Year's End: The Recommendations
December, week two, it's time for another year end review. This time I wanted to highlight my ten favorite recommendations from 2021.
The criteria for eligibility are simple.
- It appeared in The Crossover Appeal newsletter at least once.
- It brought me, specifically, a lot of joy this year.
- It seems like the kind of thing that a lot of folks might not ordinarily stumble upon.
That last rule is important to me. The whole point of this newsletter is to be a jumping-on point, an introduction. It's about discovery, not obscurity, quality, or novelty. Everything on this list was a pleasant surprise. They all gave me a moment of "oh wow, this is good," and I hope they do the same for you.
Here at TCA we like to organize all our recommendations into four basic categories: Listen, Watch, Read, and Play, and we're keeping that organization going here. Otherwise these are presented in no particular order. Take this as a final recommendation for 2021 on the things you absolutely should not miss out on. Every single one of these recs is a bona fide treat.
Listen
In 2021, The Crossover Appeal tossed 41 music recommendations your way. That's a lot of listening. And while these three albums may not top the official TCA best music of the year lists (coming soon!), they each were new discoveries for me and they've stayed in rotation all year once I found them.
Danielle Durack - No Place
The pitch
Tender-sweet acoustic balladry with a witty bite and tenacious, hummable melodies.
What we said
With a raspy tone and a slightly nasal delivery, Durack's voice is always on the precipice of that fireside friend and the most beautiful thing you've ever heard.
Found in
February 20: Get on my bike, let's go
Really From - Really From
The pitch
An eclectic, high-speed collision between midwest emo, math rock, and something jazzier, all supporting an urgent consideration of national and racial identity alongside deeply personal storytelling.
What we said
Take the baroque, theatrical arrangements of mid-oughts indie collectives like Arcade Fire or Stars, mix in the complicated grooving progressions of Deloused in the Comatorium-era Mars Volta, and sprinkle in the poppy, jazzy predilections of groups like ALASKALASKA, and you'll be close to imagining the textures at play here. It's a ton of fun, and you should check it out.
Found in
March 13: To rejoice in the complexity of things
Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
The pitch
A spacey, dizzying journey into ambient electronics and improvisational composition that remains accessible, fun, and compulsively listenable.
What we said
It's a gentle, textured listen - soulful and nostalgic, delicate and righteous. It is space-making music in the sense that when a song plays, your space feels lightly transformed by the intoxicating mix of organic and synthetic sounds.
Found in
November 13: Stuttering in bleach and lights
Watch
In the nearly three dozen "Watch" recs we passed along this year, a lot of them were from independent content creators across multiple platforms, and I wanted to spotlight two of my favorites here, once again.
"You can't take anything away from me, and I will be better" - Haegreendal
The pitch
A meditative reflection on starting over by an oh-so-aesthetic Korean lifestyle vlogger that hits like Chicken Soup for the ASMR-Addicted Soul.
What we said
Her videos look and feel like the middle passage of a Wong Kar-wai tone poem. You sink into them like they're a pile of grey-beige wool blankets, soaking in ten minutes of attainable aspiration.
Found in:
February 27: And I will be better
Jane Wickline
@janewickline Tiny man
♬ original sound - Jane Wickline
The pitch
Short, surreal comedy sketches that stretch their awkward, observational premises to the breaking point.
What we said
Her characters are like if you took Tina Belcher, removed her from the context of Linda's motherly reassurances, and put Tina's insular weirdness out for everyone to see. I think Wickline's genius comes in her sense of when to insert the straight man, the character who reacts along with us, saying, what the fuck is going on?
Found in:
May 29: The one with the tiny man
Read
"I need to read more" is a thing I say on a nearly daily basis. And it's true I do. If you do too, you could do a lot worse than these three recs, one a space-faring novella, another a moody, terrifying fable, and the last a thoughtful essay on living with chronic illness.
To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
The pitch
Humanity's last, lonely attempts at survival, but sweet, melancholic, and anti-colonial.
What we said
To Be Taught challenges our notions about what scientific progress must look like, waht drives and sustains it, and what it means to preserve our humanity by looking to change ourselves instead of the environments around us. To Be Taught, If Fortunate wonders whether or not going quietly is not sometimes nobler.
Found in
February 27: And I will be better
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
The pitch
Creeping, grinding horror in the service of exploring the generational traumas of American colonialism punctuated by moments of explosive violence and triumph.
What we said
Honest, heartfelt, and ruthless, The Only Good Indians is a shocking package, full of moments you want to look away from, but won't.
Found in
April 10: The land claims what you leave behind
"On lupus, unruly bodies, and letting go" by Staci Stutsman
The pitch
Powerful, personal storytelling with a million intersecting sentiments about illness, gender, and the body.
What we said
This is humanist essay-writing at its finest, wrangling sophisticated media and textual analysis in line with personal biography - some of which is harrowing indeed - in the service of charting a course that troubles our assumptions about the body which must be disciplined and instead asks whether or not the body is simply a thing about which we can feel good, and which can in turn be a fountain of good feeling.
Found in
Play
There were an embarrassment of good games to play this year, and with services like Gamepass really coming into their own alongside a new generation of consoles, it's never been easy to just try a new game out. These two were some of my favs.
Spiritfarer - Thunder Lotus Games
The pitch
A colorful and heartbreaking management sim about guiding lost souls, including your own, to their final rest.
What we said
Spiritfarer is about death, yes, but it is also a game about hospitality, about making space for recovery and bravery and friendship.
Found in
April 10: The claims what you leave behind
Unpacking - Witch Beam
The pitch
Environmental storytelling, par excellence, where you wander through a young woman's journey into adulthood by literally unpacking her things into each new home she moves to.
What we said
And you should take your time if you can, because it's a nice place to be, that moment of new beginnings, where you are settling in for the first time and deciding what parts of you have made the move and what parts you've left behind.
Found in
November 20: A flurry of labor for a moment of tasting
There you have it. The ten best recommendations from the first year of The Crossover Appeal. I hope you love some of these things as much as I have. See you soon for a music-focused finale to end-of-the-year list making.
See you then,
Jordan Cassidy
P.S., if you're still here and still reading, The Crossover Appeal is two subscribers away from hitting 50 for the first time, and I'd love to get there before 2022, so please, if you know anyone who might like the material we put out here, share as widely as you can. Gratitude and affection, as always.