Rachel Goodman’s top alt-rock and alt-pop songs of 2021. L to R; Row 1: Paul McCartney and Phoebe Bridgers; Maxïmo Park; Kings of Leon; Black Country, New Road; Wet Leg, The War on Drugs. Row 2: BC Camplight, Cannons, Strand of Oaks, Hovvdy, Ladyhawke, Fences, Sea Wolf, Courtney Barnett.…

The best albums of 2021 include Jackson Browne, J Balvin, Cheekface, Jame Blake, Tori Amos, Billy Gibbons, IDLES, Paul Weller, Jon Batiste, Rostam, The Killers and Between the Buried and Me. Welcome back to RIFF’s top album countdown! If you’re here just to complain about the order or lack…

Changephobia, a term Rostam coined to surmise the feeling of wrestling with our ever-changing lives, is the ambient, glossy album we need to bring us into a bright summer. With the opening of movie theaters and concert halls, artistic spaces where talent is splattered in grand displays, the album…

Photos: Karen Goldman SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout Rostam‘s Noise Pop set at Slim’s Friday, the former Vampire Weekend songwriter made references to to the absence or coming of light. Whether lyrically, such as on the title track of his 2017 solo album, Half-Light—”Baby, all the lights came up”—or on…