I know with everysinglelittlebit of myself that we’ll all be back there soon.

12 | Alien Boy - Don’t Know What I Am

Don’t Know What I Am plays out like the soundtrack to a long-lost mid-90s coming-of-age teen comedy. I’m not even talking about that made-for-TV trash, I’m talking top-of-the-line teen dramedies like Heathers and 10 Things I Hate About You. The kind of movies that culminate in a house party and always know when to bust out a peppy pop-punk tune. I suppose that would make “The Way I Feel” the scene-setting opening credits song that would play as we swoop into some bustling high school and meet our main characters. Throughout the record, the Portland rockers do an excellent job of introducing themselves to the audience, guiding them along this emotional journey, and pulling on our heartstrings with expertly-crafted hooks fit for 90s alt radio. The instrumentals are dripping in fuzzy shoegaze feedback that borrows equal parts from power pop and emo. Best listened to loud af, Don’t Know What I Am tackles topics of self-discovery, partnership, and queerness. More than anything, this record sounds like unrepentant love. It sounds like teenage adoration. It sounds like finding someone who loves you for who you are. This is the way things should have always been and should always be. It’s love the way you always wanted.

11 | Lucy Dacus - Home Video

Home Video hurts to listen to. Not just because it’s a collection of raw feelings and confessional songs, but because it was released as my relationship was crumbling in real-time. I usually try to not inject too much of my personal life on here (much less in an AOTY countdown), but this album’s pain feels intertwined with my own. The songs of unfit pairings, longing, and heartbreak mirror the feelings I’ve experienced this year. Home Video is a hard album to listen to, but even still, I can’t deny its mastery. This record delivers everything I loved about 2018’s Historian and makes it even more approachable. There are still killer guitar solos, anthemic choruses, and aching balladry, but Dacus seems even more sure of herself. These pleasant qualities help dislodge these songs from the hurt. This record may still be hard for me to listen to, but a few years down the line, I can’t wait to revisit this release from a new perspective and ride alongside in Dacus’ passenger seat, taking in the world.

10 | Stars Hollow - I Want to Live My Life

Like most emo records, the debut album from Stars Hollow sees our narrator coming face to face with their faults. The key difference between I Want to Live My Life and most other emo records is that we actually accompany our hero on their journey towards self-betterment. While other releases of this genre lament not being able to get the girl or dig yourself out of a rut, I Want to Live My Life rolls up its sleeves and actually does the hard work. This means is that the listener experiences every phase of this journey as the band works their way from merely maintaining to striving to achieve something more. It’s a beautiful and true human experience captured in a compelling 25-minute run time.

Read our full review of I Want to Live my Life here.

9 | Fiddlehead - Between the Richness

While Springtime & Blind was an album mired in death, Between the Richness is an album about life. Specifically, about the things that define a life. Inspired by lead singer Patrick Flynn’s experience as a recent father, the album uses his newfound perspective to unflinchingly capture the things that define us early on. Childhood friendships, mentors, conflicting emotions, growing apart, and academic expectations are all topics that inform the songs here. This all builds to an album-length collage that mirrors the building blocks most of us are comprised of.

After many, many, many repeated listens of Between the Richness, there’s one thing that always sticks in my mind. After all the dust has settled; after the EE Cummings poem, the Latin passages, and the obituary readings, one lyric always rattles around in my brain for hours on end; “How do I say goodbye?” Like many other lines on the album, it’s belted in a near-scream by Flynn, but is swaddled in a melody that can get stuck in your head for hours… and therein lies the beauty of Fiddlehead. Complicated articulations of even more complicated feelings delivered in a cathartic way that not only makes sense but makes you want to join in.

8 | Mannequin Pussy - Perfect

Punk music was never meant to be indulgent, and no release this year proved that more than Mannequin Pussy’s Perfect. A compact collection of five songs weighing in at a collective 14-minute runtime, this might be (pardon my pun) the perfect punk album… or at the very least, the best distillation of Mannequin Pussy’s range of sounds. “Control” is the ultra-relatable lead single, “Perfect” is the burn-it-all-down punk cut, and “To Lose You” is the soaring lovelorn middle child. Beyond that trifecta, “Pigs Is Pigs” is a bass-led hardcore sucker-punch with a vital message immediately contrasted with “Darling,” the EPs solitary closing ballad. Perfect is a full range of emotions captured in a rapid-fire montage of rage, love, injustice, hate, loneliness, and adoration. There’s simply nothing more you could ask for.

7 | Cory Hanson - Pale Horse Rider

In my mind, Pale Horse Rider is a concept album. It’s a record about a cowboy riding an undead skeletal horse to the psychedelic depths of hell. The reason isn’t entirely clear, but odds are he’s going to rescue the girl from a hulking demonic behemoth. It’s like a Robert Rodriguez film, but way more laid back. Or maybe Evil Dead if the characters cracked a few less jokes. It’s Dante’s Inferno in a western setting.

