As someone who loves music, record labels have always had a special place in my heart. The best labels are consummate curators, building out their own musical visions while simultaneously acting as a seal of quality. I’ve always believed that personal recommendation is the best way to discover music, and many labels have come to feel like trusted friends; if I love a label, I’m excited to listen to anything they release.
That being said, labels faced unprecedented challenges this year. Production delays and supply chain shortages upended the fragile musical ecosystem, forcing many labels to delay releases and rethink their operations. For our first look back at the year, we want to recognize the folks who persevered through these challenging times and brought us some of our favorite releases of the whole year. Each of the labels here shone in their own way, and we’re excited to tell you how the baker’s dozen we selected killed 2021. As always here at Undrcurrents, this list is unranked.
To be frank, this list was even harder to build than our favorite albums list; it easily could have been double or triple the length, and we did have to make some tough choices. At the top, I want to give a shoutout to a few more labels who had incredibly strong years and could easily have a spot in this list: Feel It Records, Wharf Cat Records, Trouble In Mind, Call and Response Records, Bruiser Brigade Records, Fire Talk Records, We Are Time, Astral Spirits, International Anthem, Longinus Recordings and PTP. Suffice to say that you’ll be seeing more words about many of these folks as we continue to look back at the year.
American Dreams
Looking at American Dreams’ output in 2021, you might never know anything was amiss in the record industry because holy shit did they release a lot of music. I don’t have an official count, but the Chicago based label (along with its offshoot American Decline) seemingly had at least one new record out each and every week. The fact that they managed this release calendar without ever sacrificing quality cemented their spot on this list. The label focuses on anything and everything experimental to the point where I never quite know what to expect from one of their records; you might get the etherial, ambient pop of Devin Shaffer in one album and the industrial noise of Sunk Heaven in the next. The connecting thread was a generous ear and an openness to the many ways people express themselves through sound.
Recommended Listens
Spinster
Spinster took an opposite approach to 2021, putting out only three releases for the entire year. In a musical landscape where albums’ shelf lives don’t seem to extend far past their release date (a huge personal pet peeve), this can feel like a risky proposition. However, I believe Spinster played their hand just right. The self described “radical feminist record label” is run by Michelle Dove, Emily Hilliard, and Sally Anne Morgan, and they’ve quietly amassed one of the most consistent discographies of any contemporary label over the past few years. 2021 may have been their strongest year yet, with each release (at least to my ears) seemingly destined to become a bona fide classic. From the intricate finger picking of Yasmin Williams to the mutant folk harmonies of Doran, each album was a deeply felt and perfectly rendered musical universe unto itself. I’ll be the first in line to check out anything and everything they’ve got on the back burner for 2022.
Recommended Listens
Dear Life Records
Kath Bloom’s Bye Bye These Are The Days, released in the summer of 2020, put a lot of eyes on Dear Life Record. Prior to that album the label (founded by Michael Cormier and co-run with Frank Meadows and Jon Samuels) had largely released music from its founders or friends of the label, but Bloom was a nationally known figure who brought new ears to their operation. They knew just what to do next: continue with their mission of releasing music that explores “the tiniest crevices of the human experience.” With excellent releases from deep in their roster (Natalie Jane Hill, Cormier’s own solo record) and stellar new artists (Trevor Nikrant, Fust, MJ Lenderman), the label consistently proved itself to be one of the standard bearers for contemporary singer-songwriter and folk-adjacent music in 2021.
Recommended Listens
Orange Milk Records
I’ve been following Orange Milk Records for years; the label has been responsible for some of my favorite releases of the past decade. I’ve mostly associated them with cutting edge electronic experimentation, but what I loved about their 2021 releases was how so many of them bucked my expectations. There were flirtations with classical composition on the latest Giant Claw record. Both NTsKi and Ilai Ashdot took the adventurous spirit of the label and applied it to pop forms in their own unique ways. They even put out their first rap album. I don’t expect a label with an identity as established as Orange Milk’s to surprise me, but it happened again and again this year. That each extension of their musical universe felt so natural was the cherry on top.
Recommended Listens
Ramp Local
I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Ramp Local. The label began around the time that I started volunteering at the Brooklyn DIY venue Shea Stadium, and many of their early releases documented some of my favorite weirdo bands from that era. While the label’s roster put out some stellar music in 2021 (see the latest Buck Gooter album, a beautiful and moving tribute to the late Terry Turtle), the year felt most notable for their newer acts. Stice’s Satyricon was this year’s answer to The Money Store, and Black Nash’s self titled debut was a demented set of claustrophobic quarantine rock. The fact that the label has stayed true to its roots and continues to champion strange and adventurous sounds from the DIY underground is a truly beautiful thing.
