Best Of 2021... So Far.
It’s time.
2021 is half over. Hard to believe but it’s true.
With that in mind, why not look back at the last six months and make a list! Everyone loves a list! The Cups N Cakes team came together, debated, then picked their favourite 10 albums of 2021… so far.
Enjoy.
The Besnard Lakes
The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings // Flemish Eye
Lush, warm, and sweetly eerie, The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is an arresting and bold expression of love, grief, and humility in the face of death — taking particular inspiration from the 2019 passing of Jace Lasek’s father. Offering an absolutely prime example of the band’s signature ethereal and rumbling psychedelic rock sound, with driving rhythms and expansive, sun-drenched melodies, this double album is an immersive and comforting sonic experience that is both heartbreakingly raw and gently uplifting, carrying the listener along on a trip to the brink of this existence and back. To love someone means that you will someday lose them, but The Besnard Lakes are here in courage and defiance to remind us that love is as enduring as loss, and that “with love there is no death.”
- Julie Maier
Cadence Weapon
Parallel World // Entertainment One
Dystopian, paranoid, angry, and super hard, Cadence Weapon’s Parallel World is a cry for help in a world consumed by technology and injustice. Melodic and intense in equal measure, both the instrumentation and vocals jump easily between gentle crooning and rage while, at the same time, blending a classic Hip-Hop persuasion with something futuristic and electronic to create a project that is thematically powerful and sonically cathartic. The fifth track, “Skyline,” details a “faceless” Toronto, perverted by modernity and concealing rampant inequity. This is in line with what seems to be one of the main themes of the project: everyone wants to present things a certain way that obscures what they actually are, be it an Instagram persona or a supposedly thriving Canadian city. All in all, Parallel World is engaging the whole way through despite Cadence Weapon’s consistently bleak truthfulness, thanks to his musical and poetic talent, and the wild, tight production.
- Devon Acuña
Devours
Escape from Planet Devours // Self Released
Vancouver has yielded some of the most noteworthy experiments in pop of the year. Among them, we can absolutely include Devours’ third full-length release, the double album Escape From Planet Devours. The album is prolific with 14-tracks of queer synth pop, always holding a tight dancing groove and maintaining a strong dramatic act in Devours’ every move.
“Poltergeist,” “Dick Disciple,” “Exposure,” “Yoshi’s Revenge,” and “Two Kids” are some of the stand out tracks as they reflect the many directions that Devours takes to cultivate a sound. Devours is able to captivate a post-punk and glitchcore edge in the album’s sound - for instance, the spunkiness of “Yoshi’s Revenge” outbursting the lyric “drugs” on repeat or the emotional chanting of “I am only half a man.../ I am only half the man you need” in “Dick Disciple.” Devours is in many ways the sound of punk-pop to come.
- Simone A. Medina Polo
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Theory Of Ice // You’ve Changed Records
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offers up waves of emotion, grief, faith, interconnectedness, and hope in Theory of Ice. Using themes of relationships to water and nature, Simpson delivers hard truths with a quiet confidence that pierces and envelopes the listener. Hinging around a cover of Willie Dunn’s “I Pity the Country” that carries just as much power and emotion as the original, Theory of Ice is a powerful indictment of colonialism with a vision of a life free from capital. It feels ever more striking in light of the recent discovery of mass unmarked graves at residential schools, serving a reminder to settlers of their ignorance to the genocidal history of Canada. Nature is used to drive searing commentary on politics and capitalism, but ultimately, we are left with something of a hero’s journey from loss to new life. As if this album wasn’t already one of the finest this year when it was released, it packs a whole new punch just a few months later.
- Clay Geddert
Motorbike James
VIISIONS // Slow Weather
Edmonton’s Motorbike James (Michael Werbicki) plays with time and sound on his April 8th release, VIISIONS. The instrumentals throughout the ten-tracks seems to mirror the album cover in their similar hints of space exploration, by the way they float through the air.
Making for an immersed listen, the album fuses genres as it moves from song to song. The title-track opens the album with a psychedelic feel, followed by “Enamoured”, a pop-influenced track that never strays too far from a psychedelic ambiance. Even though they all spin out their own way, none of the songs seem out of place, thanks to Werbicki’s talented song writing and production skills.
This impressive debut-album definitely leaves us wanting more of Motorbike James. His sound is completely his own, straying from the path that was his former band, Royal Tusk. He oozes creativity and skill, making him a supernova that can’t be missed.
