2024: Music in Review

It was recently revealed that on any given single day in 2024, there was more music being released than the entire calendar year of 1989. We are subsumed by music, a tidal wave of content battling for your attention, on top of the regular breaking news cycle and latest viral meme. How to stay atop it? Well, the below 40-ish albums should give you an idea of what the very best was, as decided by an impartial jury of highly learned music people (aka. me). 40 albums out of 10,000? Sounds about right for the normal attention span. Strap in and enjoy!

Albums of the Year

40. St. Vincent, All Born Screaming

Annie Clark probably read too much into the mixed reception for her excellent R&B-adjacent 2022 album Daddy's Home and brought back the rock - no complaints here! With her usual tight performances and observations, meticulously produced and sequenced, she is all professional killer.

39. Nilufer Yanya, My Method Actor

For her third straight work of genius, Yanya once again doubles her smoky alto with fragile soprano counterlines, and makes a meal of her guitar work in service of brashly cutting tracks and sinister atmosphere. One of our great treasures.

38. Shellac, To All Trains

What should have been a triumphant return for the Illinois noise-rock trio after a decade of absence was instead tinged with grief given Steve Albini's sudden passing only days before the release. Music this vital and loud shouldn't have to bear the load of a dead band member, but you cannot help but shiver as the final track promises that if he's headed to hell, at least Albini will know everyone there. Absolutely essential.

37. julie, my anti-aircraft friend

The teen shoegaze worshippers struck gold on their debut, crafting a messy, noisy masterpiece that would have fit right in between the Breeders and Ride on an alternative rock radio station in autumn 1993. The tracks never sit still, and you don't have to either.

36. Tyler, the Creator, CHROMAKOPIA

What it lacks in Call Me If You Get Lost’s straightforward rap triumphs, Tyler’s eighth album makes up for with a messy and relatable fear of adulthood, narrated by Tyler’s mom, and marked another blue-chip pop record concerned with parenthood. A meaty work to analyze as Tyler works to change his narratives.

35. Yard Act, Where's My Utopia

After a flawless post-punk debut, the Leeds band made a seamless transition to dance-punk that recalled the Slits’ transition between their first two records. James Smith continues to testify with the best of them, taking on the topics of capitalism and gentrification with introspective lyrics and his recognizable sprechgesang style as the disco burns around him.

34. Laura Marling, Patterns in Repeat

The English folk artist has long been a fascinating figure, and she puts her considerable talents to a sparse and elegant album which explores new parenthood with as many moments of silence as of razor-sharp lyrical observations. It recalls Bjork’s classic Vespertine in its use of the everyday sounds that make a home and domesticity.

33. Ka, The Thief Next to Jesus

Independent to the very end, the Brooklyn-based firefighter captain only released music when he was moved to, and never bothered with gimmicks, unless you consider his minimalist productions and absolutely diamond-hard bars flashy - which of course many of us did. For well over a decade, his albums were self-contained worlds where not a single word was out of place or superfluous, where every beat (or lack thereof) was in service of his gravely delivery. A gut punch that this has to serve as his epitaph, but so be it; another classic in a long line of them. Rest in power.

32. The Smile, Cutouts

Freed from the albatross that is Radiohead, Thom and Jonny have found a new lease on following their muse with jazz drummer Tom Skinner along for the ride. 2024's output: two separate Smile albums ten months apart in a call-back to the Kid A era. Lest anyone suffer illusions, October's Cutouts is the superior disc, with a better flow and stronger performances. However, this is splitting hairs as both discs are outstanding additions to the Radiohead universe.

31. Floating Points, Cascade

Sam Shepherd has been delivering heady electronic music for a long time, though it is possible most newcomers are only aware of his ethereal jazz odyssey with the London Symphony Orchestra and the late Pharoah Sanders, or possibly his recent ballet score. In case anyone forgot that he started off making relatively straightforward techno, he delivers a nuke with Cascade - these tracks unfurl over seven or eight minutes, whether sweaty dancefloor paeans or blissful chill-out scores. A triumphant return of the beat.

30. Wishy, Triple Seven

Shoegaze continues to be the throwback genre of choice for orthodox rock bands, and few did a better job of mimicking the sound this year than the Indianapolis band’s debut, which you can put on and convince yourself is actually a lost 1993 power-pop record with a heavy glaze of guitars. Bonus points for having male and female singers trading off songs. An endlessly catchy collection of tracks that won’t fail to put a smile on your face, and a great treat for those of us who are stuck thinking of the 90s as the peak of existence.

