Spencer Krug - Twenty Twenty Twenty Twenty One

While no stranger to self-producing, 2020 and 2021 found Krug diving deeper than ever into the possibilities of his home setup, and therein refining a distinct blend of richly analog-acoustic and unabashedly artificial sounds. This self-aware and apparently self-pleasing juxtaposition is the texture making up a lot of the album, adorned with Krug's half-baked confessionalist poetry; ill-informed takes and recluse-revelations sung out from within his cave-ish backyard studio. Living in rural Vancouver Island, loosely watching humankind unravel and gather itself over and over again from the safe, sleepy vantage point of a new father keeping himself and his family away from most others, locked in a beautiful, boring, perfect bubble, wherein every day, every month, is a kind of recurring dream, bright yet slightly troubled, a quiet walk down a too-familiar road, the cooing of the baby who doesn't yet know... Krug has unwittingly made a collection of sonic journal entries in Twenty Twenty Twenty Twenty One, each simultaneously guarded and celebratory, cynical and hopeful.