Recommended Listens
La Vida Es Un Mus
Labels like La Vida Es Un Mus have been integral to keeping punk and hardcore alive in the 21st century. They’ve documented and helped shape the international punk underground for over twenty years, and their past year of releases paints a portrait of a label that still has their finger firmly on the pulse. While there was plenty of straight up hardcore releases (see Taqbir as a shining example), my personal favorites merged strong pop instincts with raging punk energy. Rata Negra gave us one of the best punk albums of the year, and The Chisel provided shambolic anthems for the modern day working man. La Vida Es Un Mus has long been my go-to label for anything punk, and that won’t be changing any time soon.
Recommended Listens
Keeled Scales
Austin based Keeled Scales had a huge 2021. We’ll start with the music, where the label may have had their strongest year ever. Records by Lunar Vacation, Katy Kirby and Renée Reed were my personal favorites, which shines a spotlight on the label’s ability to foster and cultivate talent; each record I just named was that respective artist’s debut album. Their roster is shaping up to be one of the best in indie rock, and major players seem to be taking note: the label’s other big news was a new partnership with indie great Polyvinyl, which should hopefully help the label do what it does best at an even larger scale in the years to come.
Recommended Listens
Maybe Mars
Beijing based Maybe Mars jumped onto my radar last year after they released Hiperson’s Bildungsroman (easily the best rock record of 2020), but they’ve been around for quite some time. Founded in 2007 by Michael Pettis and Yang Haisong to support the Chinese indie music scene and bring its talent to a wider audience, in the intervening decade and change the label has grown to be one of the biggest indie labels in China. While nothing blew me away in quite the same way as Hiperson, the label’s 2021 discography was uniformly strong while providing a much needed window into the Chinese underground. From the dark post punk of Kenja Time to the shoegaze textures of Naohai, it’s clear that rock music is alive and well in China.
Recommended Listens
QTV Selo
QTV really wasn’t on my radar at the beginning of this year. The Brazilian experimental label has been around for a while, but it felt like they truly arrived in 2021. While the fact that they released two of my favorite albums of the entire year (Juçara Marçal’s Delta Estácio Blues and Índio da Cuíca’s Malandro 5 Estrelas) is a large reason why they’re here, their slate of releases was strong across the board. From the avant-rap of Negro Leo to the intricately constructed soundscapes of Mbé, QTV’s output never ceased to amaze.
Recommended Listens
Paisley Shirt Records
Tech saturated San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the US, may seem like an unlikely place to foster a thriving local music scene, but its musical output over the past few years proves otherwise. San Francisco bands have perfected slightly melancholic jangle pop, and the world knows this largely because of labels like Paisley Shirt Records. From the outside looking in, the label seems to sit at the center of the whole scene; none of their bands are nationally known names, and you’ll see the same personnel pop up in different configurations across their releases (including label founder Kevin Linn). Too often these sorts of scenes disappear into thin air with scant recorded evidence they ever existed, and in five years who knows where this one will be. All I know is I’m glad someone is documenting and sharing these sounds with the world, giving them a chance to find the audience they deserve.
Recommended Listens
Hausu Mountain
Hausu Mountain is yet another longtime personal favorite, and 2021 continued their winning streak. Founded by musicians Max Allison and Doug Kaplan in 2012, the label scours the strangest corners of the musical underground and comes back with some of the wildest experimental music out there. More than anything, what stood out this year was the label’s ambition; from four releases from Prolaps (each coinciding with a solstice or an equinox) to a dazzling double album from Fire Toolz, the label took some big risks that led to big rewards. Along with the post rock of Body Meπa, the outer zones explorations of Damiana, the transformation of Good Willsmith into prog rock heroes and much more, the label continues to delight and confound in equal measure nearly a decade into their existence.
Recommended Listens
Orindal Records
I mentioned earlier that Dear Life Records was one of the standard bearers for contemporary singer-songwriter music this year; for me, Orindal was the other. The shared curatorial interests between the two isn’t that surprising. Friendship, a project that features both Cormier and Samuels, has put out records with Orindal, and some of the same artists feature across their discographies. As Orindal moved into its second decade of existence, it continued doing what it does best: supporting the musical community it has built and releasing some stellar albums. Wednesday’s Twin Plagues is my choice for rock album of the year. Macie Stewart created a chamber folk opus worthy of Nick Drake. Karima Walker stretched folk music into glimmering ambient landscapes. Claire Cronin made some of the year’s most haunted music. For my money, they had one of the most consistent runs of 2021.
Ever/Never Records
New York based Ever/Never Records specializes in “music for adults.” I’ve always taken this slogan to be a tongue in cheek way of acknowledging that they aim to challenge listeners with each release, a mission that they continued to execute on in 2021. They took us on trips to the murky Gothenberg underground by way of Monokultur and Treasury of Puppies. We took a detour at the outer Jandek-ian limits of meandering folk music with Unda Fluxit. Spiritual Mafia showed us how much you can do with just a few riffs and phrases. While many of these releases take time and attention to fully soak in, it’s always well worth the effort.
Recommended Listens