29. Chat Pile, Cool World

The Oklahoma noise band's sophomore album only suffers from a lack of the shock of the new that their debut God's Country delivered - they continue to dish out staggering slabs of scuzzy sludge, with Raygun Busch's observations of the world around him continuing to shock by virtue of their truth.

28. Kelly Lee Owens, Dreamstate

After the abstract mindmeld of LP.8 (to be fair, designed and marketed as her theoretical eighth album, while in reality her third), Owens returns to a more accessible and appealing bit of krautrock-influenced pop, as trance and acid house float along in a seamless ebb and flow. You are clearly in the hands of a master, and it will be interesting to see if her sound does eventually mutate to that one-off third album.

27. Elbow, Audio Vertigo

Any fears that Elbow have become too stately and elegant for their own good as they reach further into their career should be assayed by the thunderous drums and sharp synths splattered across their tenth album. Tracks like “Balu” and “Good Blood Mexico City” are some of the hardest they’ve ever recorded, though there are plenty of the gorgeous ballads which are their bread and butter and give this album the dynamic variety that had been missing on recent albums. Long may they carry on.

26. Fontaines D.C., Romance

The Dublin punk band has transitioned into a polished rock band who harkens back to Coldplay’s better days so seamlessly that it can be hard to recall their sneering beginnings; who is this gang of artists with their grebo-throwback wardrobe and hip-hop-adjacent songs? An exciting development for rock music.

25. Gouge Away, Deep Sage

As the hardcore genre continues to flourish following Turnstile’s breakthrough success earlier in the decade, the Fort Lauderdale band returns newly invigorated after a six-year break with one of the most impressive entries in the genre’s recent history, equally willing to thrown down in the pit as ascend to heaven on the roar of Nineties alt-rock. A catnip combination for people my age who hold a candle for that golden decade of music.

24. Total Blue, Total Blue

The frictionless marriage of fusion and electronic on this LA band’s debut could have come from any period in the past four decades of popular music; whether it reminds you of neon-soaked urban streets or a hazy forest scene at golden hour, the immersion is blissful and it is total.

23. Geordie Greep, The New Sound

The rise and dissolution of black midi has been meteoric and messy, but out of the ashes arises singer Geordie Greep's unhinged solo album - the same manic musical energy of his former band, with all of the wild singing and paragraph-length verses detailing the sad little men Greep met in his travels, in all their unpalatable revulsion. Four more years where this will seem positively quaint.

22. Opeth, The Last Will and Testament

Re-introduce the death growl while expanding the prog-rock elements you’ve been pushing for the past decade, while sticking a cohesive concept about the reading of a family patriarch’s last will, all while playing with a new band member and feeling the anticipation of the first new album in six years – that’s craft.

21. Fabiana Palladino, Fabiana Palladino

Perhaps not all nepo babies are bad. Case in point, the daughter of legendary session bassist Pino Palladino, whose exquisitely cool pastiche of 80’s bedroom pop, R&B, funk and soul belies the hard work of songwriting over years. Ably assisted on production by the reclusive Jai Paul, this debut is a completely realized, near-flawless statement from an exciting new artist.

20. Vince Staples, Dark Times

Vince has the unfortunate distinction of being an active rapper in the era when Kendrick is King. Yet again, a Staples album has to contend with being released the same year as a Lamar album, and Dark Times once again deserves better than to be overshadowed – this is some of Staples’ most incisive writing, taking stock of the trauma of his Long Beach upbringing and how it affects the man who survived.

19. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Wild God

Not content to be the poet of gloom after having spent the better part of the last decade grieving personal tragedies, Cave instead turns to the joy that can be found in life – utterly anachronistic to much of his previous works, but nobody can begrudge the man’s right to see the positives and be both “amazed of love” and “amazed of pain” in the Bad Seeds’ din of catharsis. Cave and his band are riding a late-career arc that shows no signs of waning.

18. Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us

There is a subset of Vampy Weeks fan who refuse to believe that the band has anything to offer in the post-Rostam era, and if Father of the Bride did very little to disabuse that line of thinking, the band’s fifth album (featuring the Chrises!) and its blown-out upgrade to the classic sound should hopefully win them back. The heavy distortion? The classic New York imagery? Ezra sighing his way through “Capricorn”? That’s the good stuff.

