The top 50 records of 2021

We have reached that long-awaited moment of the year. Like every December, the Indie Hoy team made their selection of the albums that have accompanied us over the last 12 months and that, each in their own way, defined the sound of 2021.

Even as the single format and algorithmic playlists seem to guide the music industry, these 50 discs reinvigorate the importance of the album format in developing a vision in its own time and under its own rules. For the duration of a record, these artists expressed the freedom to create worlds, tell stories and find a much-needed transcendence in times marked by uncertainty and the ephemeral.

50. The Killers - Pressure Machine

Island Records

As clear as an old photograph that, still covered in dust, brings back the vestiges of yesterday with emotional magnetism, nostalgia perseveres on Pressure Machine, The Killers' most introspective and endearing album. On the eve of Imploding the Mirage (2020) completing a year stuck in that nebula that evicted him to go unnoticed without pain or glory, the members compensated their followers with an outstanding successor uprooted from their musical roots. Brandon Flowers tried to capture an evening portrait of his childhood and adolescence, while memories fade in each verse of the eleven songs that build the elegy of a refined trip to Nephi, the small Utah town where he grew up. -Jumpa Barber

49. Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth - Utopian Ashes

Third Man Records

Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth stepped out of their comfort zones with an emotional and conceptual album. In Utopian Ashes, the leader of Primal Scream and the frontwoman of Savages catharsis from their respective disappointments and imagine the end of a marriage that seemed bulletproof. Overtones of blues, soul, and country can be seen throughout most of the album, especially on songs like "Chase It Down," "English Town," and "Remember We Were Lovers." It is also inevitable to have reminiscences of minstrels like Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, since most of his compositions stand out with elegant lyrics that narrate the loneliness and disappointment that a long-term relationship can bring. But the crucial element of this ode to nostalgia is Beth's stormy vocal display, which pairs perfectly with Gillespie's measured style. -Laura Camargo

48. Renata di Croce - The body of the new era

Gema Discos

Nothing more pleasant than slowing down for a while, closing your eyes and levitating between dreams. Renata Di Croce faced postmodernity with a sound ecosystem in which a set of microclimates blur. Freshness and melancholy are two sides of the same coin on The New Age Body, her warm and shimmering debut album. The substantial intimacy of dream pop allowed the artist from La Plata to delve into the unfathomable enigma of being as a catharsis through sensitive, fluvial and revealing poetics. While the electronic pulses of house are in charge of blurring his emotional fragility in songs that stimulate body movement from “Lo que baila y encuentra” to the final remix of “Lucía”, going through “Rosa”, “Deseo” and “Como the sea". Produced by Marte Attacks and produced side by side with Iñake, The body of the new age blurs the horizon between the personal and the political to magnetize our attention with an analogy of the spell that the song of the sirens entails in an iridescent odyssey. -Jumpa Barber

47. Malena Villa - Not so good / Not so bad

ADD / Good

In her double EP, the singer and actress Malena Villa explores the virtues and difficulties of company and loneliness, seeking a balance between both forces. Not so bad / Not so good is an acknowledgment of the complexity of human ties, a work less pop than its predecessor but with a deeper conceptual search. In his first part, Villa is accompanied by other artists for each of the songs, where he also plays with new styles. On the other hand, he decides to do the second one alone, giving it a more intimate and declarative environment. - Lucas Santomero

46. Fermín - Order and progress

Independent

In addition to being one of the hands behind Dillom's excellent album, Fermín Ugarte had another outstanding debt this year: releasing his debut solo album after the dissolution of his band Tobny Houston. The successful advances "Luz y fuerza", "Polideportivo" and "Terremoto" raised expectations for what this young mastermind of songbook pop was capable of producing, and the result did not disappoint. Order and progress is a photograph of the moment of transition between adolescence and adulthood, an album that pays homage to the sound of influential artists from past decades such as LCD Soundsystem and The Strokes in its pop sincerity and craftsmanship of its melodies.

As the cover art indicates, the musician from Chascomús finds that life is not always rosy. Throughout the album, Fermín declares the death of romanticism, asks to be canceled and rejects the pressure to become an example to follow. Many of his songs also seem to have been written in the eye of the hurricane of a love separation, with all its pain and claims that are not without teachings. But even in his most pessimistic moments, Fermín finds his "light and strength" in great songs that feel like sage advice from a friend that comes at the moment of need. -Eric Olsen

45. St. Vincent - Daddy's Home

Loma Vista Recordings

With Daddy's Home, her sixth solo studio effort, Annie Clark has lost control, or at least part of it. The moments of freedom that used to be spaced out in the St. Vincent catalogue, reserved mostly for upstage (the outro of “Prince Johnny”, the overflowing sublimation of “Your Lips Are Red”), are now the founding axis. of listening. The rigid angularity was replaced by a more fluid procedure that, despite its languor, never detracts from a vision (this LP is not, shall we say, a packaged improvisation devoid of intention). In Clark's words, it's simply "people who are good at playing music, playing music." - Bartolome Armentano

44. Isla de Caras - A Caress

Independent

The smooth psychedelic pop of Isla de Caras reached a creative peak on Una caricia, their second album. Already the beginning of the album with the song that titles it and its logical continuation called “Partenaire” are among the best in the repertoire of the project led by Lautaro Cura. With numerous guest female voices (Rosario Ortega, Delfina Campos, Vanessa Zamora, Clara Cava), Chango's successor works almost like a sound unit in which the quartet deploys its arsenal of subtle guitars, spacey synthesizers, electronic drums, hypnotic basses and flutes at the service of little drops of sentimental and bittersweet pop. -Diego Valente

