“This is a music review, not therapy.” - Levi Weaver
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For this month’s Trial & Error I tested out every album that was released in 2021. Or, at least every one I knew of and thought might be worth my time. It was tough. Listening to great music in my car, at my desk, while working out or walking the dogs! Such a challenge!
Ok, so not every Trial & Error is about overcoming fear.
You can also view this post with album photos over on my music blog (that I never update) .
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More than any other year I can remember, there were so many great options. The honorable mentions are all so good and nearly made it.
Honorable Mentions
In These Silent Days - Brandi Carlisle; The Future - Nathaniel Rateliff; Enjoy the View - We Were Promised Jetpacks; Be Here Instead - Parker Millsap; Maybe We Never Die - Anderson East; First Time Feeling - Leah Blevins; Stand for Myself - Yola; Little Oblivions - Julien Baker; See You Next Time - Joshua Ray Walker; Different Kinds of Light - Jade Bird.
No Church in a While - Lecrae, 1KPhew
This is the perfect example for why you shouldn’t make your year-end lists at the beginning of December. Lecrae and 1KPhew dropped this album on December 3 and it quickly shot up in my most-played list for the year. I love that these two took one topic, people who haven’t been to church in a while and are unsure about what going back would be like, and turned it into a tight 10-song rap album. This was a pleasant surprise. “WILDIN” is the top song on this one.
Where Should I End - Saint Sister
This Irish duo takes beautiful, delicate harmonies and fills them with poetic and heartbreaking lyrics. Their collaboration with the iconic Irish songstress Lisa Hannigan on the tune “The Place Where I Work” is absolute perfection. It’s such an intimate, detailed, quiet song. Listen to this one on a cold, rainy, winter’s night. Just like their Irish home.
Gold-Diggers Sound - Leon Bridges
Weirdly, this is my least favorite of Leon’s three albums. However, it’s still great in its own way. I appreciate how Leon has developed as an artist into a style that is uniquely his. No one else can make the records that Leon makes. So many artists would have been stuck in the retro-soul sound of his first record forever. Or they would have tried to swing way too far in the other direction. Gold-Diggers Sound is part of his natural evolution as an artist. “Motorbike” is the best song I heard in 2021, but “Steam” is also a sultry, sweaty tune…in a good way.
NeverLand II - Andy Mineo
The much-anticipated sequel to Mineo’s debut album (though he’s released several albums in between), which dropped in 2014, NeverLand II sees a matured Mineo looking back on his childhood, his parents, his faith, and more. He lost his mother to cancer in 2018 but her voice is featured throughout the album. It’s really poignant. The album is pieced together really well and each song flows into the other as part of the overall story. The one somewhat jarring choice is the inclusion of he and Lecrae’s smash hit “Coming in Hot” at the end of the album. That song came out 2018 and became a massive hit thanks to TikTok, but it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the album at all. “You Know the Drill” is a great song featuring Wordsplayed and “Nobody’s Coming” is the triumphant return of singing Andy.
The Horses and the Hounds - James McMurtry
I’ve written everything I need to write about this album in my review for Texas Monthly.
Music City USA - Charley Crockett
It can be bewildering to keep up with Charley Crockett’s musical output. He’s released 10 albums since 2015! Some of them are cover albums of older songs and some are mostly original works. Everything he does is good and in his unique “Gulf + Western” style. With Music City USA he has put together the best album of his career. It has that old school country sound but it’s more upbeat than some of his slower efforts. And it’s peppered with great songs, like “I Need Your Love” that’s more retro Soul than country or blues. Other solid efforts include “Are We Lonesome Yet” and “I Won’t Cry.”
Delta Kream - The Black Keys
The Black Keys became the biggest rock band in the world after 2010’s Brothers and the follow-up El Camino. But those of us that were huge fans of the band before those albums were drawn to Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney because of their love and dedication to the Hill Country Blues of Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, and others. Everything they have ever done was borne out of their fascination with this music. Their first albums were chock full of Kimbrough and Burnside covers. Those were recorded in their Akron, Ohio basement on tape and the raw grittiness is part of the appeal. But the albums that shot them to superstardom didn’t feature any of these songs. Those albums were also incredible, especially Brothers and 2015’s Turn Blue, but longtime fans often dreamed that the two would return to their roots. Then, in 2021, completely out of the blue, they released Delta Kream which is entirely made up of covers of Kimbrough, Burnside, John Lee Hooker, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Big Joe Williams songs.
Far from recorded by kids in Akron basements, these were recorded in Auerbach’s state-of-the-art Easy Eye Studios with veteran blues musicians. However, that imperfect feel is still there as these sessions weren’t meant to be a record. It was just blues-loving musicians playing songs they loved. Auerbach says he specifically didn’t go back and fix any mistakes in the recordings, which makes this album even more special. The Black Keys were my gateway into the world of the blues more than a decade ago, so for them to release this record in 2021 was a gift from the blues heavens. Hooker’s “Crawling Kingsnake” and Burnside’s “Going Down South” are standouts here, especially Auerbach’s choice of falsetto on the Burnside tune.
star-crossed - Kacey Musgraves
Musgraves became a household name after her Grammy Album of the Year-winning Golden Hour in 2018. That album was mostly about her love with her new husband Ruston Kelly. By 2020, the two were divorced. A divorce album is a well-worn trope in country music. Everyone knew that Kacey’s next record would address this relationship. So the pressure was on her to deliver not only a follow up for the album of the year but also to address the deeply personal wounds she’d gone through in her marriage. With star-crossed she more than met the challenge.