17. Actress, Statik

Darren Cunningham has figured it out. The British producer will push and pull sounds like taffy, whether it be something with a heavy beat or, in the case of Statik, a formless cloud of vapour, slap it together on a niche label like Smalltown Supersound, and I will jump through hoops to praise it. Then the label will officially release his Resident Advisor mix with his name written in Ukrainian, and it will be even superior to the studio album. He must be stopped.

16. Father John Misty, Mahashmashana

One of the clearest-eyed observers of our current era, Josh Tillman has been racking up fantastic albums for over a decade, but may have reached a pinnacle with his sixth LP – multi-layered and sophisticated arrangements, topped with brilliantly deadpan lyrics, all the heft of 2017’s Pure Comedy without the massive sprawl. Call it a masterpiece.

15. Loidis, One Day

Brian Leeds (of Huerco S fame) unveiled a new alias and in the process crafted what might well be one of the greatest debuts since Villalobos’ Alcachofa or Luomo’s Vocalcity - extremely heady company that One Day seeks to emulate with aplomb. Comfort music that Leeds labeled “dub mnml emo tech”, it drifts by unassumingly, but the more you replay it, the more it sinks its fangs into you.

14. Jlin, Akoma

The footwork producer has been peerless from the beginning, and for her first album in seven years, she recruits kindred spirits like Bjork and Philip Glass to help her construct these awe-inspiring monoliths of percussive beauty. Good luck trying to wrap your brain around this one.

13. The Cure, Songs of a Lost World

It occurred to me that I am not a die-hard Cure fan, but even I was greatly taken by the band’s perfect comeback story; first album in 16 years and easily their best since the one I am most familiar with (1989’s Disintegration), a monolithic mood piece that finds Robert Smith in fine voice and grappling with impending mortality. What could be a better salve as time grimly marches on? Excited to see what the follow-ups will be like.

12. Billie Eilish, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT

After turning from a fringe pop singer to a multiple Oscar- and Grammy-winning Star, Billie’s third album did what any good third album needs to do: turn the artist into a lifer. From the affectations of the debut through the somnolent balladry of the sophomore album, HMHAS achieves an ideal balance and proves that Billie has what it takes. Forget the Big Three this year (that’s Charli, Sabrina and Chappell); the future is Billie’s.

11. English Teacher, This Could Be Texas

Now that the Leeds band has completed such a self-contained arc – an album made with the fearless verve of a band who has nothing else to live for, all their grand ideas and melodies thrown into the mix, and rewarded with the prestigious Mercury Prize for their efforts – it will be interesting to see what else they might have left in the tank. An utterly fascinating work from an act who will either flame out or become life-long legends: there is no in-between.

10. Kendrick Lamar, GNX

White indie-rock fans were in absolute nirvana this year when their beloved rap champ K-Dot put on a masterclass of scorched-earth beef with the previously untouchable commercial titan Drake. Not content to slaughter the man and body the entire rap game with a mere handful of tracks, Kendrick proceeded to put the cherry on top with this rambunctious collection of tracks - extremely West Coast, concise and effortless. It seems unlikely to stand up with his classic works, but as the necessary album to rubberstamp his status as Rapper of the Year, it did just fine.

9. Skee Mask, Resort

Once again proving to be an alchemical wizard of all things electronic, Bryan Muller followed up his triple-LP Pool with a slow-burning work that started off in an ambient haze and slowly percolated into a rave-up, a masterful display of control and release, and yet another unassailable mix of beats and textures. Coupled with another entry in his Ilian Skee Series (the meaty 40-minute monster ISS10), two more collections of unmastered old tracks (C and D, natch), and a rare, lengthy Resident Advisor feature, and it was clearly Muller's year.

Nostaglitch

8. Julia Holter, Something in the Room She Moves

The avant-pop artist makes these albums feel effortless. Yet another triumph in a career rife with them, Holter used the twin experience of motherhood during the pandemic to attempt to capture the playful nature of child’s play and nursery rhymes. In a year spent watching my toddler grow, few albums resonated better or were better shared.

7. Blood Incantation, Absolute Elsewhere

The Denver death metal band put the world on notice with their instant-classic sophomore album in 2019, and twisted perceptions with a purely ambient third album in 2022. For an encore, they crafted a self-styled “soundtrack to a Herzog-style sci-fi epic about the history of/battle for human consciousness itself, via a '70s prog album played by a '90s death metal band from the future” – two 20+ minute epics of absolute mastery, a wildly veering journey that combines Morbid Angel and Pink Floyd into a naturalistic whole. The most fun you could have in 2024.

6. Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee

Former Women guitarist and shape-shifter Patrick Flegel scored the year’s most unlikely triumph with this panoramic two-hour collection of absolute lo-fi aesthetics and girl-group stylings contemplating imperfection with a hauntingly distant vocal croon, which is still only available as a single YouTube video or for paid download via a Geocities website (my Angelfire website salutes with a single tear). An avant-pop masterwork that caught lightning in a bottle, and showed how this year we fled back to the familiar sounds of old.

5. Magdalena Bay, Imaginal Disk

A level-up of epic proportions from an already formidable debut, the synthpop duo of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin have crafted one of the decade’s defining works, a maximal effort filled with mirrors and identity, and enough hooks in their gumbo of psychedelic prog-pop to land a blue whale.

4. Jessica Pratt, Here in the Pitch

The Los Angeles artist’s “hippie era” inspired fourth album plays like a miniature Pet Sounds in a jewelry box, a staggering walk through a turbulent LA city-space, a hypnagogic folk collection of nine haunted tracks where each instrument shares space with the silence around it, lush and inviting and instantly repeatable at only 27 minutes long.

3. The Last Dinner Party, Prelude to Ecstasy

Though it scans on paper as a mirage, the debut from this collective of five LGBTQ artists lives on the strength of its songs – and what a bunch of songs! A dream-pop manifesto come true, you will hear echoes of ABBA, Kate Bush, Florence, Stevie Nicks and a host of others in service of the female and queer experience, a debut album that plays more like a greatest hits. More of this, please.

2. Beth Gibbons, Lives Outgrown

Time is a cruel master; you may recall the endless 11-year wait between Portishead’s second and third albums, and blanche when you realize that it has now been 16 years since Third. Gibbons’ solo debut under her own name is likely as close as we will get to a fourth album, and she makes it worth it – this is a flawless and ravishing collection of haunting folk transmissions, an examination of what makes life worth living. The answer, apparently, is “albums like this”.

1. Charli XCX, brat

After years of being music-blog-famous, Charli stormed the world with a nauseating color scheme and became famous-famous by wondering, in the midst of the hyperpop tumult and brazen living, whether the fame itself would be worth it. It has been rare to have an album so completely dominate the landscape in a calendar year, and if you could argue that this is maybe Charli's third or fourth-best work, it misses the point that brat summer was for everyone, and she ratcheted up the tension for months with bonus tracks, additional guest stars, and the grand finale of hosting/performing on SNL. She said it right at the start: "it's so obvious I'm your number one". 2024 was brat.

Honorable Mentions

Striker, ULTRAPOWER
Edmonton’s finest speed metal dudes made us wait for six years between albums, and made it worthwhile with this rip-roaring collection of uptempo monsters to headbang and crush beers to.

Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood
Katie Crutchfield comes through with another stellar collection of throat-lumping character sketches and warm production.
MGMT, Loss of Life
The one-time Aughties superstars have settled into a comfortable groove of releasing excellent albums full of craft that are somehow consistently overlooked in their calendar years. This is another excellent album you should not sleep on.

Jack White, No Name
When was the last time White was so fired up, so full of fury and licks? Possibly the most rip-roaring time on vinyl this year.

Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter
Although it veers too close to a pedantic lesson, there are plenty of great tracks on Bey's exploration of the Black legacy within her native Texas' country & western music. Points deducted for boosting Shaboozey.

Duster, In Dreams
The San Jose dream-pop shoegaze legends are on a heck of a second wind since their reunion, and continue to reap great new tracks. See also: Ride's Interplay, their strongest album since the 90s heyday.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD"
The Montreal post-rockers will never not be relevant as long as there are atrocities committed around the world, and they will hopefully never not be around to force us to confront these issues.

Four Tet, Three
Kieran Hebden continues to pull from his Tet bag of familiar tricks and creates comfort food; his 12th album is as good as his 10th, as his 9th and 7th and so forth.

Alan Sparhawk, White Roses, My God
The former Low guitarist/singer suffered unimaginable loss with the death of his wife and musical partner Mimi Parker last year; he channels that grief into a haunting, vocal-shifted album of attempting to move on. Strange, beguiling.