43. Knowing Russia - The Address

Popart Discos

In his third album, Mateo Sujatovich displays a sound that is quite accessible to any audience. It is striking that he continues to bet on a musical design closer to that of a live band that feeds primarily on guitars up front, constant line basses and light drums, totally ignoring the digitized sounds that are so popular at this time. But flirting with the classic national rock song still doesn't keep it from sounding refreshed and fresh at the same time. Unlike their previous two albums, La dirección has rich orchestral arrangements that further deepen the imprint of the album, and it is then when the limelight is shared, to the point of having songs with solos and poignant guitar arrangements, melodic instrumental passages with the piano always as the axis, and Mateo's voice that develops more and more, becoming bold and nostalgic, erecting the album into a kind of intimate letter to friends, family and love. -Ariel Duarte

42. Jazmín Esquivel - Medianoche radio club

Discobabydiscos

In her second album, Jazmín Esquivel proposes a nocturnal walk through the darkness of an empty city and through the shadows revealed by introspection. The Argentine artist moves through the wee hours of the morning with one foot in the guitar rock that characterized her early days and the other foot in the digital experimentation of skeletal beats and gloomy synthesizers. In this journey to the end of the night, Esquivel walks on the edge of emotions to find mystery and seduction in equal parts. Without removing the focus from Esquivel's talent as a composer, the joint production with Diego Acosta is in charge of creating harmonious atmospheres that make Medianoche radio club a captivating story from beginning to end. -Eric Olsen

41. Pyramides - Amalgamation

House of the Disc Bridge

Pyramides' pulse did not tremble when facing the successor to a debut as forceful as Vacíos y variablees. Consolidated a long time ago as a benchmark for local post punk, this project that started with a handful of songs recorded by Facundo Romeo in his room in his house back in 2014, continues to record his evolution. With a renewed formation, and to the delight of the most fundamentalists, in this second full length Facundo rescues old compositions and the band returns to betting on a rawer sound. But Amalgama is also surprising for its versatility: apart from collaborating with peers and friends from the scene such as Atrás Hay Truenos and the Spanish La Plata and El Último Vecino, these creators of dark anthems find flashes of light and even explore subtlety in a balladistic way. A search that establishes in Pyramides another shine within its darkness. -Marina Cimerilli

40. Tori Amos - Ocean to Ocean

Decca

A deep sense of loss and reluctance permeates the entirety of Ocean to Ocean, Tori Amos's sixteenth album and her best work in at least two decades. Her mother, Mary, passed away in 2019, and the intermittent grief that Tori went through was captured in an album that, unfortunately, acquired a new resonance when it was released in the context of a pandemic world that had to bury, in two years, more than five millions of people. “Be like water”, intones Tori in “Metal Water Wood” as a motto of resistance, and perhaps for this reason the piano occupies a diminished place in this nautical fable, undulating in the depths of the mix. The sound role is played by her family, the affective support that supported her throughout the process. Mark Hawley, Tori's husband and engineer, displays his talents as a guitarist on “Devil's Bane”, while their daughter, Tash, provides the immaculate harmonies of “Addition of Light Divided”, recapturing the magic of Scarlet's Walk in an instant. .

Ocean to Ocean also marks the return of Amos' stable band, after an eleven-year absence: Matt Chamberlain propels “Swim to New York State” to new heights; Jon Evans' bass guitar follows Tori in her first foray into drum 'n bass (“Spies”); and the usual arranger, John Philip Shenale, leads a big band in the final number of the listening, the cabaret “Birthday Baby”. In this sense, Ocean to Ocean works as a thematic counterpart to From the Choirgirl Hotel, the other underwater and band album that the self-confessed arsonist released in 1998. Where Choirgirl was about a mother grieving the loss of her pregnancy, Ocean is the elegy from a daughter to her mother. “This year you survived through it all,” Tori sings to her listeners. She too, and more than that. - Bartolome Armentano

39. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Promises

Luaka Bop

Yes, difficult times call for furious dances, but they also call for calm and patience. On Promises, English producer Floating Points and spiritual jazz legend Pharoah Sanders set aside their diametrically opposed origins to find a common language. Accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, the artists engage contemporary experimental electronic music with the long tradition of jazz in a delicate conversation even for ears outside of both genres. Promises also serves as a swan song for Sanders, who is in her eighties and hasn't released new material in more than a decade. His mastery with the sax remains intact and he even feels the urge to hum some timid melodies from time to time during the album; but perhaps his strongest presence is found in moments of silence and patient listening. -Eric Olsen

38. Asian Luxury - Ganbare

Casa del Puente Discos

Preserving the gigantic melodies and ethereal atmospheres that characterized their first self-titled album, Lujo Asiatico delivered on their second album a more organic perspective of their own sound. Recorded in a live session at ION studios and subsequently worked on for a year and a half with producer Ariel Schlichter, Ganbare is marked by an ambient halo, a companion beat and a firm luminosity that makes it as uplifting as it is hypnotic. It is, from time to time, an apology for ecstasy, accepting everything that it brings with it: dense moments, euphoria, calm, reflection, lots of dancing. It is an intense journey towards internal landscapes, where a dance floor with incandescent lights appears in the midst of the darkness. - Loreta Neira Ocampo

