Whereas the first Big Red Machine record consisted of esoteric sketches that felt like excerpts from long, heady jam sessions, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?includes some of the most approachable and pop-oriented material that Aaron Dessner or Justin Vernon have ever produced.

What’s interesting about the second Big Red Machine album is how unexperimental it sounds.

– Derrick Rossignolīig Red Machine - How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? 37d03d Things only get more confusing when you listen to the new album, but in a good way, as it features the group pumping out everything from post-hardcore to power-pop, doing it all in ways that make the band’s many mysteries all the more engaging. They did give a list of artists who performed on the new album Ultrapop (their first released through Sargent House), but given the group’s history of misdirection, who knows whether or not that should be taken at face value. For the unfamiliar, the experimental hardcore group has an ever-changing lineup that isn’t usually revealed. – Adrian Spinelli The Armed - Ultrapop Sargent House It illustrated the power of Parks’ universal songwriting and she’s maintained an unshakeable grace and charisma along the way. Collapsed In Sunbeams won the Mercury Music Prize as the top album in the UK, and also garnered a Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Album. The way her warm-voiced presentation of lyrics like “It’s so cruel, what your mind can do for no reason” (on “Eugene”) struck a chord with the loneliness millions were feeling in 2021 and were a salve in dire times.

Originally beginning as poems, her songs are gorgeous ruminations on the depressive states that are all too common with young people today, and became magnified as we lived our lives in a locked-down state for months. Arlo Parks - Collapsed In Sunbeams Transgressive RecordsĪrlo Parks was like a therapist during the pandemic.

Best holiday albums 2021