Back in 2018, I fell ass-backward into monthly new release roundups. This was spurred by a better-than-normal crop of January albums and soon evolved into a self-issued challenge. Could I write interesting and insightful descriptions about eight albums each month? It turns out the answer was yes, I could! It proved to be a fruitful experiment that allowed me to write candidly in short-form about everything I loved as I was enjoying it. From brand-new discoveries to the latest records from bands I was already following, I loved being “up” on new music throughout 2018 and documenting my excitement somewhere concrete. Those posts now read like a time capsule for where I was and who I was each of those months. While it was freeing to break the bounds of this site’s typical review format, it was also tiring, and I had no desire to do it again… until this year.

In January of 2021, we received a great crop of releases, including but not limited to Beach Bunny, Shame, and Cheekface. January is also a time where the music industry is in a (relative) lull as musicians and journalists alike are recuperating from the holidays and getting back into the swing of things. It felt like nobody was really talking about or celebrating these records, so I went ahead and filled the gap. Thus, another monthly tradition was born.

After two years off from these types of single-paragraph reviews, it was refreshing to jump back into this monthly tradition. I don’t think I’ll do it again next year, but it was fun (and often challenging) to try to get these roundups out in a timely and relevant manner each month. This post is simply a compendium of every monthly review roundup from 2021 so you can look back and see what I was excited about each month. Here’s hoping there’s something new here that you haven’t heard of or seen a million times on every publication’s album of the year list. Cheers and thanks for reading along this year.