Songs of the Year

Kendrick Lamar, "Euphoria" / "6:16 in LA" / "Meet the Grahams" / "Not Like Us"
The collection of diss tracks that Kendrick brought this year against pop villain Drake made for an extra-special treat, both in their rapidity and instant-classic status. Better writers than me have glossed over the effect of these tracks, but it was wild to see Drake, who I have for an eternity listed in my Worst section for his various trash efforts, taken down so spectacularly by so talented a rapper as Kendrick. "Not Like Us" was the gigantic hit, but for me it was the psychologically devastating "Meet the Grahams" that truly resonated - imagine getting that leveled at you and even thinking you had a chance at a response. RIP in peace Drake.

Burial, "Dreamfear" / "Boy Sent From Above"

New Burial tracks on the XL label, with a smattering of drum programming and haunted samples?? We are so back. Kudos also to "Phoneglow" from his split 12" with Kode9 - I'm okay with getting a steady drip of Burial loosies every year.

Chappell Roan, "Good Luck Babe!"
Chappell had a meteoric rise in 2024 after her slow-burner debut The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess kept picking up steam through the year, with increasing festival audience sizes and feral fan behavior made her a huge talking point. This one-off single, with its iconic tempo drop for a finale, will keep appetites high for whenever she drops her sophomore album.

Sabrina Carpenter, "Espresso"
The foul-mouthed, pint-sized Disney kid turned in a sixth album much better than it had any right to be, and was spearheaded by this clever, frothy summer jam that never made it to number 1 on the charts but was number 1 in all partiers' hearts.

Worst

With the fragmentation of music consumption and a wide range of blogs to read, it's fairly easy to avoid getting an earful of trash these days. Sure, turn on the radio and it's a grim death march, and wading into Instagram and their recycled TikToks of bottom-feeding regurgitation and utterly generic algo-beats is guaranteed misery. I suppose I could complain about the continued fascistic rule of Taylor Swift over literally all forms of human life in the west, from the nakedly manipulative re-re-re-releases of her utterly turgid two-hour slogfest The Tortured Poet Department to guarantee that upcomers like Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter had no chance to top the albums chart, to the conclusion of her massive two-billion-dollar-grossing Eras tour (mass hysteria and spectacle on par with Nuremberg) with her list of triumphs in 2024 reading like the consolidation of power before WWII broke out, but what good would it possibly do? We are fascinated by billionaires because those numbers are incomprehensible and because "girl power" or some such.

There were also some trash new albums from perennial contenders like Katy Perry and Justin Timberlake but those spectacular flame-outs really belong on a special schaudenfreude list.

As always, the passing of artists young and old tends to be the worst news of the year and this space offers me a chance to look back and pay tribute to them. Here is an abridged list of those we lost in 2024.

Iasos (January 6) - the Greek new age keyboardist was a stealth influence on much of today's music.
Silent Servant (John Juan Mendez) (January 18) - the revered post-punk/techno producer died of supposed fentanyl poisoning alongside his partner Simone Ling and Luis Vasquez at the age of 46.
The Soft Moon (Luis Vasquez) (January 18) - the post-punk musician died of supposed fentanyl poisoning alongside Silent Servant and Simone Ling at the age of 44.
Frank Farian (January 23) - the producer behind Boney M and Milli Vanilli died at 82.
Wayne Kramer (February 2) - the MC5 firebrand was 75.
Toby Keith (February 5) - the maligned redneck country singer was a complex character and suffered greatly from cancer before passing at 62.
Mojo Nixon (February 7) - the psychobilly legend was 66.
Damo Suzuki (February 9) - peerless singer/shaman of Can's most acclaimed era, the legend was 74.
Karl Wallinger (March 10) - the multi-instrumentalist behind The Waterboys and World Party was 66.
Rico Wade (April 12) - member of Atlanta's legendary Organized Noise collective, the producer was only 52.
Duane Eddy (April 30) - a hugely influential guitarist best known for his work with Lee Hazlewood, Eddy was 86.
Steve Albini (May 7) - one of my generation's greats, the guitarist and engineer has fingerprints all over some of the best music of the past four decades; a shocking, sudden death at 61.
Francoise Hardy (June 11) - the internationally loved ye-ye singer was 80.
James Chance (June 18) - one of no-wave's finest figures, the Contortionist was 71.
Shifty Shellshock (June 24) - Crazy Town singer and well-documented substance abuse struggler, he was only 49.
Charles Cross (August 9) - one of the key documentarians of the Seattle scene, the journalist was 67.
Rich Homie Quan (September 5) - the Atlanta rapper who made magic with Young Thug on 2014's Tha Tour mixtape, Quan didn't reach the level of fame he should have; he was only 34.
Tito Jackson (September 15) - a member of the Jackson 5, he died at 70.
Kris Kristofferson (September 28) - a multi-hyphenate legend and all-around good guy, he was 88.
Jackmaster (Jack Revill) (October 12) - top-shelf Scottish DJ who was a master at his field and attempted to clean up his image, he was only 38.
Ka (Kaseem Ryan) (October 12) - the Brooklyn firefighter and rapper who made his uncompromising music at his own pace, he was 52.
Liam Payne (October 16) - the former One Direction pop singer faced his demons and was only 31.
Paul Di'Anno (October 21) - the original Iron Maiden shrieker whose works with the band are essential, he was 66.
Quincy Jones (November 3) - superlatives fail with his staggering body of work, though he seems destined to be best remembered for producing Thriller, Jones lived a LIFE and was 91.

