Strokes
The New Abnormal
This record came out at the tail end of 2020 and so I featured it on my year-in-review post, though I’d only been listening to it for a month or so by year’s end. It stayed with me (and with us: the whole family loves it) throughout this year too. My son Sebastian (4) has choreographed a dance to the song “Bad Decisions.” I think every Strokes record lands on a best-of list of mine somewhere (apart from that RCA one, yuck) because I think this band is tops. They won a Grammy for this one, right, for Album of the Year category? So apparently loads of people agree with me on this one.
Luxury
Health and Sport
Luxury is perhaps my single favorite band, ever, from any time period, the way The Beatles or U2 are for some people, so seeing this will surprise no one. It’s one of their missing albums, not present on streaming platforms and thus not present at all for most listeners. That meant for me having the great fun of committing to—paying for—a record I hadn’t heard a single note of, which really is fun, a kind of gambling. I mean, I did have the recommendation of Andy Prickett from the Parallel Love documentary to go on, which isn’t nothing. Also, earlier this year I was on a panel of “experts” making cases for which is the best Luxury album and Lee Bozeman asserted at the end that this was his favorite from their catalog. Happily, they’ve just issued a vinyl pressing. It’s a moody and dramatic record, triumphant somehow and experimental and perfect.
TobyMac
The Elements
This is Not a Test
I believe I am old enough now not to have to apologize for my liking Christian music. I always have, since those early Benny Hester, Leslie Phillips, Amy Grant, and Petra LP’s I spun as a precocious 6 year-old, ignoring the Mickey Mouse sing-a-long 77’s they’d bought me the plastic turntable for. It continued through high school and college and life thereafter: whatever else I was listening to, I always simultaneously treasured CCM. DC Talk’s records were deeply formative for me, but I fell off the train after Jesus Freak and left TobyMac’s solo work alone until I randomly played his demos CD last year for my kids when we were on a road trip. They were hooked. So was I. We’ve spent this year going through his catalog and these two new records were our most played music of 2021 by a huge margin. They ask for him all the time. I took everyone to see his concert (their first) at the fair (also their first). It’s a great gift to be able to share this with them, our whole family moving to music that moved me first when I was a teenager. I’m grateful both for his creative longevity and his witness.
Skillet
Victorious
I’ve always maintained that these lists are not necessarily what I think to be “the best” records of a given year—often they weren’t even released during the year in question—but the ones that defined the year for me. I loved and still love that first Skillet record but haven’t followed anything in-between. This one I only played because I turned my garage into a weight room during COVID and needed some testosterone-fueled workout music. I tried all kinds of playlists and punk bands, but nothing got my blood pumping so much as this one, so I played it at least once a week when I got out there. They’ve still got it though. “Terrify the Dark”? That song has me gasping for breath.
War on Drugs
I Don’t Live Here Anymore
War on Drugs last appeared on my 2014 list when I sunk deep in Lost in a Dream. I tried the next one, but couldn’t get into it, though many others revere it as a masterpiece. But this one had me from the first track, from the first few seconds of the first track. There’s just so much going on musically in this record. Each year, I send my dad a CD that I think he, audiophile, will appreciate. This year, it’ll be this one, an instant classic that achieves that status in part by not ignoring the classics.
Coda: I don’t usually have a runner-up category or anything like that, but this year, the two records I thought about most were Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud and Natalie Berman’s Mercy. I don’t know what to do with either of them, exactly, which is why I’m reluctant to place them on the list. I can develop relationships with some artists slowly and I wouldn’t be surprised to see either of these become essential for me, but it could just as easily go the other way and I never listen to either of them again. I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.