Reports from the Underground: 2021 Albums of the Year

Hello there, Sam here. This is an introduction I write with a heavy heart. After all, I am announcing my retirement from this blog. After running it for three plus years, I got burned out. As we stopped doing batch reviews and moved over to individual ones, things got much more relaxed at our end and it became more difficult to manage. I made many mistakes in managing that transition, which took a ton of my energy. But aside from that, I also no longer feel that insatiable hunger for the best obscure acts I did when I started this thing. Reviews became a chore for me and got formulaic over time.

But fortunately for you, my retirement does not mean the end of this blog. For me, this project has always been about much more than myself. It’s about getting seen that which is hidden, preferably with the greatest variety possible. My policy is the less common ground among the writing staff, the better. If I were to drop off, who is to say this should stop? I believe this blog has a place in this world, however small. To that end, Sebastian will take over from me as the person in charge. It’s hardly a surprise given that he wrote the last couple of post introductions, but we still have to formally announce it. I’m happy about this really. He’s a much more steady presence than I am. You might have noticed his post introductions being much less of a ramble than mine and more serious in nature. It’s probably for the best. I’m a pretty terrible organizer with how inconsistent and mood-dependent my work ethic is (ADHD yay!).

With that said, it’s time to start talking about the post. What it’s about speaks for itself I think. We’ve reviewed a huge amount of great albums this year, and we’re here to talk about them once more. Our format is the same as in other years. We’ll first present a list of honorable mentions with links to the original reviews and a handful of genre descriptors, then there will be five tiers of greatness in ascending order. Each of our active writers has picked (at least) four albums they loved, so variety is assured. You can find each tier in ascending order below with the page numbers. They’re a bit buried on the page, unfortunately. It’s a con of our current site theme we haven’t been able to fix yet. I thank you for your understanding. Any other meta-comments from here on out will be by Sebastian. Happy reading!
– Sam