2021 Year-End List Analysis – The Quietus’ Top 100

Webster’s Dictionary defines “quietus” as “death or something that causes death”. Here’s what a stock image website spit out for me. Apt!

‘Tis the season! The only reason I truly look forward to the shitty holidays is because they happen to be at the end of the year, and the end of the year means all the online music publications post their year-end lists. Cranky music fans worldwide will froth at the mouths over the fact that most of these websites are dropping their lists in early December, you know, when there’s still 8.33333333% of the year left to go. I, however, welcome the influx of premature ratings! If you’re stupid enough to drop your album in December knowing full well that you’ll be completely out of contention for someone’s Top 10 / 25 / 50 / 100 Albums of the Year list, then that’s your own stupid fault, you stupid asshole! I’m looking at you, Arca. Devin Townsend. Marie Osmond.

I, myself, will wait until at least the last few days of December, if not well into January, before dropping my own personal list. That is because I’m like a kid in a candy store during the dismal month of December, perusing and curating all these lists to scoop up some album recommendations that I either hadn’t gotten around to yet, forgot about completely, or initially waved off. This is when I really try to cram it all in! Oh, the fun I’ll have.

I plan on covering a few of my most anticipated year-end lists over the next month, and possibly beyond, starting with one that I look forward to more than almost all the others: The Quietus’ Top 100 Albums of 2021, which dropped on December 1st. Known for their notoriously underground tastes and selections, the Quietus likely rates their most beloved album releases of the year based on contrarianism and deliberate obscurity. There’s no way they actually like all these albums! I make a point to listen to most of their top 20 every year, and I often find nothing that I continue listening to after a few days worth of careful consideration! That’s not to say that I haven’t discovered some really amazing gems through their website; some really enjoyable artists I would never know about if it were not for them (LoneLady, Årabrot, These New Puritans, Circle, Yugen Blakrok, Vanishing Twin, Hey Colossus, Sleaford Mods, I could go on and on).

While they continue to remain completely predictable in their unpredictability, the Quietus list is a MUSIC-LISTENER’S music list in the purest sense. I dedicate a generous portion of my time, energy, and real estate of my brain dedicated to keeping up with music discovery. As a giant music nerd, half the fun of the Quietus list is scouring through the 100 albums and seeing a) how many I’d actually heard of, and b) how many I’ve actually listened to. Once upon a time, their list would be entirely comprised of albums that I’d never even knew existed. Every year I recognize more and more as I broaden my reach. In 2021, as I write this, I recognize 44/100 and I’ve listened to 31/100. That’s a respectable score. Even better than that, not only have I listened to 31 albums from their list, I’ve covered 16 albums from their list throughout the year in Newer Release Roundup posts! The Weather Station, Sleaford Mods, Liars, Divide and Dissolve, The Armed, Arab Strap, black midi, audiobooks, Part Chimp, Black Country, New Road, Dry Cleaning, Japanese Breakfast, Melvins, Snapped Ankles, Squid, and LoneLady. Now that’s something to be proud of, son. I’ll likely hit a few more for the Roundup, too, before I move on to next year’s albums.

So let me go through their year-end list, their sumptuously decadent offerings, and see what jumps out as urgent items that I need to comment upon today:

Quietus’ #4: The Weather Station – Ignorance

Boo!

Fuck that! This album got the big blue frowny face from me, and repeated listens + half a year’s worth of extra time has not warmed me up to Ignorance at all. Not one iota. It’s sterile, it’s static, it’s simple. I don’t like it! And I must be objectively wrong, because this is clearly going to be the global indiesphere’s Darling of the Year. If even the snooty-ass Quietus can put an album like Ignorance at #4, then who am I to say that it’s a poor album? Nobody, that’s fucking who. Nobody, and don’t you forget it.

But yes, any publication worth a damn that specializes in indie rock of any kind is going to put this album on their list, and it’s going to be high. I can’t like everything, but damnit, I want to at least understand everything. And I just don’t with this one. It’s frustrating.

Quietus’ #71: At the Gates – The Nightmare of Being

Hiss!

lmao! The Quietus always picks one or two token extreme metal albums, and this year one of them is melodic death metal band At the Gates? I mean, it’s fine enough, I guess, but really? It wouldn’t even be #71 on a list that was ENTIRELY metal.