- Holly-Anne Gilroy
Sarin
You Can't Go Back // Prosthetic Records
You Can’t Go Back, the latest effort from Toronto’s sludgey Sarin is the result of dramatic change for the individual members of Sarin but also the band as a whole. Loss of longtime band members, fallen apart relationships and a lot of inner contemplation shaped the context for the band's most emotive record yet. The album's lyrics, mood, tone and overall arc give a truly honest representation of a moment of self reflection, change and hardship. Within the band’s veil of sludgy post metal, Sarin present a wide range of emotion. It’s what makes the album such a dynamic piece of music. They really hit so many marks throughout its runtime. Glorious hints of beauty, gritty dark chugging, uplifting flashes of clarity. All while towing the line of keeping it rightfully tasteful.
Each track is free from any linear structure, yet flows impeccably. The combination of the bands hunt for tone, sharp production work, and deft song writing gives the album a deeper level of meaning. As though each instrumental line, every fill, each sparse moment of vocals adds something that needs to be in the song. It gives the listener the feeling that this is a fully realized album.
- Kennedy Pawluk
VISSIA
With Pleasure // Hurry Hard Records
VISSIA’s highly anticipated second full-length album, With Pleasure, is dynamic, catchy and, most importantly, honest. It also shows a noticeable change from her earlier folk influenced sound and now delivers an up-beat vibe along with soft ballads and powerful vocal melodies that will give you a satisfying musical experience worth repeating.
Musically, you can expect a mix of alt-pop, soul and R&B with groovy rhythm sections, infectious bass lines, funky guitars and ethereal synth sounds that make this album perfect for any occasion. Each of the ten tracks has the VISSIA touch and she’s able to elevate every song to the sky with her beautiful confident voice and take you along with her. Get dancing with bangers like “Take It Apart” or “On My Mind”, or take a moment to relax with songs like “The Cliffs” or “About Moving On”.
Whatever your vibe is, you can find it in With Pleasure. Available now on vinyl as well as in all the music platforms. Make sure to press play and enjoy the ride.
- Fel Gamarra
The Weather Station
Ignorance // Next Door Records
The Weather Station’s Ignorance became an obvious contender for Best Album of 2021 despite only being released one month into the year. From instrumentation and lyrics to song structure, and of course, Tamara Lindeman’s incomparable voice, Ignorance is one of those works that defines a year in the Canadian music landscape. This is songwriting at its best: tasteful storytelling with nuance and patience in the unravelling, lyrical un-structures that roll like prose, and grief wrapped in questions: “Is it alright if I don’t wanna sing tonight? I know you are tired of seeing tears in my eyes. But are there not good reasons to cry?”
As with most best-of albums, Ignorance is the type that needs to be listened to over, and over, and over again to squeeze out all the richness; produced by Marcus Paquin and Lindeman herself, each song has sometimes overt, but usually camouflaged glitters of production genius, from Moogs and Pianets and Wurlitzers to literally all the bells and whistles.
- Lana Winterhalt
Whitney K
Two Years // Maple Death Records
The first time I heard Whitney K’s “Trans-Canada Oil Boom Blues” it brought me right back to my sun-in-the-eyes days of weekly highway commuting between Edmonton and Banff, leg jittering, head nodding, hours of landscape watching. It’s a swaggering rock n’ roll song that reflects on how the oil boom lust for opportunity, wealth and good times has pillaged the land. Sacrificing the future for the short-term gains. Thus is the creativity of Konner Whitney’s February 2021 album Two Years. He swings us between deep thought and humour, usually in the same breath. Sometimes a lonesome country-poet with a salty swagger and slide-guitar like in “Me or the Party #165”, or a stumbling garage rocker in “Last Night #2”. Sometimes hitting us with a quaalude-soaked sounding Lou Reed delivery like on “Maryland”.
Whitney’s arrangements are fun and loose - acoustic strumming with frisky percussion and bar-room piano. The whole album takes on the persona of a travelling troubadour looking for good times and feeling the morning after regrets. As Whitney says himself about the album - “Time to open your arms, I’m coming out of no fun city and aiming straight for you.” Well, welcome good man! Summer of 2021 needs a good party.
- Mo Lawrance
Willie Dunn
Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology // Light In The Attic
Beyond being a fabulous career spanning collection of amazing Canadiana from a criminally underexposed titan of North American folk, this retrospective is an absolutely essential treasure of Indigenous wisdom at a time when our Nation desperately needs it. When this collection was issued at the start of the year, it seemed very much a clarion call from an elder voice with a great and urgent message to impart to the attentive listener; in light of recent events that voice is made even more imperative and vital, as are all voices informed by the perspective that Indigeneity brings. There has never been a more crucial time for the citizens of this country to listen carefully to the voices of our first people, and the words and music of Willie Dunn make a great point of entry, coming as they do from a long life informed by vital political resistance and fiercely creative output. If there was one record I would pick for every Canadian to listen to once this year, it would absolutely be Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies.
- Shaun Lee
