theboarddot's Top 50 Albums of 2021

[Tweet]

3. The War on Drugs- I Don't Live Here Anymore (444, 10)

[mookie]

Jan 7, 2022 13:54:13 GMT -6 mookie said:

I will say this is a more interesting top 50 than we have typically have, good job board

Just saw #3, I retract my statement

[Tweet]

2. Tyler, the Creator- CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST (449, 13)

[mookie]

I honestly do not know what album is #1

[munkivelli]

Jan 7, 2022 13:56:33 GMT -6 mookie said:

I honestly do not know what album is #1

Turnstile?

[Tweet]

1. Turnstile- GLOW ON (464, 12)

[mookie]

wow

[Tweet]

Ok probably the shittiest board rollout ever but I will explain everything between 4-5pm CST today. There we go. Get your takes off so I come back to something fun. Love you all, thanks for letting me do this even though it's botched

[monasterymonochrome]

Didn't get invited to the Low PM group, so I'll just say here: I am shocked at how deeply that album moved me. I didn't come across it until like October or November, but I've listened to it probably 20 times since then. To me, it represents grasping for what beauty we have left, before our world disintegrates. It's a truly special album, and I'm stoked to see it so high here.

[sleeping]

Nothing above #8 on my list made it onto the board list

[monasterymonochrome]

Dropping my other PM reviews here:

Snail Mail - Valentine:

• Listened to Habit when it was hyped. Didn't do it for me. Listened to Lush when it was hyped. Didn't do it for me. But for some reason this record just floored me. Her vocals just cut through me here, especially on the quieter tracks. Pretty much every song here has a perfect little moment that keeps me coming back to it. The hook in Valentine. The outro in Automate. The double tracked vocals on Light Blue. The way she says "Baby Blue" on c. et al. The strings in Mia - which accomplish the really hard task, IMO, of creating an emotional, operatic close to an album without steeping into cliche. One of the year's best.

Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

• I had no idea who Cassandra Jenkins was until this year, but her music was a frequent companion in 2021. It feels like the musical equivalent of the Headspace app - which felt both like a good or bad thing, depending on my mood. Hard Drive is a modern classic, of course, but don't sleep on "New Bikini" or "Ambiguous Norway," both beautiful snapshots of loss and living. This album makes me want to text my friends that I love them. Maybe I'll do that now?

Illuminati Hotties - Let Me Do One More

• The singles for this absolutely fucked! And the album tracks were pretty great too! But for some reason it all felt like a little *much* for me to return to it frequently after release week. That said, I listened to Pool Hopping several dozen times this year, the hooks on this are filthy, and it was one of the few albums this year that Emma dug as well. Thumbs up!

Pom Poko - Cheater

• I saw a lot of made-up genres in people's Spotify Wraps this year, one that came up frequently being "bubble grunge." I'd say this comes pretty close to that descriptor, as much as I kind of hate it. I'm a sucker for anything that reminds me of Charly Bliss, Deerhoof, and Guerilla Toss. Bonus points if it's < 35 minutes. More short, catchy albums pls!

[claypoolfan]

FUCK YEAH BOARD YOU DIDN'T LET ME DOWN

I kept scrolling through looking for it and once I hit the top ten I was like wow it didn't even make it huh? Then pow.

Did everyone watch their Tiny Desk from this week?

[dij22]

Jan 7, 2022 14:21:27 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Dropping my other PM reviews here:

Snail Mail - Valentine:

• Listened to Habit when it was hyped. Didn't do it for me. Listened to Lush when it was hyped. Didn't do it for me. But for some reason this record just floored me. 

Couldn't agree more. Snail Mail should have been right in my wheelhouse but I just felt there was something missing in her last two albums. A lack of something special that kept her in B+ territory rather than a solid A. That all changed with Valentine though.

[monasterymonochrome]

One of these days, maybe I'll understand this Turnstile album. Alas, today is not that day.

[reviewzz]

I'm glad Tweet was able to call me out of the lurker-world to give Turnstile enough points to get to #1.

[munkivelli]

Did I Became Birds really not make this list? Rigged!

