In Courtney Barnett’s case, contemplation is her immediate aim, though this can be broadened into a larger story about slogging through negativity to find a bit of sunshine. Things Take Time, Take Time is a record of contemplation, that damnable, lazy buzzword folks use when art denies them obvious adjectives for describing a deliberately relaxed piece. Courtney Barnett: Things Take Time, Take Time On lead single “Gold Chains” and the album as a whole, Owusu exposes “the flaws of being in a profession where, more and more, you have to be the product, rather than just the provider of the product,” emphasizing the human being under all that gold, whose peace of mind may be the price he pays. The avant-garde, yet undeniably accessible album spans glitchy, Death Grips-esque electro-hip-hop, lush dark-pop and R&B, lusty synth-funk and new-wave rock, with Owusu as the charismatic presence in the eye of the stylistic cyclone. Just take Ghana-born, Australia-based musician Genesis Owusu, whose thrilling debut record Smiling with No Teeth is consistently difficult to pin down in a way that feels nothing less than vital. Genre classifications can be a helpful shorthand when it comes to understanding and engaging with new music, but nowadays, more and more artists are leaving them entirely in the dust. Listen to Paste ’s Best Albums of 2021 playlist on Spotify here.
On this year’s 50 best albums, artists forced by the world’s troubles to look inwards-whether at their unanswered emotional questions or simply into their own imaginations-discovered new corners of their creative universes, and returned to show the rest of us. New faces including Dry Cleaning, Arlo Parks, Katy Kirby and Geese rode their debut albums straight to “ones to watch” status, and veterans like The Mountain Goats, Madlib and Low made formidable additions to already-herculean catalogs. Artists like TURNSTILE, The Armed and Deafheaven reimagined hardcore music as pop at its punchiest, while Pink Siifu, Remi Wolf and Genesis Owusu moved as if genre didn’t exist at all. Songwriters channeled their existential dread into their work, with climate change and COVID looming over urgent and indelible albums from the likes of The Weather Station, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, and Gojira.
Yet in spite of all this inequity, pressure and confusion, the music itself was the industry’s saving grace, same as always. Before vaccine mandates were normalized, the onus for imposing such common-sense measures fell on musicians, forcing them to go out on a limb and risk alienating fans and show promoters in order to play safely-artists did just that anyway. Bandcamp and their wonderful Fridays continued to be a vital lifeline for artists struggling to make ends meet, supporting them directly when other income streams had run dry. Worse still, a perfect storm of bottlenecked vinyl production and skyrocketing demand left many indie artists on the outside looking in when it came to getting their records pressed in 2021. Independent venues were struggling even prior to the shutdown that prompted the movement and legislation to save their stages, and the streaming economy continues to pay the vast majority of artists a pittance. Of course, it’s worth pointing out that “normal” wasn’t all that great to begin with. It enabled them to share with audiences the releases they wrote and recorded while they were stuck on the sidelines-a chance to step out of 2020’s shadow and let their eyes adjust to 2021’s sunshine. But on the whole, this year finally gave artists the opportunity to get out and support their latest records after an existential threat to their livelihoods, making their all-important returns to the road. Some artists canceled or postponed as many shows as they were able to play, as the pandemic’s summer surge, in particular, continued to destabilize the industry. After an all but tour-less 2020, this year brought bands back out of their bedrooms, basements and rehearsal spaces, off constant livestreams and back onto stages at last. Like stepping out of a dark room into broad daylight, or that first halting conversation after an extended silence, 2021 was a time for the music world to gradually readjust to normalcy.