37. Miraculous Medal - Mental Wave

Independent

After Fantasia peligro, that urgent debut in which they knew how to make the most of the fi ninvento guitar and the ethereal sound of shoegaze, the members of Medalla Milagrosa understood where the next challenge was going: the time had come to cross the reverb cloak and peek to the surface. With Ignacio Castillo as an ally in the production, in their second full length the quintet gives free rein to their most precious and playful version, and although they do not do without sound atmospheres at all, the balance leans towards pop sensibility rather than introspective hangups. . Refined and at the same time rich in nuances, Mental Wave positions Medalla Milagrosa as one of the most detailed and interesting proposals on the scene. -Marina Cimerilli

36. Jungle - Loving in Stereo

Caiola Records

Faithful to their style that mixes electronics with jazz, funk, soul and disco, on Loving in Stereo the British duo Jungle displays a palette of sounds that are compatible with each other, although they change from track to track. It is an energetic and danceable album crossed mainly by funk, but with elements of hip hop and jazzy guitars. Compared to his latest albums, this proposal aspires more to pop with a very refined work of melodies in the voices, with repetitive and catchy phrases in dialogue with R&B. The electronic pop bases and the synthesized sounds accompany these fourteen lively and happy songs that also vindicate the disco music of the eighties. -Cecilia Bonomo

35. Hypnotic - Mixed

Independent

Mixed presents us with a new side of Hypnotics. In its nine songs we find an eclectic collage of sounds ranging from pop and folklore to hip hop and R&B. The title of the album refers to the mixtape structure that links their songs but also reinforces the concept of mixture that Nahuel Barbero and Hernán Ortiz from Cordoba propose, taking new artistic risks and going through different challenges without losing their roots and their own sound. that managed to position them as an increasingly important project on the national scene. -Euge Chionna

34. Melanie Williams & El Cabloide - Somos 2

Goza Records

Unlike Comprensión1, the 2019 debut prior to the current formation of El Cabloide, Melanie Williams's second album seems to be the unconscious result of the duality that this full-time musical creature projects and embodies, also a session player and beatmaker. On the one hand, her facet of experimentation in the studio, with Guli and Mario Breuer as direct references; on the other, her identity as a diverse instrumentalist and cultivator of music cooked over a slow fire and in a collective breeding ground. The one and the other play all the time in the eight tracks of Somos 2, an album that has both laboratory and refined expression live, beyond the fact that it was recorded by Williams and a couple of henchmen. The "Intro" session published on his YouTube channel before the album's release is the synthesis of that permanent coming and going. -Juan Manuel Pairone

33. Somontano - San Fiesta

Independent

Since we met Somontano back in 2018 with his EP Niebla sucia, the Peruvian singer-songwriter and producer has grown voraciously in life and in music. The result of his short but intense experience, after his EP Unojoalfuturo and various advances, is this first album entitled San fiesta. These eleven songs function as stories about an evolutionary process from the perspective of a centennial who has taken pop as his banner. It is that you can hear the voice of Diego Chávez Vizcardo playing slow or fast melodies, be it ballads or trap and reggaeton bases. And although there are tropes in common with other artists of the genre, and even references, such as C. Tangana, Rels B and Sen Senra, the man from Lima has managed to syncretize everything he has heard with everything he has experienced. His lyrics are not explicit or vulgar, but very sincere when telling his most personal feelings about his emotional and close ties, as well as his relationship with social networks and the use of cell phones. -Zezé Fassmor

32. Zahara - Whore

G.O.Z.Z. records

Puta is a dark electronic pop album that revolves around two main themes: the music industry and the ways in which a woman who decides to live her sexuality without restrictions is perceived. Zahara presents us with visceral work that takes religious images and biblical concepts to contrast them with today's world. Although the confrontation with the Catholic imaginary in the 21st century may seem anachronistic and hackneyed, the artist had censorship attempts in some cities during the tour to present the album. A work of art that manages to attract the attention of those to whom it is not addressed and moves the foundations of its time is a work that must be attended to. -Luciano Billone

31. Wos - Dark Ecstasy

Doguito Records

In Dark Ecstasy, Wos takes a tour of all the feelings that make us human. His second album is a search for very broad sound experimentation, ranging from dense mattresses of synthesizers that harmonize his rhymes, as well as guitar riffs that give him a forcefully rock sound, mixing vintage with modern. On the other hand, his poetry makes this atmosphere call to think about the various emotions that we go through every day, from ecstasy to vertigo, from heroism to cowardice, and even from the eternal to the fleeting. All these expressions submerge us in a plane that gives us the possibility of rethinking the world in which we live. -Ariel Andreoli

30. Pablo Malaurie - The Shattered Cabin

Independent

What are the effects of time on a musical career that aspires to transcendence? After eight long years since his last album, Pablo Malaurie returned with a symbolic sequel to his now classic El beat de la cuestión (2013). The Destroyed Cabin picks up where the Argentine troubadour had left off his concern for skeletal beats and the infinite possibilities of a synthesizer. Throughout his eight songs, Malaurie questions the possible ways to find freedom in a present that seems to be marked by algorithms, social networks, apocalyptic social climates and the passing fashions of the music industry. Songs like "Viniste" and "Enfriamiento global" point out that the answer may lie in love crushes that resist oblivion. -Eric Olsen

29. normA - Cro9uis

TOT Records / G13 Discos

Perhaps a new normA album has never been more necessary. Faced with the exasperating monotony of the present and the palliative repetition of the past, the quartet from La Plata contrasts their music with right angles, lyrical reduction and free and brittle forms. The appearances of Fito Páez and Sergio Rotman underpin the concept: normA makes the decisions that many would like to make, but are no longer encouraged. From the mythology of the provincial capital in the self-affirmative "D78" ("We are not someone, there is no color, where fame is is not our destiny") to the terrifying lysergy of "Viktor", and the suburban country of "Metropolice" to the electric impressionism of "Surremo" and the profane arrow "Citrix", these nine sketches comprise the entire thematic and timbre range of the group's discography (which, after the remarkable Siguiente, seemed to have been deactivated forever) and project it into an unpredictable and deformed, oblivious to all norms. - Luciano Lahiteau

