Devours - Escape From Planet Devours

BC: Top 10 of 2021

by Sean Orr

DIY artist Jeff Cancade’s underground queer pop project Devours has never shied away from tackling deeply confessional topics like body image, mental health, queer politics, and masculinity; but on Escape From Planet Devours he rips open his insides and pours them into 14 tracks of soulful electro-goth greatness. Six-bit bleeps and blips mask the bleakness behind his sardonic and introspective lyrics in an album he “fought like hell” just to get to us. And we couldn’t be more grateful for such a raw and emotional triumph.

Bo Burnham’s transcendent comedy special isn’t the only great piece of COVID-adjacent art titled Inside released this year. The indie-rock quintet’s latest opens and closes with the sounds of the 7pm clanging pots and pans that once heralded the essential workers, and many of the tracks find them grappling with introspective thoughts while trapped in a room – being stuck inside one’s own head being an even worse fate than the physical boundaries.