Robin Thicke had a really solid, underrated career going before everything kind of went crazy with the biggest hit of his career in 2013 and the biggest flop of his career in 2014, followed by a divorce, a big costly copyright lawsuit, and an extended wilderness period of sporadically releasing low profile singles. So it's nice to just see Thicke get back on track with his first album in over 6 years, more ProJay-produced quiet storm and bossa nova jams in the vein of The Evolution of Robin Thicke and Love After War, my personal favorites being "Hola" and "Beautiful." There is one song produced by Pharrell, "Take Me Higher," that doesn't feel like it's trying to repeat the "Blurred Lines" phenomenon but does have a nice vibe, I can picture kids and old people dancing to it at weddings if it got a big push, but it might be better for Thicke if he never has a hit like that again. Here's the 2021 albums Spotify playlist that I add all the new records I've been listening to this year. 

The first solo album that Hayley Williams released last May, Petals For Armor, wasn't a quarantine album, but it sort of had a scaled-down intimacy and vulnerability compared to Paramore's records that it kind of felt like one. Now less than a year later, we've got her actual quarantine album, recorded at home with her playing everything, and it's pretty gorgeous. It was never really too clear how much of the guitar or keyboards Williams was playing herself on previous albums so it's cool to see what she's really capable solo, it's not quite as intricate and stylish as the instrumentation on Petals but there's a great ambiance to this album, it holds my attention a lot better than such a ballad-heavy album usually does. And I love the little snapshot of the home recording struggle when she gets interrupted at the beginning of "HYD." But this is definitely one of those albums where it feels like everything is building toward the final track, "Just A Lover" is really something. 

Jon Ehrens lives in Vermont now and spent the last few years in Philly, but his roots in Baltimore's scene continue to run deep. And the album he's made in quarantine over the past year is full of remote collaborations with notable Baltimore musicians, including members of Future Islands, Horse Lords, and Soft Pink Truth. It's fun to hear him kind of tangle up his usual Repelican sound up with other people who have their own sound, some great songs here but I think my favorite is "Smoke Signals" with Cara Satalino. 

Philly singer/songwriter David "Pink Sweat$" Bowden is super talented, but none of his singles have caught fire, so his major label debut peaked at #133 on the Billboard 200. If Atlantic Records doesn't figure out how to market him, though, I think he's gonna be writing hits for other artists sooner or later. "Magic" and "Pink Money" are the early standouts from the album for me, along with "Give It To Me" and "17" from last year's EP. 

I probably should've guessed when the super prolific Australian band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released an album called K.G. in November that a companion album called L.W. would soon follow. But as always I continue to be surprised that their bottomless well of weird retro groove rock continues to produce more excellent records. There's usually at least one song on 5/4 on their records and the one this time around, "Supreme Ascendancy" and "Ataraxia" are both good ones. 

I know that most people are kind of weary about Foo Fighters' decades of ongoing ubiquity, but I was genuinely excited about the late career high point of Wasting Light and disappointed that they followed it with the two weakest albums of their career. The three advance singles from Medicine At Midnight didn't inspire a lot of confidence in me, but the album is much better than expected, those are probably the three weakest tracks, they've made better use of Greg Kurstin's broader production palette than they did on Concrete And Gold. The female backing vocalists on "Making A Fire" and the title track really lend a nice '70s vibe to it, you so rarely get hard rock with backup singers wailing away on the chorus anymore. 

There's of course a lot of great hip hop songs that sample classic rock artists, but there's always a ton of killer breaks lurking in those big obvious records, and Baltimore producer John "Jumbled" Bachman decided to dip into his big brother's favorite records and made this really enjoyable little half hour mix of beats sampled from everyone from AC/DC to ZZ Top. Check it out on Bandcamp. 

It's hard to think of the last time a rapper went from relatively unknown to a top 5 Billboard debut as quickly as Pooh Shiesty has. But it's proof of Gucci Mane's incredible eye for talent that the 1017 stable is still producing new stars for over a decade, as well as a testament to Memphis being one of the best rap cities in a America right now. I don't love the whole Shiesty Season tape outside of the obvious standouts like "Back In Blood" and "Neighbors" but he's got a lot of potential. 

New York-based guitarist Brad Farberman has started releasing this series of compilations on his Bandcamp benefiting live venues that are closed during the pandemic, and I was happy to buy the first installment and support the cause. I don't know most of the artists on here besides Ben Goldberg, but there's a nice mix of rock, jazz, prog, sitars, all sorts of stuff, I particularly like the Jon Madof and Cheryl Kingan tracks. Hank Shteamer's song is good, too, I've worked with him as an editor at Rolling Stone but I didn't know he made music. 

I love that Willie Nelson is really on his own trip and will make whatever album he feels like making -- the world probably wasn't expecting him to make a Sinatra tribute record, My Way, in 2018, but now three year's later he's releasing yet another collection of standards associated with Frank. Nelson and Sinatra both called each other their favorite singer, and I think knowing that kind of enriches my understanding both of them. "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning" sounds particularly good with a Mickey Raphael harmonica solo. 

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