28. La Piba Berreta - Stroke of (m) Luck

I Desire Records

How are the concepts of death and luck related besides their linguistic similarity? In her solo debut, the singer of Lxs Rusxs Hijxs de Putx does not worry about revealing the answers to metaphysical enigmas, but does express her skepticism about any conclusive illusion that sheds a ray of light to erect the ruins of the sad world we inhabit. La Piba Berreta demonstrates the skill and ingenuity of her solo project combining poetry, performance and cinema in a record work as radical as it is saturated. Throughout its ten songs, Golpe de (m)suerte echoes the impetuous gesture of the artist from Zárate, attacking with a whirlwind of reflections where she vents her sorrows howling like a wolf, throws verses in the code of Molotov cocktails like a warrior and, of course, rises to the dark side of the sky as an emblem of self-management. -Jumpa Barber

27. Camila Moreno - King

Independent

Even as Camila Moreno speaks of Rey as a dystopian album, there is an urgent relevance to her seeming science fiction work. The follower of Mala madre (2015) is a monumental album of 20 songs comprised of conceptual interludes and great productions of electronic experimentation and pop confrontation. The album follows the love story of two cyborg beings who, in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world, fight for a revolution in a quest that questions topics such as pleasure, motherhood and the possibility of a future even when everything seems be on fire With this one-of-a-kind work, Moreno confirms her position as one of the most ambitious artists of Chilean pop. -Eric Olsen

26. Willy Fishman - Guachi wow!

Indie Folks

Woof woof! by Willy Fishman is great news for the local indie. The freshness that was needed in the environment comes from the hand of the member of Gativideo, now also become a soloist. Trying to classify this album in some genre is an impossible task. What we will say is that Willy's album is full of timeless loops, harmoniously placed one on top of the other, and that in the background, as in Gativideo, the bizarre and critical humor towards our generation is present (don't forget the borders Capusotteans of these good boys). Despite the timelessness of the loops, the voice of the eclectic Willy sets a time and a space: Buenos Aires, 2021; and a modern tango tonality that is already a mark of this Buenos Aires era. -Juan Gabriel Lopez

25. Luciana Tagliapietra - New Form

Independent

After the sweet and irreverent whim of her previous album Kawaii, Luciana Tagliapietra returned with Nueva forma. It is not only a name, but also a vital proposal. What is the world like for her right now? Sometimes she feels that she is going to die, other times she wants to stop loving without prosperous encounters and in that search the expected gem appears: the voice of the melancholic heroine who wants to continue betting on novelty. For half an hour, a time to walk or travel by public transport, Tagliapietra goes through love stadiums with the synth pop skill that characterizes her. She is no longer the one who is lost at the bottom of a desire as she sang in "Si las cosas", but someone who wants to do (be) good. - Vera Buendía

24. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg

4AD

Situated in the vast and diverse universe of post-punk, the quartet led by singer Florence Shaw has been a force to be reckoned with from the very first song on their debut album. Building on the timeless legacy left behind by the likes of Joy Division, Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Suede singer Brett Anderson's favorites use a fortuitous balance of darkness and power to build their songs. In a present where Great Britain has ceased to be the novelty due to cultural globalization that only tends to generate slogans and artists alien to the avant-garde and artistic risk, the album by Londoners Dry Cleaning is a good bet for reconnecting with music that shows a fight against decadence and oblivion. - Bernardo Diman Menendez

23. Palo Pandolfo - Servant

S-Music

Leaving one of your best works before you die must be one of the most difficult goals (a utopia?) in the path of an artist. The literary theorist Edward Said called it "the late style." Palo Pandolfo, then, did it with Servant. Due to its sound forcefulness, its deep and exquisite lyrics, the positioning of its voice to the point of caramel in the songs and an aura of reaching a place (symbolic and heavenly) that takes a lifetime to approach. Were you sure that you were going to die soon? Impossible to know. What is certain is that with Servant, Palo achieved an extraordinary level of purity in his materials: troubadour, shaman, wise man. Perhaps the best track on the album is “Párpados”, a collaboration with Fito Páez. There it says: "I'm going to dust / I dream with my eyelids open / Sore hands, souls without comfort / I come from walking dusty roads". Impossible for humans to see the future. Instead, songs can do it. Servant of Palo Pandolfo: one of the best national records of 2021, an unforgettable date for all the wrong reasons. -Walter Lezcano

22. Rare Fish - Dogma

Gonna Go! Discs

During the most stringent period of the pandemic, Peces Raros opted to repress the rush and throw themselves fully into the production of Dogma. However, the resounding call for silence was fragmentary, as the duo delighted their followers with two unpublished songs that they released separately: “Rápido y seguro” by Lucio Consolo and “Olas de vapor” by Marco Viera; followed by an EP titled Vendaval (2020) made up of four remixes of Anestesia (2018). “Cicuta”, the first preview and opening of the repertoire, came to light along with a video with images alluding to metamorphosis: a huge graffiti that says “Future”, urban dance and Spring Breakers-style phosphorescence.