Thanks for sticking around and see you all in 2025!

e-mail

40. St. Vincent, All Born Screaming		Annie Clark probably read too much into the mixed reception for her excellent R&B-adjacent 2022 album Daddy's Home and brought back the rock - no complaints here! With her usual tight performances and observations, meticulously produced and sequenced, she is all professional killer.
39. Nilufer Yanya, My Method Actor		For her third straight work of genius, Yanya once again doubles her smoky alto with fragile soprano counterlines, and makes a meal of her guitar work in service of brashly cutting tracks and sinister atmosphere. One of our great treasures.
38. Shellac, To All Trains		What should have been a triumphant return for the Illinois noise-rock trio after a decade of absence was instead tinged with grief given Steve Albini's sudden passing only days before the release. Music this vital and loud shouldn't have to bear the load of a dead band member, but you cannot help but shiver as the final track promises that if he's headed to hell, at least Albini will know everyone there. Absolutely essential.
37. julie, my anti-aircraft friend		The teen shoegaze worshippers struck gold on their debut, crafting a messy, noisy masterpiece that would have fit right in between the Breeders and Ride on an alternative rock radio station in autumn 1993. The tracks never sit still, and you don't have to either.
36. Tyler, the Creator, CHROMAKOPIA		What it lacks in Call Me If You Get Lost’s straightforward rap triumphs, Tyler’s eighth album makes up for with a messy and relatable fear of adulthood, narrated by Tyler’s mom, and marked another blue-chip pop record concerned with parenthood. A meaty work to analyze as Tyler works to change his narratives.
35. Yard Act, Where's My Utopia		After a flawless post-punk debut, the Leeds band made a seamless transition to dance-punk that recalled the Slits’ transition between their first two records. James Smith continues to testify with the best of them, taking on the topics of capitalism and gentrification with introspective lyrics and his recognizable sprechgesang style as the disco burns around him.
34. Laura Marling, Patterns in Repeat		The English folk artist has long been a fascinating figure, and she puts her considerable talents to a sparse and elegant album which explores new parenthood with as many moments of silence as of razor-sharp lyrical observations. It recalls Bjork’s classic Vespertine in its use of the everyday sounds that make a home and domesticity.
33. Ka, The Thief Next to Jesus		Independent to the very end, the Brooklyn-based firefighter captain only released music when he was moved to, and never bothered with gimmicks, unless you consider his minimalist productions and absolutely diamond-hard bars flashy - which of course many of us did. For well over a decade, his albums were self-contained worlds where not a single word was out of place or superfluous, where every beat (or lack thereof) was in service of his gravely delivery. A gut punch that this has to serve as his epitaph, but so be it; another classic in a long line of them. Rest in power.
32. The Smile, Cutouts		Freed from the albatross that is Radiohead, Thom and Jonny have found a new lease on following their muse with jazz drummer Tom Skinner along for the ride. 2024's output: two separate Smile albums ten months apart in a call-back to the Kid A era. Lest anyone suffer illusions, October's Cutouts is the superior disc, with a better flow and stronger performances. However, this is splitting hairs as both discs are outstanding additions to the Radiohead universe.
31. Floating Points, Cascade		Sam Shepherd has been delivering heady electronic music for a long time, though it is possible most newcomers are only aware of his ethereal jazz odyssey with the London Symphony Orchestra and the late Pharoah Sanders, or possibly his recent ballet score. In case anyone forgot that he started off making relatively straightforward techno, he delivers a nuke with Cascade - these tracks unfurl over seven or eight minutes, whether sweaty dancefloor paeans or blissful chill-out scores. A triumphant return of the beat.
30. Wishy, Triple Seven		Shoegaze continues to be the throwback genre of choice for orthodox rock bands, and few did a better job of mimicking the sound this year than the Indianapolis band’s debut, which you can put on and convince yourself is actually a lost 1993 power-pop record with a heavy glaze of guitars. Bonus points for having male and female singers trading off songs. An endlessly catchy collection of tracks that won’t fail to put a smile on your face, and a great treat for those of us who are stuck thinking of the 90s as the peak of existence.
