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The Best Albums of 2021 A listing by Jerome Clark By "best" I mean no more than what I have gleaned from subjective judgments, of course. It should go without saying that the list does not represent every roots album that, had it entered my life, would have excited me. These constitute recordings that managed to sneak within hearing range as review copies or as purchased discs. What they have in common, whether loved or simply liked, is that I derived pleasure from them and subjected them to multiple listenings. As always I have eliminated from consideration albums by artists who are personal friends or anyway musicians with whom I am friendly at some level. Unless otherwise indicated, the albums contain new or heretofore-unreleased music, and each claims a 2021 copyright date. My all-time favorite album choice this year is a tie: Norman Blake's Day by Day, which I reviewed at Rambles.NET, and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss's Raise the Roof, which I didn't. Ordinarily, I don't write about albums I have to pay for, and Blake's came to me as a review copy. Plant/Allison's became my possession after I put the money down. Between it and Day by Day we see what the designation "folk" has come to in our time. Blake's, which he says is his swan song, revisits the Old Southern Sound (in Mike Seeger's phrase) played and sung the traditional way; Plant & Krauss's is folk song and performance redefined for the 21st century. Both are enormously moving. As always, I heard many good songs in the past year. For some reason, however, John Hiatt's "The Music is Hot" hit me in some place I wasn't prepared for, possibly because it is so unlike what its title suggests. And then there's the melody, not just beautiful (though it is certainly that), but as uncannily familiar as it is impossible to place, like something you'd encounter in a dream. His and the Jerry Douglas Band's Leftover Feelings is littered with little gems: "All the Lilacs in Ohio," "I'm in Asheville," "Changes in My Mind" and -- the saddest song of all 2021, I believe -- "Light of the Burning Sun." If the melody of that one weren't so gorgeous, the lyrics could really mess you up. One presumes it is a true story because it feels too devastatingly real to have been made up. For the year's top box-set/retrospective, the choice for me could be none other than the magisterial four-disc/one-book A Life's Work: A Retrospective (Craft) on the career of Doc Watson, among the immortals of American and Southern roots music and an influence on the life of everybody, musician or otherwise, who paused to listen. There will be other great traditional artists, but no one will replace him. In what follows, an asterisk by the citation indicates that my review appeared in Rambles.NET and is available to you with a click of the mouse if you're so inclined. I chose no particular number. I just stopped writing titles down after I'd run through every one I liked, remembered, and thought would give you pleasure, too. An album makes the final cut, as a general rule, if I continue to listen to it even after the review is finished. * Nathan Bell, Red, White & American Blues (Need to Know)
The Flatlanders, Treasure of Love (Rack 'Em)
* Malcolm Holcombe, Tricks of the Trade (Need to Know/Proper Music)
* Clint Morgan, Troublemaker (Lost Cause)
* Randy Lee Reviere, Wyoming (independent)
various artists, I Am of Ireland: Yeats in Song (Merrow)
Editor's note: You can find a complete list of Jerome's many reviews here.
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 Rambles.NET music selection by Jerome Clark 11 December 2021 Agree? Disagree? Send us your opinions! 
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