[monasterymonochrome]

Jan 7, 2022 16:41:31 GMT -6 munkivelli said:

Did I Became Birds really not make this list? Rigged!

Just did some quick maths, and it got 86 points from 3 lists, which should place it somewhere in the upper tier of the 51-100 range.  For reference, Viagra Boys at T99 had 55 points from 2 lists.  

[munkivelli]

Jan 7, 2022 16:59:05 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Jan 7, 2022 16:41:31 GMT -6 munkivelli said:

Did I Became Birds really not make this list? Rigged!

Just did some quick maths, and it got 86 points from 3 lists, which should place it somewhere in the upper tier of the 51-100 range.  For reference, Viagra Boys at T99 had 55 points from 2 lists.  

Damned shame!

[Tweet]

Press conference moved to tomorrow, obviously. My bet is that when plugging in the votes I didn’t spell the band/album name universal so it got lost

[Tweet]

Jan 7, 2022 23:32:26 GMT -6 Tweet said:

My bet is that when plugging in the votes I didn’t spell the band/album name universal so it got lost

This is exactly what happened, I gave the album name 2 different names. It stands alone at 68 on the year and will be reflected properly when I put the list in the completed projects thread.

[monasterymonochrome]

We did it, Board! Now everyone listen to this and realize what you were missing all year:

[venom]

i've listened to too little new music the last two years to participate in this list-making. but i appreciate seeing what people are listening to and piquing my interest in some things that i have missed.

[munkivelli]

Jan 8, 2022 10:45:48 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

We did it, Board! Now everyone listen to this and realize what you were missing all year:

co-signed.

[reviewzz]

Jan 8, 2022 14:16:14 GMT -6 munkivelli said:

Jan 8, 2022 10:45:48 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

We did it, Board! Now everyone listen to this and realize what you were missing all year:

co-signed.

x3

[mookie]

Thanks Tweet for putting this together this year, I know you had more planned for the rollout. The zoom call would have been a good time, but oh well.

[obmit]

Just wanted to drop in and give kudos to Tweet for taking this on. It's a huge undertaking. I did enjoy what you attempted at the start too, that was fun.

Definitely one of the more even lists here, with a surprising #1.

[Tweet]

A long, overdue interview with Tweet, by Tweet. This interview has not been edited for length or clarity.

Well first of all, what the fuck.

That's both a non-specific and pretty obvious place to start, isn't it?

Fine, we'll start at the beginning. What exactly happened here, bub?

Well I tried to do the album of the year list for the 15th year, the first of me running it. Things went smoothly at first: the lists got made, the votes got tallied, a plan got put in place to make the rollout more fun and interactive. Then real life got in the way- I got a promotion and a (potentially!) extremely large raise in my corporate job, and shit just kept getting in the way. By the time the list rolled out, I got called into more meetings, and about a week of work got tossed out the window in the process.

*long pause*

I feel like you're over simplifying this by a lot.

Let me know if you're gonna ask some actual questions.

I guess the first one would be what exactly were you planning to do for the rollout? It seems like only certain people got to be involved and that makes me uncomfortable as a community member.

Right, and that's probably a fair criticism to be honest. So here's the thing I wanna start by saying on this subject: this was the 2nd idea to roll out the list.

You had 2 ideas? You barely have any good ideas.

That's also fair. Anyway, the first idea was along the lines of: we've been doing this for 15 years. And in that time a lot of boarders have come and gone and stuck around and took time off and come back, etc. I figured, one of the few things that's been universal about this forum was people talking about music, good or bad, and sharing stuff with each other, which ultimately led to a community of meeting up at shows and festivals and whatnot. So why not incorporate that into the rollout itself, as a bit of a throwback, with boarders from 5 year eras (before 2010, 2010-17, the new migration when lolla.com kicked us off). Surely getting 10 people on a zoom call for a couple hours in this day and age wouldn't be too hard.

Right, you made a joke about Bonnaroo group camping in the first post of this thread. I take it organizing this was hard?