Dogma branches out the optics of the group by bringing together sparks of their techno with the rock nerve that they always kept in parallel throughout the track. From the powerful guitar riffs to the ambiguous poetics versified in a dozen songs, we can assure you that, in addition to driving the dance through a hypnotic sequence of arpeggiators, denaturing it is also part of the essence of Peces Raros. The fourth album by the duo from La Plata deconstructs electronics to revolve around the mouth of the underlying rivers that make up their experimental idiosyncrasy. -Jumpa Barber

21. Girl in Red - If I Could Make It Go Quiet

World in Red / AWAL

With just a few singles released, Girl in Red became one of the most representative voices of Generation Z. But at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, the Norwegian artist Marie Ulven Ringheim released the first advances of her first album that They evidenced the maturity of their project with careful listening. If I Could Make It Go Quiet not only marks a before and after in her career, but it is also her urgent consecration. From the galloping beat of “Did You Come?” until the instrumental closing of “It Would Feel Like This”, we contemplate the emotional epic of the bid to legitimize identity and revalidate the empowerment of the motto “The personal is political”. -Jumpa Barber

20. Coghlan - Bossa Buenos Aires

Yolanda Discos

Bossa Buenos Aires is the most recent installment, and perhaps the longest to date, of the new local scene that, no matter how fragmented it still is, is beginning to take shape around the Argentine hyper-song, where it clearly technological coexists with the decidedly human. Throughout his 10 songs, Coghlan presents a sampler that intersects perfectly executed stylistic exercises from several of the mainstream stylistic currents of the 2010s. “Feeling all these rivers of being running so strong inside of me”, the artist manages to say at an early point in the listening. If her first album of 2017, Bolero Midi, was purely Panda Bear, this is her Björk Post; not only after the debut but also after the genre, without this ever detracting from cohesion. - Bartolome Armentano

19. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee

Dead Oceans

Michelle Zauner guides us on a path in which happiness does not always sound the same and not everything is flowers and colors as we always imagine. In her songs we not only feel euphoria to achieve what we want, freedom to be who we want to be, and passion behind trumpets and marching drums, but we also experience sadness, anger, and frustration. And that's not bad, in joy there is always the same intensity as in loneliness or sadness. Within each intimate moment in which we are really ourselves, we do not care about anything else, just feel and let be. True happiness is found in all those sensations, in the good, the bad and what makes us want to give up or continue, that is what it feels like to live and we can go through all of that in Jubilee. - Adriana González Olivo

18. Tyler, the Creator - Call Me If You Get Lost

Columbia

What else to say about an artist like Tyler, the Creator? Established for a few years as one of the best musicians of our era, Tyler reaches new heights thanks to his fine, direct work that is very difficult to improve. Enemy of linearity and anti-conventionalist militant, Tyler Gregor Oknoma managed to condense and raise all the sounds and concepts of his previous albums to power; Call Me If You Get Lost works (once again) as a festival of creativity and sonic precision in which jazz, soul, synth pop, reggae, gospel and R&B intermingle. But perhaps the most radical –and brilliant– aspect of this combination is the North American's ability to perfectly combine such an eclectic sound palette with the rawest, most painful and aggressive sound of eighties hip hop. - Rodrigo Lopez

17. Santiago Motorizado - Songs about a house, four friends and a dog

Independent

Who would have thought, at the beginning of El Mató a un Policía Motorizado, that Santiago Barrionuevo would become one of the most respected singer-songwriters in the country (and in all of Latin America) almost two decades later? Emerged as a project linked to the reissue and remastering of Okupas, the debut album by the bassist and singer of the group from La Plata is a confirmation of that sentence. Invited to redesign the soundtrack for Bruno Stagnaro's miniseries, Barrionuevo jumped into the void. In addition to his customary song/cancha anthem in the key of space rock, he also explored cumbia, zamba and its more cinematographic side. The participations of Jorge Serrano, Melingo, Anabella Cartolano and Vicentico show the respect and admiration that he generates among his colleagues. This album and his collaboration with Palo Pandolfo make him one of the great figures of Argentine music in 2021. - Juan Manuel Pairone

16. Olivia Rodrigo - Sour

Geffen

Olivia Rodrigo managed to position herself as one of the most promising artists of today. Sour, her debut album, is made up of hits that almost a year later are still on the charts around the world, songs written when she was between 16 and 17 years old and that have already become hymns for an entire generation. The young singer tells throughout her album how a past relationship broke her heart and it is impossible not to feel identified with her lyrics whose simple and direct metaphors go straight to our hearts. Rodrigo brought back a pop punk sound and at the same time combined it with pop ballads that blend seamlessly into the full LP. There is a reason why this was one of the 10 most sold, played and awarded albums of the year: Olivia Rodrigo is here to stay. -Euge Chionna

15. Axel Fiks - Modern Lover

Independent

The music of Axel Fiks hurts for the loss. The threadbare folk that the Buenos Aires singer-songwriter makes is skeletal in the most literal sense: devoid of meat, only intermittently animated, intimate and sober by necessity rather than choice. His debut album conveys the hollow pain of being alone while inquiring into the problems associated with bonding today; the way the loss of a relationship consumes one's very being.

