2021: My Year in Music

It took me getting Covid-19 to give me the margin I needed to actually bear down and complete this, 5 full months into the year.  I'm recovered, isolation is complete. I'm about to re-enter the world again.   I'm changing jobs, changing a lot of things, and trying to plan with little to no information required for planning.  But I'm leaning into the mystery and trying to enjoy the space I have for now, because time like this doesn't come around very often.  

I have the benefit of extra time between the writing of this post and the selection of the songs.  I have been thinking about these songs for so long, it feels good to finally get the thoughts organized and out of me.  I finished up a big redesign on my apartment. I had a good streak going for most of the year where I spent the night of the first day of every month away from home.  So I explored some great new places and have a great new permanent space too!  

A list of 20 songs follows this short intro.  I'm glad to finally get to share some of what I listened to last year.  Thanks for being patient with me, in ever so many ways. 

Little Flower by Peter Bradley Adams

I remember first hearing this song on a cold, rainy February morning.  I can’t remember the last time a song made me cry but this one did.  I've listened to it so many times and I don't cry anymore but it always strums my heart strings. The metaphor of the little flower trying to grow and struggling through seasons of life, and the person singing both "I won't walk beside you" and also, "a voice in the distance, a love that never let you go".  I think that's the best hope I have for how I'm being loved by people who aren't here anymore. 

Early Morning Sedona in January

Southeast West Virginia by Virginia Coalition

My heart leapt in delight when I saw that VaCo had released an EP in 2021.  I can’t hear the sound of this band without thinking of one chilly fall evening, as a freshman, when they played the small terrace on my campus. It was quintessential college. I physically traveled to southeastern West Virginia in early autumn visiting New River Gorge NP and doing some fall camping.  This served as the perfect soundtrack for some of the moments of the drive through that hilly, familiar heartland.  They have been through different iterations of togetherness since the early 2000s when I got to know them but this song brings me right back to all that is great about the music they play.  

San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) by Daniel Herskedal, Emile Mosseri, Michael Marshall

A track from the excellent film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”.  I love that the horns gently carry the rhythm of the song. Daniel Herskedal is a Norwegian jazz artist and plays the tuba on the track.   It’s a cover of a pretty cheesy song but this reimagining of it is beautiful.  The strength of the Michael Marshall’s vocals creates this sense of melancholic urgency, and a perfect cinematic musical moment in the movie.

May in Great Smoky Mountain NP

Carry You by Novo Amor

Try listening to this song late at night, driving across a freezing cold, snow covered and moonlit landscape.  The desert lands of Arizona between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon and a huge dark sky sprinkled with stars above make it easy to surrender to the poetry of being changed forever by things larger than ourselves.  I resonate with songs about carrying someone or needing to be carried because I feel that way a lot. I will also always think of CJB on that drive sitting through two entire Lord Huron albums and patiently awaiting the moment when we would change the music.  We never did.  She finally had to plead with us to play something else, when all of us were lost in a sort of reverie that the landscape and music like this created.

Sanctuary by Hiss Golden Messenger

The heart behind this song is an unassuming and deeply open and caring spirit saying, things are bad, you look like you need a safe place to be, so I’ll be that for you.  Whether that is a literal place or a figurative place, I think 2021 probably was a pretty tough year for a lot of people, and so, this song played often in my mind and through my speakers.

Running Up That Hill by Car Seat Headrest

This is a Kate Bush cover from the mid-80s, which is a great song on its own. But the choice of a good cover is also the mark of a discerning artist. Car Seat Headrest write such interesting songs, sonically and lyrically, and they hail from my neck of the woods! This is a great exploration of a common sentiment of people who hold God in contempt for remaining above it all and not entering in to our suffering, but leaving us to deal with it in perceived isolation.  The chorus is about asking God to feel what it feels like to live this life, in our Sisyphean daily tasks of coping and dealing with short term and long term hardships.  In my own pursuit of faith I've tried to stop assuming the worst and instead assume that God cares and wants to walk in our hardships with us, and to see what he has to say about that. I don’t believe he is silent on that point, nor is he distant.  And I wonder if Kate or Will or any of them ever got any answers about striking this deal with God. 