Told as the full story of her relationship, it starts off where Golden Hour left off. She sings about her desires to be a “good wife.” But soon cracks start to form and she gets nostalgic for times before the difficulties of marriage on “simple times.” The standout song on the album is “justified” as she addresses all of the different forms that grief and healing takes in a persons life. You may go weeks feeling like you are over the pain and then suddenly something hits you and you’re right back where you started. Eventually, the bitterness takes over and she’s roasting her ex like so many great country female singers. “breadwinner” is just brutal. By the end she’s found an acceptance and begun to look forward. It’s a brilliant work of art from start to finish.
The Marfa Tapes - Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, Jon Randall
Perhaps the most unexpected, unique, and refreshing album that came out in 2021, there’s really nothing like The Marfa Tapes. You’ve got Jack Ingram, a Texas country legend but someone with little name recognition outside of Texas. You’ve got Jon Randall, a highly successful songwriter and guitarist but a mostly behind-the-scenes player. And then you’ve got Miranda Lambert, one of the most famous artists in all of music.
It’s an odd combination for an album. The three of them went out to Marfa1, way out in the Big Bend area of West Texas to hang out and write songs together. Eventually they hit record as they sat around a campfire. And they left it all in the recording: the crackle of the campfire, the blowing of the wind, the mistakes and restarts, the airplanes flying overheard, the banter before and after songs. It’s almost feels like you were invited to be part of a secret show for only you. The harmonies between the three are beautiful. The songs are brilliant, funny, and nostalgic. It’s just so cool.
It also shows what a unique talent Lambert truly is. There are no other mainstream stars in country music that would do something like this. I love Kacey, but her songs are always studio perfect. And none of the male stars whose voices are far from impressive outside the sheen of a Nashville studio could do this. Lambert’s voice has never sounded better than in this natural setting. The imperfections of this setting make her shine even more. “In His Arms,” “Am I Right or Amarillo,” and “Waxahachie” are the best tracks on the album.
The Million Masks of God - Manchester Orchestra
I’ve been a fan of Manchester Orchestra since I saw them play at a music festival in Stillwater, OK in 2011. However, there’s always been something about them that I just can’t figure out. Their latest album is breathtaking. And it’s perfect all the way through.
But…I just couldn’t find a way to truly write about it. Something about their lyrics and their style just eluded me. So, I tried to find some help. The Athletic’s Levi Weaver is a singularly talented baseball writer and a former singer-songwriter. I knew he was a fan of Manchester Orchestra and this album. So I asked him if he could help me. Maybe he understood them better. I asked him some questions via email and he sent me back this beautiful piece of vulnerable, autobiographical writing. It’s exactly the right way to write about Manchester Orchestra.
I’m deeply in debt to him for his contribution. If you’ve made it this far in the list, enjoy Levi’s writing as the just reward for your efforts.
***
When I was 20, I went on a missions trip to Guatemala for an entire summer. By the time September rolled around and I decided to drop out of college to go back for another semester of fulfilling what my parents and I agreed was my destiny (I was named after the tribe of priests2, after all), someone from Puerto Rico told me that I spoke Spanish with a Guatemalan accent. I guess that means I was fluent back then.
More than twenty years later, I can still comprehend the broad strokes of the language if I overhear a conversation in Spanish — someone is angry at a family member, or they’re trying to decide which restaurant to hit for dinner — but the finer details escape me.
I feel a little bit that way listening to Manchester Orchestra. I haven’t done the requisite reading to know all of the finer details of lead singer Andy Hull’s personal life, but I know enough: he’s a preacher’s kid, like me. He’s a dad, like me. He’s perpetually digging for answers, like me. In the end, does it really matter that I don’t know exactly what he meant with a line like “It felt like a first, but it wasn't new / It felt like a sin, it was more like a noose”?
I don’t have to know what it means, yet…I know what it means.
The final line of the album — ”All this time, I thought I was right” — finds its way past my ribs and pokes me right in the lungs, because Spanish isn’t the only language I’m rusty with these days. I often think back at the words I used back in those missions-trip days to describe my unchallenged understanding of faith: “win the world for Christ”, “covered in the blood”, “how does this affect my witness?” “find the will of God,” and so on.
Those Christianese phrases sound weird coming out of my mouth now. I sent a text to my brother recently: “Do you know anyone who grew up the way we did who is a well-adjusted adult now?” I honestly don’t think I do. Most fall into two categories: still speaking the language fluently, or rejecting the premise of God altogether.
But some of us fall into a weird purgatory middle-ground. I don’t consider myself to be part of the evangelical church, and especially don’t identify with their politics, but if you pressed me to come down on one side of the fence or the other, I’d say I still believe there’s a God.
That’s a big sentence to just leave here without entire chapters of explanation, but this is a music review, not therapy. The point is, when I hear Hull sing “I don’t want to believe it / stuck in my thought / I’ve been trying to replicate the mask of God,” I don’t know for sure if he means he’s trying to trick himself into faith again, or if he’s truly trying to find a God that has always hidden in the “still, small voice”.
And I guess I don’t have to know; either way, I feel it in my bones.
***
That was probably a lot heavier than you were expecting for a top 10 albums list, but that to me was the perfect distillation of Manchester Orchestra. It’s often heavy listening. It requires some thought, some introspection, and often leaves you with more questions than answers. But, especially on The Million Masks of God, it’s more than worth the effort.
Thank you so much for reading and for supporting Trial & Error this year! It’s been so fun working on this. I really appreciate each and every one of you. But I especially appreciate the paid subscribers who are actually financing all of this work. If you’d like to support, you can join the T&E club for only $5 a month!
if you’re wondering, Marfa sucks
if you’re lost here, in the Bible the tribe of Levi was the priests for the nation of Israel