Hot Garbage — RIDE

Ontario: Top 10 of 2021

by Daniel McIntosh

The debut album from these Toronto-based students of psych is a cavalcade of fuzzy guitars brimming with droning textures. During the breakdown of “Soft as Gold,” percussion builds into a wall of sound, then falls apart again. Hot Garbage collapses into itself again and again, leaving listeners with no choice but to follow them into the abyss.

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.