![]() ![]() ![]() As a solo artist Huckfelt has expanded beyond the folk atmospherics of The Pines to a bold sound of his own. The album has an overarching concept regarding land rights and the plight of native Americans. With Room Enough, Time Enough he continues his own musical path surrounding himself with brilliant sidefolks including luminaries Howe Gelb and Billy Sedlmayr as well as notable. Since Huckfelt’s other gig was over 10 years in The Pines, it’s not surprising that his solo work sounds reminiscent of those brilliant albums. Dog Years by Joel Siresĭavid Huckfelt - Room Enough, Time Enough – David Huckfelt released his second solo album in 2021. A fantastic release from one of Iowa’s best new songwriters. This release on the new Seeder Records label started out as a release based on the amazing solo shows Joel does in the area, but in an interview with KUNI recently, he said that he really wanted to have a full band on these songs, so he quickly assembled a band to back him producing a release that doesn’t stray far from the last TWINS album’s sound, leaning towards folk rock. I reviewed it for Little Village in November of 2020, but delays with manufacturing the 10″ vinyl EP held the release until April. Joel Sires – Dog Years – The debut solo EP from Joel Sires, frontman for Cedar Falls band TWINS came out in April. The first six in this list are all Iowa, or Iowa-adjacent acts. ![]() With all of that, let’s get to the list! In no particular order, these are my favorite releases from 2021! It’s interesting to me that all of these releases were available on Bandcamp, which is where I did the majority of my purchases in 2021. That happened to be the Grand Opening of the new Davenport location of Ragged Records, too, so that was really great! The upshot of that was that the titles I wanted were moved to the 2nd Drop so I only needed to go to the 2nd one. First, it would theoretically reduce the attendance (and lines) by splitting up the releases, and secondly it would help with the delays from manufacturing as well. Record Store Day resumed in 2021 as a two-date “Drops” one on June 21st and one on July 17th. It was not a big deal for me since I had the digital stream and download for it. This was compounded by shipping issues– records manufactured overseas were held up on shipping containers– my vinyl copy of the brilliant Promises by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra was ordered in March and didn’t ship until September! This was certainly out of Luaka Bop’s control, but they did a really great job of keeping folks in the loop about where things were with the shipping. All of the manufacturing issues we saw in 2020 were still in effect and delays were commonplace just in getting the records pressed. The vinyl record situation was worse than 2020. This summer was looking better for outdoor shows, and maybe in 2022 I’ll look closer at those kinds of events. I had tickets for three shows this year that honestly I wasn’t comfortable attending so I skipped them. At this writing I have not been to a concert since March of 2020. Artists needed to evaluate for themselves what kind of risk they were willing to put their fans in and themselves. Concerts kind of resumed and kind of didn’t. As I’m writing this, the topics still surround COVID, and lately the latest variant of that, plus vaccinations, and boosters.Īll aspects of the music industry resumed with fits and starts. 2021 was a year that was framed pretty much as “the year after 2020.” Every topic of discussion in 2021 seemed to be saddled with the context of the previous year. ![]()
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