The Sampler: Best local albums of 2021

Tony Stamp looks back at some of his favourite local releases of 2021, including summery beats, bedroom pop, Dunedin legends, and dance floor bangers.

Live From The Cloudy Subtropical by Christoph El’ Truento

The prolific Auckland producer released a sample-collage that seemed to hark back to the beat music of my youth, and when taken in conjunction with its accompanying visuals, felt like a love letter to a cloudy summer in Tāmaki Makaurau.

It’s a masterfully assembled collection, full of Pacific signifiers like slide guitar, and heaven for trainspotters trying to identify each percussion loop or piano noodle. All these snatches of audio, taken from however many sources, originally made in whatever time period, were all stitched together into something that just aimed to provide a good vibe. It had me wishing summer would come sooner.

Cosmonaut by Pickle Darling

Ōtautahi’s Lukas Mayo once again made one of my favourite albums of the year under the alias Pickle Darling, capturing the same exploratory sense of wonder as their first, with the same approach of using anything that's to hand - banjo, programmed drums, various vocal manipulations, whatever works.

Mayo’s music gets labelled twee, and maybe that’s accurate, but what I love about it is the homegrown aesthetic, as if you can see their thumb prints smudging every sound. It’s personal not just lyrically but aurally too.

The album is full of inspired details - its best song 'A Deep Breath' for example uses the sound of breathing as its rhythm, the sort of detail I only noticed after a few listens, but even subconsciously makes such a difference.

Scatterbrain by The Chills

This year I finally watched The Chills documentary The Triumph & Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, and thought it was an amazing piece of work. It may have informed my enjoyment of the new Chills album, which found Phillipps reflecting on his life and the decisions he’s made, in songs as crisp and classic as any in his back catalogue. 

‘Destiny’ finds Phillips grappling with the idea of free will and how much of life is out of our control, as he, in his words, “lurches closer toward the grave”. His voice is still as sharp as his wordplay, and the band feels reinvigorated by this new material.

My favourite track might be ‘You’re Immortal’, a title that packs plenty of irony into two words: he’s addressing the younger generation and the invulnerability we all feel in our youth, but also acknowledging his time of influence is fading. It’s ladled with mariachi brass and lush strings, windswept and cinematic, but somehow still casual.

Breakfast With Hades by Mā

In Te Whanganui-a-Tara an artist named Mā made what I think might be a concept album about getting up in the morning. It certainly starts that way, with a song called ‘Dreamswimmer’. When she sings ‘let me be’ under a layer of instrumentation that feels like a thick blanket, it’s hard not to sympathise.

Like a lot of my choices this year, this felt like a sound and perspective I hadn’t quite heard before. It came out on Mara TK’s label Meetinghouse Records, which is a good fit - the album pairs in-the-pocket beats with instruments like thumb piano, harp and native birdsong, and on most of the tracks, Mā’s voice, moving between singing, spoken word and rap, always casual, almost introverted, and inviting.

Deep Summer by deepState

In another corner of the musical landscape, Tāmaki Makaurau producer deepState crafted an EP that felt like a love letter to the dance floor... more specifically the dance floors of my younger years when euphoric house and garage were at their height.

Jessica Morgan isn’t interested in imitation though - in her career so far she’s moved through different genres and applied her own sensibility to them, and on this one the urge to move was irresistible.

Sonics are so important in music like this, and the way she balances the bass gurgles with classic drum shuffles is just spot on. More than that the music spoke to me emotionally, and reminded me how much dance music has this kind of yearning melancholy balanced with uptempo rhythm.

Leave Love Out Of This by Anthonie Tonnon

At least one of the songs on Whanganui musician Anthonie Tonnon’s latest album is four years old, and the whole collection felt like something accrued over time rather than generated in earnest. Tonnon’s songs are like that though, the products of a lot of careful thinking on his part.

On ‘Old Images’ for example, he sings about looking at pictures of his wife when she was young, seeing her parents when they were his age, and muses about the decisions their generation made while living through the cold war.

The lyrics in that song aren’t just politically nuanced, they’re also startlingly romantic, and it’s that balance that makes Tonnon a songwriter like no other. Combining that with his rich voice and a wealth of indie pop hooks, helped along by co-producer Jonathan Pearce of The Beths, made this one of the year’s most rewarding listens.

Happy To Perform by Kane Strang

Ōtepoti songwriter Kane Strang reappeared after a few years with a cheekily-titled surprise album , and a newly defined sound. It was sparse and slightly gothic, less immediately friendly than his previous work, but still packed with hummable tunes.

There was a whiff of jazz to these songs, in some of the angular arrangements and the saxophone provided by Wax Chattels’ Peter Ruddell. There was also a simmering sense of restraint, which only occasionally tipped over into something more frenetic.

I was just happy to have Kane Strang back, and the fact that he dropped an album of well crafted, constantly evolving and alive tunes, was an even more pleasant surprise. He’s happy to perform, and we’re lucky to have him.

The Licking of a Tangerine by Jazmine Mary

Australian transplant Jazmine Mary has moved through a few personas and styles during their musical journey, and seems to have settled for now into folk music that’s heartfelt, but loose enough to indulge some of their weirder impulses.

There’s a comparison to be drawn between Mary and Aldous Harding in some of their vocal acrobatics, but listening to The Licking of a Tangerine, it’s clearly the work of someone on their own distinct path. The heartfelt sentiment of tracks like ‘Fool’ sit side by side with spikier ones like ‘Remembering’ with its injections of jaunty brass - again courtesy of Peter Ruddell.

Jazmine Mary is an artist who can make me laugh out loud one minute and get choked up the next. These songs connected with me immediately when I heard them, and repeat listens throughout the year proved them to be endlessly rewarding.

It’s Your Birthday by Vera Ellen

I was aware of NZ musician Vera Ellen through her Los Angeles band Girl Friday, a punky outfit who tackle a list of societal problems in their music. Ellen’s solo Flying Nun debut is musically quite similar to her band, but as the title suggests, it all feels very celebratory. It also feels ramshackle in the best way - cheeky guitar riffs sneak in and out of songs, her voice slips up and down octaves, but it’s all held together with fantastic songwriting.

Girl Friday’s focus on things like hyper-consumerism crept into some of these tracks, but I mostly got the feeling this was an avenue for Ellen to be more personal. ‘Crack The Whip’ seems to chronicle a past relationship, while ‘Yuppie Farm’ recounts working in an LA coffee shop, the listlessness and boredom offset by Ellen’s voice, startlingly pure when she goes up to her highest register.

Bad Meditation by Mara TK

The band Electric Wire Hustle finished up around five years ago, and in that time, vocalist Mara TK was figuring out how he wanted to make music. He bought a studio’s-worth of gear, and taught himself how to use it. A quote from him about this process helped unpack the album for me: he said “music, like any other creative form doesn’t have to be perfect - the brush strokes don’t have to be exactly straight”.

The brush strokes may not always be straight, but Mara uses every colour he can - there’s bold use of effects throughout, and the overall experience is like wandering through his mind - tracks bleed into one another, ideas veer down new avenues, but it's all soaked in his particular sense of soul. Personal and appropriately meditative, it was one of the year’s best albums.