The title track is an early tent poll that plays out like the would-be movie’s title card. From there, we wind from the desert-like desolation of “Necklace” to the epic battle portrayed as a guitar solo on “Another Story From the Center of the Earth.” Even the celebratory moments like “Limited Hangout” are carried out after acknowledging how arduous the journey has been. “Sometimes it's so hard not to feel like a corpse Dragging a soul on two broken wheels / I have often felt the edges of my body trying to escape,” Hanson bemoans before picking up a drink. It’s a nice little moment of lightness that still acknowledges the dark reality we often find ourselves in.

With Hanson as our ferryman, he guides us through the voyage with crystalline pedal steel, rumbling cowboy drums, and jangly campfire acoustic guitar. Despite the macabre theme and overall mood, the release closes out with a sunny disposition on “Pigs,” which plays out like the final credits after we’ve clawed our way back to the surface of the earth. In true old west fashion, the album leaves you ready for another pulpy expedition, but not before celebrating with a stiff drink.

6 | Jail Socks - Coming Down

When I listen to Coming Down, I hear Jail Socks, but I also hear my childhood. I hear my first collection of CDs like Sum 41, Good Charlotte, and Simple Plan. I hear candy-coated pop-rock with immaculate hooks and catchy choruses that mask a more profound layer of emotions lying just beneath the surface. Essentially an album about the comedown of youth, the band’s debut album builds off the foundation laid out in their 2019 EP and draws influence from 90s alt-rockers like Third Eye Blind and Jimmy Eat World. From outright rippers like “Peace of Mind” and “Point Point Pleasant” to more pensive moments found on “Pale Blue Light” and “More Than This,” the band explores a dazzling range of early-20-something lamentations on this record. Already my most-listened-to album of 2021, I know that Coming Down will be an album I’ll return to for many years to come.

Read our full review of Coming Down here.

5 | The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Illusory Walls

An 80-minute post-emo, post-hardcore, post-rock album about the social, moral, and ideological rot of late-stage capitalism? AND it’s all passed through a conceptual Dark Souls filter? I am in. There’s simply no amount of hyperbole I could pack into this introduction that would do Illusory Walls justice, so I’ll just say that this was one of the most impactful first listens I’ve had with an album in years. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die are perhaps best known for being forebears of the 2010s Emo Revival. Famous for their long name and even longer list of band members, everything about Illusory Walls seems counter to their previous work. It’s a darker, fiercer, and more focused album that was conceived amongst the group’s (now core) five members.

While the singles range from a mixture of The Anniversary and Broken Social Scene on “Queen Sophie For President” and heavy metal riffage on “Invading the World of the Guilty as a Spirit of Vengeance,” the group rounds out distant corners of their universe on songs like “We Saw Birds Through the Hole in the Ceiling” and “Your Brain is a Rubbermaid.” The cherry on top of this album comes with the one-two punch of its closing tracks. Both the 16-minute “Infinite Josh” and the 20-minute “Fewer Afraid” are absolutely jaw-dropping tracks that are guaranteed to inflict goosebumps upon any listeners who might take them in with an open heart. While “Infinite Josh” is built around a post-rock build and steadfast bassline, “Fewer Afraid” is a career highlight manifesto complete with a spoken-word passage and philosophical sentiments. The latter of these two songs evoked an actual joy-filled scream from me upon first listen when the band broke out into an interpolation of my favorite song of theirs from nearly a decade earlier.

Over the course of this album’s final 36 minutes, the group touches on topics like death, the passage of time, religion, and the desire to make the world a better place. It’s inspiring, cosmically-affirming, and downright staggering. In one of the record’s most profound lines, friend of the band Sarah Cowell sings,

You cry at the news, I just turn it off
They say there's nothing we can do and it never stops
You believe in a god watching over
I think the world's fucked up and brutal
Senseless violence with no guiding light
I can't live like this, but I'm not ready to die

Even if you aren’t a fan of this band or emo as a whole, Illusory Walls is a boundless work that shatters nearly every preconceived notion one might have about the possibilities of this genre—an extraordinary feat of the medium.

4 | Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee

Michelle Zauner has had a hard couple of years. After the dissolution of her previous band and the death of her mother, Zauner coped the best way musicians know how: by creating. She recoiled into grief over the series of several Bandcamp EPs, culminating in 2016’s phenomenal Psychopomp. She processed her loss in the outer reaches of space with 2017’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet and then took a few years to explore her creative whims. She recorded some covers, did some collabs, and even wrote a damn book. This is all to say that Zauner has kept busy, and after plumbing the depths of sorrow for nigh on five years, she has earned herself a bit of joy. Enter Jubilee.

Japanese Breakfast’s aptly-titled third album finds Zauner basking in vibrant colors, biting into a sweet persimmon, and allowing herself a cautious bit of happiness. “Paprika” sifts through the rubble, eventually uncovering a triumphant parade of love. This leads directly into “Be Sweet,” which is a downright untouchable anthem that deserves nothing less than to be sung at the top of your lungs while bouncing around in pure revelry. This is not to say Jubilee is all good vibes; the album’s happiness is also tempered with plenty of realism and darkness found in songs like “Posing In Bondage” and “Savage Good Boy.” Just as there will always be loneliness and shitty men even in life’s best moments, Jubilee acknowledges the presence of good alongside the bad. It’s a complete spectrum of emotions that all cement in the epic six-minute slow-burn closer “Posing For Cars.” Michelle Zauner will not be defined by her grief nor her happiness. She is a complete human with a planet’s worth of emotions contained within. Jubilee is merely Zauner’s attempt at capturing that ever-shifting mix of feelings. It’s a rush.

