4 Fantastic Releases from 2021

It’s already nearly a month into 2022, and most people have probably given up on their New Year’s Resolutions by now. Even if you haven’t yet gotten over the “new year, new me” mantra (and kudos to you if you’re still sticking to those 2022 goals), it never hurts to revisit some tunes you may have missed over the past year. 2021 saw a slew of great music released by independent artists across the globe, and the latter half of the year had a few real gems that you may have missed while you were busy dealing with, well, everything that 2021 threw at us. Here are four of the best independent releases from the New Jersey-New York-Pennsylvania tri-state area that you might have missed in the second half of 2021.

Hailing from Hackettstown, NJ, the post-hardcore group Died Out released their self-titled EP in August 2021. The seven-track release includes reimagined versions of the three tracks off their 2019 debut, Woolf Road Sessions 2019, in addition to four brand-new songs that are altogether loud, fast, and full of energy. With lyrics that are open to interpretation, each listener is likely to take away a different message from Died Out’s latest release, but core themes of alienation and stagnation seem to run throughout. The EP’s opener, “Simulated Life,” seems to have been perfectly released only a few short months before the premiere of the latest Matrix film, and the midpoint track “Four Walls” perfectly encapsulates the ‘dead inside’ feeling that so many develop waking up to the same room day after day after day.

As the self-described “gonzo anti-folk punk rock radical leftist hootenanny” of New York City, Out of System Transfer has been crafting rousing acoustic songs for nearly a decade now. Their newest release, Just Be Loud, is a full-length album comprised of twelve songs that each tell a story of what it’s really like to live in the Big Apple in the twenty-first century. With lyrics detailing topics such as the explosion of on-the-ground protests seen in 2020 and 2021 for movements like Black Lives Matter and instrumentals in the vein of Pat the Bunny and Cheese on Bread, Out of System Transfer’s latest offering to our ears is one that is sure to please hard-core leftists and folk punk fans alike. (Yes, we know the Venn diagram of those two things is almost a circle. Still, check out Just Be Loud.)

Moving into a quieter and more introspective space, Skylar Pocket released the full-length album To Hell with Heaven in October 2021. Grappling with themes ranging from overcoming trauma to grappling with our mortality, this latest offering from the New Brunswick group is surely their sharpest yet. With a sound that blends the contemporary emo of Modern Baseball and Future Teens with the sound of early 2000s indie like Death Cab for Cutie, Skylar Pocket simultaneously provides a hopeful view on life while also allowing us to wallow in our own sadness, if only for a little bit. Still, the band’s playfulness is on full display here, as is perhaps clearest seen in their video for the album’s lead single, “Honeywater.”

Continuing on the introspective train, Travis Love Benson’s latest release, Houses to Hollyhock, takes meditative passages about a year of the artist’s life and sets them to beautiful, full-band instrumentals. Benson discussed the creative process for this EP in an exclusive interview with Mad Indie Media last year, and the culmination of these efforts has been well worth the wait. Houses to Hollyhock is the final product of Benson’s years-long “expressive music journaling” process and reimagines the tracks from their 2020 release, We All Get Found Sometimes, this time with a full band and the addition of some new interludes that give this release a more polished sound when compared to the raw feelings evident in We All Get Found Sometimes. Houses to Hollyhock is certainly Benson’s greatest effort to date, and to answer the artist’s desperate plea to not be forgotten and lost on the album opener “A Statue,” we have to say: Travis Love Benson, we have definitely found you. But perhaps more importantly, this album solidifies that you have found yourself in your artistry. Now, if only NPR can find you – especially after your solid entry for their 2021 Tiny Desk series, as seen above.

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Died Out is a Hackettstown, NJ-based post-hardcore band whose releases are tinged with anger and passion and which sport some seriously impressive visual art. Their latest release, a 7-track self-titled EP, came out in August 2021. You can find Died Out on Bandcamp, Spotify, Facebook, and Instagram.

Out of System Transfer is an anti-folk punk band hailing from Brooklyn creating energetic and political songs about living in the hellscape of late-capitalist USA. They released the full-length album, Just Be Loud, in September 2021. You can find Out of System Transfer on Bandcamp, Spotify, Facebook, and Instagram.

Skylar Pocket is an indie rock band based out of New Brunswick, NJ whose music focuses on gender euphoria and gender non-conforming love and heartbreak. Their latest release was the full-length To Hell with Heaven, released in October 2021. You can find Skylar Pocket on Bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, and YouTube.

Travis Love Benson is an anti-folk musician and licensed music therapist creating music in Philadelphia, PA. Their latest release, Houses to Hollyhock, was released in December 2021 and is both a culmination of their thesis work for their music therapist program and a reimagining of their earlier 2020 release, We All Get Found Sometimes. You can find Travis Love Benson on Bandcamp, Spotify, Facebook, and YouTube.

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