Northern Lights in Denali NP

The First Days of Spring by Noah and the Whale

Charlie Fink’s hopeful song about rebirth into the person he might hope to become after losing someone he loves.  I love songs and poetry and imagery about spring, and I love spring itself.  Every time it happens, it helps me believe anew that what Charlie is writing about here is possible for all of us, because everything around is pushing and growing, just like we aspire to.  I like that the song is so long with rambling orchestration and string arrangements.  We all need good songs about spring to hold close, so we remember that we can be reborn and grace covers the damages we sometimes feel are irreversible. 

Not a Complicated Person by Down Time

A short, simple song which reminds me in pandemic times, and all times, that we desperately need to be real people to each other, and we need to be present, and that because people have thoughts and feelings and most of us withdrew into them for the better part of two years, we can’t stay there and be scared of other people who also might have feelings.  Let’s be in each others lives with everything we are.  And if we never did it even before the pandemic, let’s start now.

Talking to Myself by Gatlin

I've never heard this as a song about missing someone.  I associate this song strongly with Covid. With all the time that so many of us spent alone, our thoughts run on a little longer in perhaps unhealthy directions. Don't we let things loom larger than they would if we had the people we usually have in our lives putting them in check on a more regular basis?  I think this goes for people who live alone or with other people.  When we withdraw into our worlds whether for protection or necessity, it's harder to know what we're letting get the best of us.  This has been a pretty common refrain from the pulpit at church recently: we're not ourselves by ourselves.  I like how she acknowledges in the song that she's losing her mind but also that the "walls would never tell".  They'll keep her secrets, and no one will ever know that she's being crazy, because she's all on her own.  

Good at Being Lonely by Medium Build

I could write and write and write about my trip to Alaska in August/September of 2021.  I am forever smitten with the Last Frontier and, truly, I think about going back almost daily.  I loved it so much.  I have to thank one of several amazing hosts I experienced in that state.  JH from Talkeetna introduced me to this song and it was far too on-the-nose about how we were all feeling when the world started to open up again.  It’s also just a great sounding song.  Alaska is a place for people who want to get away from something.  It’s a place where people go to lose themselves, for better or worse.  For me, I just discovered even more of me out there.  But one of the things that I definitely discovered was that I have gotten very, VERY good at being lonely.  And that it’s kind of the default state I have to switch out of, not being alone is now the thing that feels less familiar and actually harder. 

Me and Denali

I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream. by The Tallest Man on Earth

In a Pitchfork review of this album, the subtitle included that Kristian Matsson is wondering “how best to move about the landscape of his life” through its lyrics.  That is likely the sentiment I connect with the most in this song. I, too, have been thinking about the mystery as I’m driving through it all.  The mystery of the sentiment of love in particular.  Matsson wrote this album in the wake of his divorce a few years ago, wondering sometimes if the love we experience is all just a fever dream. Have I ever done it well? Were those feelings that were so strong just a fever, like Peggy Lee sang? Love has many forms, we know.  And I like how things song wonders about the love that was there in the wake of loss.  Matsson says that love and death are like Yin and Yang, there is a little of each in the other. 

My Father’s Daughter by Olivia Vedder (ft. Eddie Vedder and Glen Hansard) 

I am my father's daughter

Come hell or high water

Never gonna leave him

Despite the rights or wrongs

I got you and I hope that you know

And I'm right behind you

There's a light, there's a light

That shines wherever you go

I am my father's daughter

Come hell or high water

Freedom (Yeah Yeah) by San Fermin
Almost every important conversation I had in 2021 had something to do freedom or permission. I believe there is right, and there is wrong. I also know that I don’t always get those two things identified properly. So freedom feels completely irresponsible to me. I often don’t want it because it forces me to take ownership of my actions and their consequences and live with them. That is also the true essence of adulthood, if you ask me. I love songs about freedom, that sound free, and I love running through Alaskan wilderness and other places where I don’t feel borders, or boundaries and the world is so big and wide and open. But the freedom of my own adult life is, all at once, the most beautiful set of wings and the weightiest responsibility. While it can seem a bit flippant, and sort of skewing on the tired mantras “Live your best life now”, and “you do you, boo”, I think this song is a good reminder for people like me, for whom freedom can often feel dangerous.