It wasn't hard to get people on board with the idea, but as I started to transform into a corporate fuckboi and omicron kept spreading, it got harder and harder to plan. People couldn't make it, could only make certain times, and I think I moved the set date at least twice as part of my real world stuff going on. 10 people is still, in general, a lot of people to organize.

Who were the people you asked to participate?

They can name themselves if they want to. Like I said, I tried to get as wide a swath as boarders as I could without making it a bunch of people talking over themselves. I think it would've been a lot of fun. I still would try to do it again with those folks if I had a do-over.

Well you actually did have a do-over my guy. You said you had a 2nd idea as part of this, uh, "roll out". So tell us about that?

Right so the 2nd idea was just all on me- I figured that even if everyone I invited to the Zoom session bashed the idea and didn't wanna do it, 38 half serious/half satirical reviews wouldn't be too hard to pump out for me over the course of a bunch of beers over a couple of nights. They were kinda fun to write! So I wrote up the format of the first five posts in this thread on a big ol' google doc that you can look at here.

I have a lot of questions about that format.

Well go ahead and ask them already. Jesus, the college football championship is about to start!

Who is Symbionese?

A better question to ask would've been, "When did you decided to switch over to Greg Nasty?"

Why stop at 38?

It became pretty obvious about 2/3's of the way of counting the votes that those were gonna be the ones in some way shape or form. Some late lists changed the rankings and numbers around a bit but it was pretty consistently those 12 above all the others all the way through. I will also say it was pretty consistently a 3 way heat between Turnstile/Tyler/War on Drugs for the top spot, which I find fascinating for a lot of reasons. Who knows what would've happened if Neader had finished his list (which I would like to note is the 2nd year in a row he's done such a thing), but I do gotta shout out Reviewzz here for throwing a list up almost certainly last minute. I'm not entirely sure if that's a more established member's burner account on here, but they stepped up to the plate way more than some of you jamokes who've been around a while did.

Why did you ask for certain boarders to make a comment on certain albums?

The albums I asked about (there were maybe 10) are ones that I thought sucked or and I didn't wanna stink the thread up making jokes about that. I figured might as well have people who actually liked them say why rather than being a prick.

Yeah in my mind that would've been the musical equivalent of men saying women don't have the right to an abortion.

I think we need to workshop that kind of joke still, but go on.

Who were the people that you asked?

Some of them did get posted, but 5Iron, dij22, munkieveli, and probably someone I forgot (sorry!) sent stuff in, in addition to the published authors in this thread. c1916 and anderewv_b sent apology notes, which I guess count for something. And I asked them to do it in like, not even 24 hours notice too. I feel bad they didn't get that due, but again....you know.

Well we better wrap this up soon, the college football game is on.

I agree, I just flipped it on.

I guess the one big question I have left is like, why try so hard on this project? Like, this forum doesn't even like music on most days. Anyone whose done this list before eventually ends up leaving, and you don't get as many ballots as this board used to get for this kind of project.

Yeah so I think a lot of that is clear in the first post of this thread. But I think one thing I was thinking about a lot more is how people used to comment in between the posts and how it's a pretty quantitative pulse check on how a bunch of generally smart people pay attention to music and to a lesser degree "culture"- what is good now and what looks better in hindsight after 3, 4, 8 months, and where you can draw the line from when you hear something first to what catches on in the larger mainstream. There's a bunch of books on the subject and countless articles but I think that this extremely micro internet hivemind is still doing this for 15 years. Hell, the shape of this forum is probably a book in and of itself.

They just called a scoop and score back in the footbaw game.

I know! Sorry, I know we're trying to watch that now. I liked doing it and next year if I get to do it again I'll have a better plan on how to roll it out. I hope I'm not going through a once in a lifetime feeling event.

Speaking of once in a lifetime, when are we doing the 80s list?

After Ace does March Madness on here, fuck if I'm doing another project before then.

[monasterymonochrome]

Thanks for puttin' this all together, Tweet! I really enjoyed the format - and would be interested in seeing it carried forward next year. Would also be available to help lighten some of the organizational / posting load too!

"Speaking of once in a lifetime, when are we doing the 80s list?"

Honestly, if we could count on enough community participation, I'd be down to help out / spearhead this too. Sounds fun!