29. Chat Pile, Cool World		The Oklahoma noise band's sophomore album only suffers from a lack of the shock of the new that their debut God's Country delivered - they continue to dish out staggering slabs of scuzzy sludge, with Raygun Busch's observations of the world around him continuing to shock by virtue of their truth.
28. Kelly Lee Owens, Dreamstate		After the abstract mindmeld of LP.8 (to be fair, designed and marketed as her theoretical eighth album, while in reality her third), Owens returns to a more accessible and appealing bit of krautrock-influenced pop, as trance and acid house float along in a seamless ebb and flow. You are clearly in the hands of a master, and it will be interesting to see if her sound does eventually mutate to that one-off third album.
27. Elbow, Audio Vertigo		Any fears that Elbow have become too stately and elegant for their own good as they reach further into their career should be assayed by the thunderous drums and sharp synths splattered across their tenth album. Tracks like “Balu” and “Good Blood Mexico City” are some of the hardest they’ve ever recorded, though there are plenty of the gorgeous ballads which are their bread and butter and give this album the dynamic variety that had been missing on recent albums. Long may they carry on.
26. Fontaines D.C., Romance		The Dublin punk band has transitioned into a polished rock band who harkens back to Coldplay’s better days so seamlessly that it can be hard to recall their sneering beginnings; who is this gang of artists with their grebo-throwback wardrobe and hip-hop-adjacent songs? An exciting development for rock music.
25. Gouge Away, Deep Sage		As the hardcore genre continues to flourish following Turnstile’s breakthrough success earlier in the decade, the Fort Lauderdale band returns newly invigorated after a six-year break with one of the most impressive entries in the genre’s recent history, equally willing to thrown down in the pit as ascend to heaven on the roar of Nineties alt-rock. A catnip combination for people my age who hold a candle for that golden decade of music.
24. Total Blue, Total Blue		The frictionless marriage of fusion and electronic on this LA band’s debut could have come from any period in the past four decades of popular music; whether it reminds you of neon-soaked urban streets or a hazy forest scene at golden hour, the immersion is blissful and it is total.
23. Geordie Greep, The New Sound		The rise and dissolution of black midi has been meteoric and messy, but out of the ashes arises singer Geordie Greep's unhinged solo album - the same manic musical energy of his former band, with all of the wild singing and paragraph-length verses detailing the sad little men Greep met in his travels, in all their unpalatable revulsion. Four more years where this will seem positively quaint.
22. Opeth, The Last Will and Testament		Re-introduce the death growl while expanding the prog-rock elements you’ve been pushing for the past decade, while sticking a cohesive concept about the reading of a family patriarch’s last will, all while playing with a new band member and feeling the anticipation of the first new album in six years – that’s craft.
21. Fabiana Palladino, Fabiana Palladino		Perhaps not all nepo babies are bad. Case in point, the daughter of legendary session bassist Pino Palladino, whose exquisitely cool pastiche of 80’s bedroom pop, R&B, funk and soul belies the hard work of songwriting over years. Ably assisted on production by the reclusive Jai Paul, this debut is a completely realized, near-flawless statement from an exciting new artist.
20. Vince Staples, Dark Times		Vince has the unfortunate distinction of being an active rapper in the era when Kendrick is King. Yet again, a Staples album has to contend with being released the same year as a Lamar album, and Dark Times once again deserves better than to be overshadowed – this is some of Staples’ most incisive writing, taking stock of the trauma of his Long Beach upbringing and how it affects the man who survived.
19. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Wild God		Not content to be the poet of gloom after having spent the better part of the last decade grieving personal tragedies, Cave instead turns to the joy that can be found in life – utterly anachronistic to much of his previous works, but nobody can begrudge the man’s right to see the positives and be both “amazed of love” and “amazed of pain” in the Bad Seeds’ din of catharsis. Cave and his band are riding a late-career arc that shows no signs of waning.
18. Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us		There is a subset of Vampy Weeks fan who refuse to believe that the band has anything to offer in the post-Rostam era, and if Father of the Bride did very little to disabuse that line of thinking, the band’s fifth album (featuring the Chrises!) and its blown-out upgrade to the classic sound should hopefully win them back. The heavy distortion? The classic New York imagery? Ezra sighing his way through “Capricorn”? That’s the good stuff.
17. Actress, Statik		Darren Cunningham has figured it out. The British producer will push and pull sounds like taffy, whether it be something with a heavy beat or, in the case of Statik, a formless cloud of vapour, slap it together on a niche label like Smalltown Supersound, and I will jump through hoops to praise it. Then the label will officially release his Resident Advisor mix with his name written in Ukrainian, and it will be even superior to the studio album. He must be stopped.
16. Father John Misty, Mahashmashana		One of the clearest-eyed observers of our current era, Josh Tillman has been racking up fantastic albums for over a decade, but may have reached a pinnacle with his sixth LP – multi-layered and sophisticated arrangements, topped with brilliantly deadpan lyrics, all the heft of 2017’s Pure Comedy without the massive sprawl. Call it a masterpiece.
15. Loidis, One Day		Brian Leeds (of Huerco S fame) unveiled a new alias and in the process crafted what might well be one of the greatest debuts since Villalobos’ Alcachofa or Luomo’s Vocalcity - extremely heady company that One Day seeks to emulate with aplomb. Comfort music that Leeds labeled “dub mnml emo tech”, it drifts by unassumingly, but the more you replay it, the more it sinks its fangs into you.
14. Jlin, Akoma		The footwork producer has been peerless from the beginning, and for her first album in seven years, she recruits kindred spirits like Bjork and Philip Glass to help her construct these awe-inspiring monoliths of percussive beauty. Good luck trying to wrap your brain around this one.
13. The Cure, Songs of a Lost World		It occurred to me that I am not a die-hard Cure fan, but even I was greatly taken by the band’s perfect comeback story; first album in 16 years and easily their best since the one I am most familiar with (1989’s Disintegration), a monolithic mood piece that finds Robert Smith in fine voice and grappling with impending mortality. What could be a better salve as time grimly marches on? Excited to see what the follow-ups will be like.
12. Billie Eilish, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT		After turning from a fringe pop singer to a multiple Oscar- and Grammy-winning Star, Billie’s third album did what any good third album needs to do: turn the artist into a lifer. From the affectations of the debut through the somnolent balladry of the sophomore album, HMHAS achieves an ideal balance and proves that Billie has what it takes. Forget the Big Three this year (that’s Charli, Sabrina and Chappell); the future is Billie’s.
11. English Teacher, This Could Be Texas		Now that the Leeds band has completed such a self-contained arc – an album made with the fearless verve of a band who has nothing else to live for, all their grand ideas and melodies thrown into the mix, and rewarded with the prestigious Mercury Prize for their efforts – it will be interesting to see what else they might have left in the tank. An utterly fascinating work from an act who will either flame out or become life-long legends: there is no in-between.
10. Kendrick Lamar, GNX		White indie-rock fans were in absolute nirvana this year when their beloved rap champ K-Dot put on a masterclass of scorched-earth beef with the previously untouchable commercial titan Drake. Not content to slaughter the man and body the entire rap game with a mere handful of tracks, Kendrick proceeded to put the cherry on top with this rambunctious collection of tracks - extremely West Coast, concise and effortless. It seems unlikely to stand up with his classic works, but as the necessary album to rubberstamp his status as Rapper of the Year, it did just fine.
9. Skee Mask, Resort		Once again proving to be an alchemical wizard of all things electronic, Bryan Muller followed up his triple-LP Pool with a slow-burning work that started off in an ambient haze and slowly percolated into a rave-up, a masterful display of control and release, and yet another unassailable mix of beats and textures. Coupled with another entry in his Ilian Skee Series (the meaty 40-minute monster ISS10), two more collections of unmastered old tracks (C and D, natch), and a rare, lengthy Resident Advisor feature, and it was clearly Muller's year. Nostaglitch
8. Julia Holter, Something in the Room She Moves		The avant-pop artist makes these albums feel effortless. