Paste's 50 Best Albums of 2021

For a record born of introspection, Things Take Time, Take Time is surprisingly fun.

Dark in Here doesn’t exactly capture America’s emerging comprehension that, in fact, there’s rot at the country’s core that requires swift remediation; mostly it gives opportunities to reflect on and recover, if only slightly, from our national trauma.

Where their peers might suddenly send out a head-spinning blast of guitar noise, Black Country, New Road thrive in slower tension and release.

Even with booming guitars, pounding drums and soaring instrumentals, Little Oblivions feels just as intimate as Baker’s more, well, intimate albums.

In contrast with much of today’s folky indie-pop, which rests on the melancholy sway of dream pop, Cool Dry Place is unexpectedly groovy, with hooks and rhythms worming their way into hearts and minds in more ways than one.

Home Video ... is just what you’d expect from such a talent. Here, her wise brand of rock music blooms into something even more palpable, relatable and beautifully messy.

Over the past eight years, they’ve demonstrated their creative ambition, as well as the courage to move away from the sound that made them successful. And on Infinite Granite, they prove they have the chops to follow the path of their choosing, wherever it may lead.

The North Carolina songwriter’s heart overflows on her instrumentally and emotionally abundant second record.

On Sinner Get Ready—her first release for Sargent House—she leans more into the droning classical, chant-based material from Caligula while introducing a more minimal, Appalachian-folk influences to her orchestrations

Her sound is compelling enough that, even when her lyrics regress into platitudes, her music remains stirring and intense.

Over the past 13 years—and with each project—The War on Drugs have continuously grown into fuller and more realized versions of themselves.

The British quintet’s utter disregard for rock convention elevates Bright Green Field’s paranoid, vaguely dystopian universe.

Where serpent mourned fizzling loves on soil and debut EP blisters, here, he hails the simple glories and everyday little moments of thriving Black queer romances.

Nick Cave may very well be the avatar for the idea that what we think of as “mellow” can be “heavy” and vice versa. With Carnage, he and Ellis prove that point yet again. Believe it or not, they also stretch themselves again, suggesting there may be no end to the inspiration they have up their sleeves.

We’re left with 10 raw, rock-solid tracks that feel just as restorative for us as they clearly do for Jordan. Valentine is proof that a breakup album doesn’t have to be sad—it just has to be powerful.

After establishing themselves as one of the most unique acts on the indie-rock landscape for three albums in a row, it’s heartening to see Spirit of the Beehive take their music even further.

Call Me If You Get Lost delivers, by way of investigating a part of Tyler we’ve not yet seen on any of his previous projects: transparency.

Ignorance is a departure. More specifically, this album is a stunningly assured plunge into a sleek, buzzing jazz-pop wilderness.

GLOW ON isn’t just one of the best hardcore albums of the year; it’s one of the best albums of the year in general.

There’s a timeless quality to Promises, an inscrutable sense that the album could hail from 30 years in the past or 30 years into the future. Of course, that’s what makes it a genuine intergenerational collaboration, this sense of time collapsing upon itself.