3 | Turnstile - Glow On

Before Turnstile even announced Glow On, the band’s four-song Turnstile Love Connection had already made its way onto my album of the year shortlist. On Turnstile’s third studio album, the band builds off their summer sample platter (and excellent visualization) into an expanded world of pink cloud hardcore punk. One spin of the album’s opening call to action, and it’s easy to see the appeal; muscular guitar riffs, exhilarating instrumentals, and catchy scream-along lyrics are all things the group has mastered now over a decade into their career.

Months ago, I saw someone online describe the album as “pop-punk,” and I have become obsessed with that descriptor. Glow On isn’t pop-punk in the frosted tips Sum 41 sense of the term but in a much more literal interpretation of those two words. This is hardcore punk music made in a poppy, approachable way. This is radio rock that can deadlift hundreds of pounds and throw up a 6-minute mile no problem. If this album doesn’t want to make you take flight, then quite frankly, nothing will.

2 | Wednesday - Twin Plagues

How many of us have experienced Twin Plagues over the last year? The loss of a family member and the loss of a job. A life-threatening accident and a breakup. Bad news following already bad news. Sometimes these things just overlap, and when they do, they compound, making each feel worse in the process. Add a climate crisis, political regression, and a pandemic on top of it, and you’ll find that one section of your brain has been passively worrying for the last two years, if not longer.

Twin Plagues is an album full of these dual-wielding worries, contrasted against midwest mundanities. NFL teams, burned-down fast food buildings, high school acid trips, family photos, and dead pets are brought up and passed by like a roadside attraction that nobody wants to stop the car for. While nondescript on paper, these observations are rendered beautifully within the album, set to an instrumental backdrop that ranges from fuzzed-out shoegaze to wistful slide guitar.

This record captures these overlapping plagues and offers a surprising amount of compassion to the emotionally rung-out listener. It’s the sound of multiple major life events converging on you at once, all while the world outside continues to spin onward. It’s the sound of catastrophe happening while you find yourself caught in the eye of the storm.

That said, there’s still escape and comfort to be found here. Twin Plagues may not offer a solution, but in a way, it offers something better; solidarity. It provides the knowledge that you are not alone. It quells your mind with the fact that there are other people out there experiencing the same thing, and, despite how it may seem, we are stronger together than anything the world can throw at us individually. And if you’ve made it this far? If you’ve weathered those Twin Plagues or you doubt that you have the strength to do so, then look no further than the affirmative first words of the album: you are fearless.

1 | Home is Where - I Became Birds

If I were to describe I Became Birds with one word, it would be electrifying. There are tons of things you can compare Home Is Where to: Neutral Milk Hotel, Bob Dylan, and your favorite local punk band, just to name a few. But simply put, this band is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. As a collection of songs, I Became Birds is all of those sounds and influences packed into a magnificent 19 minutes that strikes my soul like a bolt of lighting. With poetic and visceral lyrics that capture the trans experience, these songs tackle important and seldom-discussed topics like body dysmorphia and self-discovery in inventive and affirming ways. The band also touches on rustic backcountry sentiments, the desire to pet puppies, and presidential assassinations throughout the album’s blistering fast runtime.

Back in March, I described the release as a rickety roller coaster, and I standby that. Every time I give this record a listen, I half expect it to collapse under the weight of itself. This is even reflected in the band’s live performances as lead singer Brandon Macdonald leaps, screams, shouts, wails, and collapses as the songs unfold. The guitars sway, tap, and shred with a fiery passion, floating just above the propulsive rhythm section, which alternates between gently guiding the songs forward and putting the pedal to the metal, forcing them into a careening full-tilt. Throw in some harmonica, synth, horns, violin, group chants, and a singing saw, and you have an honest, revelatory, and elating experience that also makes for the best album of 2021.

Swim Into The Sound

Swim Into The Sound

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Swim Into The Sound

Swim Into The Sound's 15 Favorite Albums of 2021

15 | Wild Pink - A Billion Little Lights

14 | The Antlers - Green To Gold

13 | Good Sleepy - everysinglelittlebit

12 | Alien Boy - Don’t Know What I Am

11 | Lucy Dacus - Home Video

10 | Stars Hollow - I Want to Live My Life

9 | Fiddlehead - Between the Richness

8 | Mannequin Pussy - Perfect

7 | Cory Hanson - Pale Horse Rider

6 | Jail Socks - Coming Down

5 | The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Illusory Walls

4 | Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee

3 | Turnstile - Glow On

2 | Wednesday - Twin Plagues

1 | Home is Where - I Became Birds