Great Basin NP

Hot & Heavy by Lucy Dacus

A perfectly written song about that high school love.  There will probably always be one song on these playlists tacitly (not in this case!) dedicated to the men who live in my memory like this.  And I think many of them have become those fires that can’t be tamed and others know the secrets that they were to themselves and the world is better for it, and them. 

Maintenant ou Jamais by Catastrophe

It’s now or never! I love the disco throwback feel to this song. It’s fun, retro, danceable, catchy, and infectious.  

Pelota (Cut a Rug Mix) by Khruangbin 

Since I’m writing this so so late, I now have a funny story about attending a Khruangbin show a few months ago that was full of terrible decisions. We were, in the end, richly rewarded, despite abandoning all our senses concerning going to this show.  I am also now a crotchety concert-goer who wants all the youngsters to shut up and listen to the music instead of talk.  Why would you talk all the time during a thing you paid good money to see?  Even if you are talking about the band itself, I don't get it.  In fairness to myself, I am old now, but I’ve never been one to talk much at concerts.  And none of this has anything to do with why I love Khruangbin.  I’ve been following them for a few years, and my younger brother said their show he went to was one of the best of his entire life, so I paid attention!  They were awesome, and I love that they have a distinct sound that is both new and old, and has a ton of different musical styles influencing it.  They are such a cool band and I love almost every song they have, and especially that they have done a bunch of collaborations with Leon Bridges, who I am VERY excited to see live later this summer.

Tu Es Beau by Yelle

My sexiest song of 2021, although it was released in 2007.  You don’t need to understand the words to feel it.  That’s how you know.  

Kenai Fjords NP

Aloha! (Main Title Theme) by Cristobal Tapia De Veer

This song is the title theme to a darkly captivating mini-series from HBO called The White Lotus.  The complexities of the theme music are echoed throughout the show’s plot and characters, and as I explored more about the composer and this particular commission, I learned that the producers of the show had asked for something that “sounded like human sacrifice”. It’s more than a little bit astounding to me that someone can take a concept that specific and creepy and put it into music (flawlessly, in my opinion).  I watched the title credits two or three times before I’d even get into an episode of the show so I could try and pick out all the instruments and sounds layered into this crazy, short little piece of music.  

A World So Full of Love by Shakey Graves

A classic broken heart song, first written and performed by Roger Miller.  I included this one because I finally made it through Ken Burns’ incredible Country Music documentary last year and loved every minute of it. So many incredible stories and people and sounds.  I believe some of the best songwriting in the world is hidden underneath deeply accented speech, and simple guitar strumming from the early days of music in America.  This song has updated well, still can ring very true, and I love this interpretation of it, playful in the depths of despair.   

Crossing to Jerusalem by Rosanne Cash

I saw her in concert late last year and it really completed my full-circle journey on the country music documentary journey.  This song is great for a lot of reasons, not least of which because I heard it performed with people I first traveled to Jerusalem with.  She writes truly beautiful songs, full of feeling and relatable sentiment.  It’s a song about finding a true home, but also feeling at home where you already find yourself.  

It's a tumultuous time for sure.  But it's punctuated with great company and steady souls to keep me anchored in the storm.  I'm so glad for all these disruptions and even a little bit glad for this forced time to sit down and rest for a while.  Isolation isn't fun, and I definitely appreciate all of you who give me reasons to want it to be over.  See you soon.  

Catalina Island in December