For all its romantic exclamations, of which there are many, Modern Lover is not a radical departure from or a retread of a past iteration of the musician. The progression is simple but significant: in contrast to the demo sound of Idyll (2018) and subsequent singles from it, Fiks sounds totally at ease this time around. After a few years of unraveling the knots in his music, not to mention a year of forced isolation and canceled dates, he emerges on this record in a more brazen and extravagant way. -Ariel Duarte

14. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever

Darkroom / Interscope

Billie Eilish's candid and illuminated face, with her blonde hair and 1950s look, confronts the appearance of the daughter of Lucifer who cried black tears and wore gargoyle wings. Many would believe that we are looking at two visually opposite albums, but first appearances are often deceiving. Although the comparisons can be hateful, sometimes they give rise to a subterranean interpretation that remains veiled to the provisional blindness of the moment. A less cursory listen to Happier Than Ever, the American pop artist's second album, reveals what the darkest record truly is, even if its notion is blurred by a contrary first impression.

Over the course of sixteen songs, Eilish sheds light on the irony of her album's title with a poetic dexterity that at times concerns the individuality of a pop superstar, and at others unfurls a universal denunciation that any sensitive soul can validate. Thanks to the ingenuity of his faithful collaborator, producer and brother, Finneas O'Connell, Happier Than Ever flirts with a wide range of genres such as R&B, soul, jazz and techno, confirming the maturity and comprehensive evolution of the project. familiar for almost an hour of pure emotional reverberation. -Jumpa Barber

13. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Carnage

Goliath

It took a pandemic for Nick Cave and his indisputable right-hand man, the composer and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, to come up with the idea to sign an album of songs together. Of course, in the middle are those who edited with the Bad Seeds, plus a good handful of movie soundtracks. But the eight tracks that make up Carnage, recorded in full confinement and published without prior notice at the end of February, do not respond to any other creative whim other than that of their own creators. And the result is much more than a logical response to the boredom of confinement or the impossibility of going on tour: it is a way of narrating dystopia.

Familiar with the mechanics of mourning after the death of his son Arthur in 2015 (a tragedy that has pervaded his art ever since, and which he sublimely exorcised in Ghosteen), and faithful to his ex-heroin addict's ways, Cave found in self-isolation a familiar feeling. Something that he defined as "a state-ordered version of more of the same." This is how he confessed to a fan in Red Hand Files, an epistolary website where he maintains a fluid exchange with his followers, and in the press conference he gave during his last visit to Argentina he went even further: "it is as routine as a office worker”, he assured, in relation to his creative process. Still and all, his is inexhaustible. At this point in his career and at 63 years old, where others struggle not to become a cliché, Nick Cave continues to deliver outstanding albums. -Marina Cimerilli

12. Balvanera - Courses of Action

DKA

Inspired by the visual artist Liliana Maresca and the philosopher Walter Benjamin, the EBM (Electronic Body Music) duo Balvanera gives us a collection of music to dance in a dark room. Courses of Action questions how the body can explore the past through various reflections and connections of its own, and how the mind can betray what we know as familiar, perhaps all too familiar. Agustina Vizcarra contains a gothic and hidden voice, which rarely enters the melodic field, and builds mantras through the art of repetition. Together with Lucas Ledoux, his music reaches towards the most primal of synthesized rhythm so that the listener can understand, in a brief moment of lucidity, how much it affects his daily life: the personal and the political questioned through pulses and vibrations. - Rodrigo Murguia

11. Ca7riel - El disco

Clix

It's September 2020 and we're all cooped up in our homes. Ca7riel seems to be trapped too, but in a nightmare with a dragonfly: he has just released “Polvo”, the kickoff of what a year later is going to be El disko. A sound universe full of fluorine has just opened up to us. That first cut synthesizes a lot of the spirit of the album. There is a level of performativity in these eleven songs that not only allow us to hear all the genres that Ca7riel manages to combine; now it is also possible to see him, crossing with animal print clothes, painted nails and metallic teeth the worlds where the lascivious tone of “Chanel Maconha” coexist with the melancholy of “Souvenir”. Lyrics with sincere sensibility, who understand that the rhyme is an objective in itself but reveal a contemporary feeling: "I have so many things to live / That today I can't stay to sleep."

Yes, the album starts out sampling Virus and The Beatles. But it is much more than a tribute; is a manifesto on the versatility of Ca7riel's compositional possibilities. Jazz, rap, techno, funk, pop, rock, trap, reggaeton: he is out of debt. With 28 years and more than forty songs between all his projects, he is already capable of nucleating the diversity of influences of an entire generation that breaks any typecasting. -Fernando Brovelli

10. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club / Blue Banisters

Polydor / Interscope

The truly admirable thing about Lana Del Rey is that she does what is sung to her and she sings better every time. This year she gave herself the pleasure of publishing not one but two very solid albums to add to a career that never stops going from minor to major. In Chemtrails Over the Country Club -released in March- and Blue Banisters -in October-, Lana continues to refine her voice, so exquisite and versatile that she has no qualms about going from a soulful falsetto to throwing tantrums (“Dealer”) or shouting with distortion until it sounds like a harmonica (“Living Legend”). And this thanks to his free and unconventional style as a lyricist, which allows him to experiment with unusual vocal melodies, breaking with the apparent simplicity and musical minimalism in which piano ballads predominate. Letters that, in addition to having a great evocative power to print images full of details, flowers, colors and country days, have an emotional thickness capable of destroying any soul with heart problems.

Nostalgia, the decadent glamor of Los Angeles and those lovers as tragic as they are dark continue to be the order of the day. What Lana Del Rey does produces an infinite number of sensations, many of which are difficult to describe. Undoubtedly, it can be said that he has become one of the most outstanding voices of his generation. - Nayla Loza

09. Fus Delei - Tell Me

Afonico Music

If the brand-new successor to Ideas for an Imaginary World were a work of architecture, it would be one with baroque mazes, secret passages, and subterranean tunnels. In the mixture of dissimilar atmospheres and energies, Fus Delei's songs narrate from a hybrid point of incandescence and night. As direct as its name indicates, Dímelo reflects on self-recognition through songs that question the inequalities of the laws established by heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity.