Look, seven trillion metal albums are released all over the world every year, and there’s so much that would be right in the Quietus’ wheelhouse. Ylem by Sunless! That’s mind-bending black metal with traditional instruments in the vein of Deathspell Omega. Avow by Portal! Harsh and nasty, drone-y atmospheric black metal by a band notorious for pushing limits in a seemingly limitless genre. Ascension Codes by Cynic! A solid effort from legendary genre-skewing progressive death metal act. But no, they pick At the Fuckin’ Gates. Must be all those ornate lyrics, it matches the Quietus’ review writing style.

Many Linchpin Artists Make Yet Another List Appearance

That Gazelle Twin lady sure is weird!

It wouldn’t be a Quietus year-end list without a wealth of repeats! I’ve been a connoisseur of their Album of the Year list since, I don’t know, 2013 or 2014. In that time, it’s hard not to notice that many artists get extra-special treatment: a guaranteed spot in the Top 100 no matter how mediocre their album might possibly be that year.

I once read on the Quietus website that their year-end picks don’t necessarily represent their favorite albums, but the ones they happened to listen to the most throughout the year. Well, I call bullshit, because the Richard Dawson & Circle album hits their #7 spot even though it only came out on November 26th, five days before this list dropped. They probably already had that album slotted for the top ten as soon as they saw a press release revealing that Richard Dawson and Circle were collaborating. They probably didn’t even fucking listen to it.

This year’s notable inclusions with many past honors (excessively and undeservedly so, in a few cases) are William Doyle, the aforementioned Richard Dawson, Sleaford Mods, Gazelle Twin, Liars, Shirley Collins, Skee Mask, Shackleton, Årabrot, Manic Street Preachers, GNOD, and Laura Cannell.

If there were albums in 2021 dropped by Hey Colossus, Nadine Shah, Lorenzo Senni, Shit and Shine, Jam City, Wire, Fat White Family, Teeth of the Sea, Matmos, Alexander Tucker, Ian William Craig, or British Sea Power, they’d be on here too. No question. Even if they all released identical albums of nothing but farts. Speaking of which…

William Doyle Kind of Sucks, Actually

This guy looks like he smells.

Here’s William Doyle’s resume with respect to the Quietus year-end lists in the last decade:

-2014: Total Strike Forever (as East India Youth) – #4
-2015: Culture of Volume (as East India Youth) – #6
-2019: Your Wilderness Revisited – #4
-2021: Great Spans of Muddy Time – #5

He’s the only musician who gets to be in the top ten every time he makes the list at all. The problem here? His music is dull! Like, really dull. Look at the guy, does he look like an endless well of transcendent creativity to you? It looks like his mom still dresses him.

This guy is friends with the staff. They throw him a bone on their well-known website by elevating him near the top of their lists. What does it say about him that even this publicity isn’t helping whatsoever. Exactly.

Notable Omissions

Sorry, Cavey, it ain’t your year.

Here are a few albums I thought would be here for sure:

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – CARNAGE
Nick Cave is usually a shoo-in. All the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds records released since the publication’s inception have made it. CARNAGE wasn’t perfect, but it’s certainly Top 100 material. Maybe the Quietus hates Warren Ellis and his dumb beard!

Lingua Ignota – Sinner Get Ready
This feels right up their alley. Classically-trained, industrial, power electronics, noise, neoclassical, opera, extreme metal, dark poetry, feminism, I’m literally shocked that this isn’t anywhere to be seen. Probably because Anthony Fantano loved it.

Lana Del Rey – Blue Banisters
They usually throw in a super-mainstream bonus option somewhere in the middle half. You know, just to prove that they’re not entirely on Mars. Past winners include Beyoncé, Kanye West, Billie Eilish, and Cardi B. This year the most well-known artist here appears to be…Godspeed You! Black Emperor at #43? Possibly Clairo at #65? Surprising. My pick this year was Lana Del Rey’s Blue Banisters, which wasn’t a smash hit of a release for her this year, but it got many decent reviews and would be the underdog option compared to her other 2021 release Chemtrails over the Country Club. Perfect. Should’ve been, uh, #52.