I don't think I had heard of Joyce Wrice before the day this album dropped, but I'm glad I caught wind of the positive buzz and checked it out, this is a really excellent independent album that could definitely pave the way for mainstream R&B stardom. Most of the album is produced by D'Mile, and I didn't even realize how much stuff I love that he's had a hand in (Diddy-Dirty Money, H.E.R., Victoria Monet, Ty Dolla Sign, and Lucky Daye, who guests on the standout "Falling In Love"). The Westside Gunn verse is one of the biggest mood killers in the history of R&B albums but otherwise the whole thing is great. Here's the 2021 albums Spotify playlist that I put all the new albums I listen to into 

I used to share a practice space with Jason Butcher's old band Among Wolves and I've been a big fan of his voice and his songs for a long time. So I was really excited to see that he's re-emerged from a couple of tough years with a new project, and the 7-song debut by Better Days recorded at Wright Way Studios in Baltimore is great. It's got a similar roots rock sound to most Among Wolves stuff but the single and standout "Ladyfingers" is kind of funky and minimalist with finger snaps and electric piano and lots of empty space between notes. 

Brittany "Starrah" Hazzard has written huge hits for Rihanna, Maroon, 5, Kevin Gates, and tons of other artists, and I've been following her career with interest ever since her early work with Jeremih, especially after I realized she went to the same high school that I did, years after I did (Cape Henlopen HS in Rehoboth, Delaware). I tried to interview a few years ago but apparently she's pretty private and her team was trying to figure out some weird thing where I'd submit questions and the interview would be animated, I don't know, it didn't work out. The Longest Interlude is her first solo project, aside from a 5-song thing with Diplo a few years ago, and it's pretty good, very chill midtempo autotune R&B sort of thing, reminds me a little of early solo Dawn Richard. 

It kind of feels like Nick Jonas has spent the last decade a bit like Michael Jackson spent most of the '70s, kind of bouncing between making solo records and making music with his brothers, sometimes having more success with one or the other and seemingly always fumbling around for the right musical direction. Spaceman is one of the best albums, maybe the best, that he's ever made, though, because he just locked in with one really versatile producer, Greg Kurstin, and made something with a sustained sound and mood that doesn't feel like it's trying to be everything to everybody, I think "Delicious" and "If I Fall" are my favorite tracks. Unfortunately, the album came out with little advance notice, got no radio airplay, debuted outside the top 10, and is maybe a week from dropping off the Billboard 200 entirely. 

Poster Girl is another solid pop album that kind of came and went without making much of an impact, despite the fact that Zara Larsson has been releasing excellent singles for it, including "Ruin My Life" and "Love Me Land," since 2018. There was also a cute promo run where she played up being Swedish and did a livestream concert from a literal Ikea store in Sweden. "Need Someone" and "Poster Girl" are my favorite songs on here that I hadn't heard before the album, great bassline, definitely recommend this to fans of the last Dua Lipa album. 

When I was growing up, INXS was on MTV constantly, even well into the '90s, and I loved all their hits, and appreciate them as a band and their whole catalog even more now. The INXS videos always understandably had Michael Hutchence front and center with his 5 bandmates all toiling relatively anonymously in the background and occasionally mugging at the camera. But keyboardist/guitarist Andrew Farriss, possibly the least animated guy in those videos, was the musical mastermind of INXS, writing most of their songs with Hutchence, and has just now released his first solo album. He's a passable singer and is mining a more rootsy singer-songwriter aesthetic than anything INXS did, but I'm enjoying it and it's cool to see kind of an unsung genius finally step out on his own for the first time, I think "Drifting" is my favorite track. 

I interviewed 24kGoldn last year, early in "Mood"'s run as the #1 song in the country, and it was cool to talk to this guileless kid at the moment that a catchy little song he wrote with his friends was conquering the world. "Mood" is still inescapable -- it just notched its 30th week in the top 10 -- but both of his follow-up singles missed the Hot 100 entirely, and this album made a relatively small splash, so this might be his one big moment in the sun. I wouldn't count him out, he strikes me as a shrewd and clever guy, and he made El Dorado largely with the same friends that produced "Mood" and mines the same territory, bringing guests like Future and Swae Lee into that sound instead of trying to cop their style. 

It's not unusual for there to be some hard feelings and some messiness after a band breaks up, but I've often been saddened or confused my Mike Doughty's actions since Soul Coughing split 20 years ago: writing a whole memoir trashing his bandmates, sometimes refusing to play the band's songs at solo shows but also making a solo album of Soul Coughing re-recordings and doing a solo 25th anniversary tour of their debut album Ruby Vroom. So when I interviewed Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg last year I was happy to hear that he and Doughty had patched things up and were getting along better. Still, some weirdness persists: Doughty said in interviews that he'd attempted to reunite the band but not everybody was down for it, so instead he'd be making an album with Steinberg called 'The Ghost of Ruby Vroom' (this is doubly weird because the album's namesake Ruby Froom is a real person who is still alive and has made some good music of her own). For whatever reason, this didn't pan out, so Ghost of Vroom became a duo with Doughty and a different bassist, Andrew Livingston. And while I find this whole saga exhausting, the record is pretty good, it's fun to hear Doughty in a more playful mode than his singer-songwriter solo stuff and doing odd free associative rhymes over noisy, sample-filled bass grooves. 

YBN Nahmir's biggest singles, 2018's "Rubbin Off The Paint" and the recent 65-second "Opp Stoppa," aren't exactly masterpieces, but Visionland still managed to be such a notably shitty album that on the release date people were openly ridiculing the song "Soul Train" on Twitter. YBN Cordae famously dropped the YBN from his name and left his crew on his journey to become the token young rapper that old rap fans think is wholesome and talented. And YBN Nahmir makes some clumsy gestures towards trying to be that kind of rapper too on the opening track "Still (Family)" with Ty Dolla Sign, and then the rest of the album is just straight down the middle boredom. At least the bay area track with E-40 and Too $hort is good. 

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