There are some sultry and powerful moments from the likes of "Something of Everything," "Chupasangre," "Phoenix" and, of course, the maverick anthem "Adopté"; as well as others in which the pop metal band fires rays of light to subtly discharge all their tangled emotions: “Atlántida hundida”, “Cabeza” and “Grito en la oscuridad”. The second album by the group from La Plata uses the peaks and peaks produced by enveloping synthesizers, incendiary percussion, arpeggios, and a histrionic vocal by Desaria, to create a dance floor with an open window that overlooks Eden. -Jumpa Barber

08. Sen Senra - Chrome Heart

Sound Muchacho / Universal

If with C. Tangana we understood that this year he had a good port on the other side of the ocean, with Sen Senra we realized that there was also water if we swam a little further. This Galician made his way onto the music scene with two grunge records in English that he made as a boy in his native Vigo. Then he presented his third album, Sensaciones, where he explored pop and trap in Spanish for the first time. And now, at the age of 27, this 2021 brought us Corazón cromado, a beautifully produced project that doesn't stop there, but shines from within, opening between the sensual and the street.

A mix of bragging and melancholy, in seven tracks he tells us what he makes of his nights in Madrid, his romances and how he deals with fame. Songs like "Lying in the garden watching the sunset" feel like fragments of a movie that rest between dreams and echoes. The sum of the album sounds sublime, as one of his songs would say. And how is it that everyone noticed, if even the star from Madrid himself gave him his blessing (and his voice) in the very danceable “Qué facilidad”. -Magy Meyerhoff

07. France - Virtual world

Queruza

Virtual World perfectly balances the sensuality and hedonism of synth pop with the poetic narrative that made the world of pop songs noble. In a game between confessional and nostalgic, the duo made up of Francisca Moreno Quintana and Ignacio Albini imprints the beauty and elegance necessary to make each song a danceable and luminous universe, where the message seems to be that even today it is possible to take the dance floor as a place of recreation and artistic creativity at the same time.

In a present where a large part of dance music forgot silences and the importance of organic programming, Fransia's debut shows a way of how novelty can be in knowing how to tell the best legacy that the history of pop culture. Released in May of this year, Amor Virtual attests that a new modern Latin American song is still possible. - Bernardo Diman Menendez

06. Paco Amoroso - Saeta

Clix

The solo reinvention of Paco Amoroso converged in an ode to the night and interpersonal relationships that end up a bit rough. In his ten songs, Saeta narrates the nocturnal adventures of Ulises Guerreiro, now transformed into the "angel of the night", while on the course he becomes new illusions and many other disappointments.

Unlike his work with Ca7riel, this time the artist is encouraged to sing seriously and in a melodic key, something that is quite comfortable for him. In turn, it is accompanied by electronic beats that make up a dense but danceable house that endows the album as a clearly festive piece without losing its sensuality. Despite following a defined sound line, the album manages to hide some surprises thanks to the production work that was in charge of producers from the local scene such as Percii, Bruno Donato, Maxi Sayes, Tadefonk, Alot and Neeki. In that sense, Saeta is not only his debut album but also a bigger bet in which he did not hesitate to incorporate other artists and friends such as Lara91k, Tio La Bomba, El Doctor and Adrián Dárgelos in the hypnotic “Switch”. With Saeta, Paco found himself and showed that he can do it alone. - Lucas Santomero

05. Arca - KICK ii / KicK iii / kick iiii / kiCK iiii

XL

What other artist today is capable of publishing four excellent albums in the same day? This is how Arca decided to spew out the final volumes of his ambitious Kicks series based on the relentless transformation as his conceptual thread and main inspiration. Still, nothing feels throwaway in the KICK ii, KicK iii, kick iiii, and kiCK iiii. Even the most cathartic moments add up to an atmosphere of cathartic introspection and constant experimentation. That's why these four pieces feel more like symbolic follow-ups to the excellent self-titled album that the Venezuelan artist released in 2017, and less like the subsequent parts of 2020's chaotic and embarrassing KiCk i. Yes, both her videos and the logistics of her Releases made noise and managed to generate a worthy expectation, but these albums show us a sensitivity and aim that Arca had neglected in his last five years of career. -Eric Olsen

04. Amigovio - Amigovio

Feel of water

Flavio Lira was always an anti. Already in Carmen Sandiego, the band that he co-founded and led for more than ten years until their separation in 2019, he was the author of irreverent and very graphic songs but with a careful choice of words (it is difficult to miss a title like "Semen burp ”, however the chest of songs signed by him is worth a night of discoveries on Bandcamp). But in Amigovio, a solo alter ego that emerged in 2018, there is a twist that is dark and danceable at the same time, like the meme of the black and pink houses.

Embraced to synthesizers, Lira signs from Montevideo more than an album of heartbreak, an album of disenchantment. If we all get anguished dancing to “Dancing On My Own” at some point in our lives, here is “The Two Colbys” with a more lumpen tone between porn stars, “The Swimmer” and its power of observation, the ironic “Sad Whores” and the tender “En la bicicleta”. The cover (which includes a meta-cover with a Madonna True Blue T-shirt) is a clear nod to Butt, the Dutch magazine that became known among the gay community in the early 2000s and whose pages were all pink, among photos of chongos and interviews without filter. A time when neither brands nor pakis had reached Pride. It seems that everything Lira likes no longer exists and in Amigovio's debut she tries to rebuild it, offering a last refuge for those who choose to walk on the dark side of pop. - Rodrigo Piedra

03. Arlo Parks - Collapsed in Sunbeams

Transgressive

In the midst of the chaos and uncertainty that characterized this year, a fresh and necessary breeze came from the hand of Arlo Parks' first LP. And it is not that it is a work with a recalcitrant optimism or a particularly motivational attitude, nor is it a revolutionary musical work that has exposed new codes or forms of the song.

What I love about this recording debut -and what has led the London artist to be a benchmark of the so-called Generation Z- is her ability to capture the confusion of these times with honesty, empathy and without fear, through of songs in which testimonial poetry is key and the music, a rich and sweet combination of pop, soul and folk, only makes the experience more enriching, uplifting and suitable for all audiences. Thus, and exhibiting a love of pop culture, Parks left a soft intensity in the air, perhaps the embrace of vulnerability we've been needing. - Loreta Neira Ocampo

02. Dillom - Postmortem

Bohemian Groove

“I don't talk about my life, that shit is so sad,” sings Dillom in the requiem that gives its name to his debut album. Released by his Bohemian Groove label, Post Mortem is both a statement of principles and a schizophrenic tale for the Argentine rapper. Under this pretext, the Rip Gang's enfant terrible attacks the traditional diegesis of trap by concentrating nightmarish delusions and biographical fragments in a convex mirror that distorts the discernibility of his portrait.

With songs like “Opa”, “Piso 13” and “Post Mortem”, Dillom demonstrates his penchant for fiction drenched in blood and thirsty for destruction. While in “La primera”, “Bicicleta” and “220” he abandons the slayer to unfold his eloquence with moving, existentialist and melodious bars. It is far from being a trap album, rather it is a conceptual work where the twenty-something singer meditatively crosses various polarized landscapes that mimic the sound qualities of L-Gante, Muerejoven and Saramalacara. Post Mortem offers an eclectic and unclassifiable repertoire, eighteen pieces that project a phantasmagorical parade, as gloomy as it is jubilant, that marches steadily through the sunset towards an unforgettable birthday party. -Jumpa Barber

01. C. Tangana - El madrileño

Sony Music

Since the beginning of his career, Antón Álvarez Alfaro developed different alter egos and changed skin many times. Although he began rapping under the nickname El Crema while he was still a philosophy student, when he began his solo career as C. Tangana his style continued to mutate and approached the "commercial" sound of reggaeton and the trap that he embodied in their first two albums. However, the Spanish musician decided to swerve during these months of the pandemic and create a totally heterogeneous and mestizo work entitled El madrileño, created together with his leading producer Alizzz.

In his third album, Tangana bets on an acoustic sound with Creole guitars, choirs and all kinds of Latin instrumentation, which is why more than one has been encouraged to accuse him of "cultural appropriation". But far from clumsily copying rhythms from other countries, the artist builds his own Tower of Babel and pays homage to the musical richness of those places by inviting a constellation of stars from different generations such as the Puerto Rican José Feliciano, the Uruguayan Jorge Drexler, the Mexican Ed Maverick, the Brazilian Toquinho and the French from Gipsy Kings. The man from Madrid is also a reflection of the affinity that the 30-year-old musician has with peers from other latitudes. For example, according to what he himself told the press, "Nominao" is a song he wrote with Drexler during the 2020 Latin Grammys while they were waiting to find out if the Montevidean was going to win a statuette that night.

That's why it's not surprising that the album begins with "Demasiadas mujeres", her instant hit in the key of techno house, and then passes as if nothing had happened to the mixture of bachata, rumba and flamenco that she proposes in "Tú me you stopped wanting" -a song that he himself has defined as the most important of his career to date-, and then the irresistible bossa nova with hints of R&B in "Comerte entera"... and so on with almost every song on this material. On a conceptual level, El madrileño elaborates on different attitudes typical of toxic masculinity that Antón acknowledges has been instilled in him from a very early age. One of the tracks that makes this more transparent is "Cambia!", where he sings: "I grew up thinking that only the ticket would give me my respect/ That a man who doesn't have to spend/ He's not a man, just a doll/ That he always there will be plenty of friends, and don't even mention women when diamonds abound / Today my neck shines more than Las Vegas / They ask me to change ".

Although many have interpreted these songs as a kind of defense of macho values, Tangana makes it clear that, far from glorifying these tendencies, he recognizes them as a problem that leads him to self-destruction and does not intend to always look good . This theme reappears in "Un poisono", where he sings: "This excessive ambition / For women, money and spotlights / It's taking my life / Very little by little by little". In that sense, it is a work that problematizes a life full of luxuries and pleasures in the same way that The Weeknd did with his acclaimed Beauty Behind the Madness (2015).

Likewise, the exercise of revision of the tradition of traditional Spanish music and his fascination for the tragic stories that Tangana performs in this album is similar to what the writer Federico García Lorca did at the time with his mythical collection of poems Gypsy Ballads , and what his ex-partner Rosalía achieved a few years ago in El mal querer con el flamenco. The man from Madrid is an album with a vocation for transcendence that does not seek radio success with a predictable formula, but rather has groundbreaking ambitions that, fortunately, are shrewdly materialized.

Beyond the musical merit of this work, what finally makes it so attractive and original at a time in history when it seems we have already heard everything, is the simplicity that Tangana has to express her emotions. Her frankness often borders on cheekiness, and other times naivety, but she always has enough power not to leave us indifferent. - Lau Camargo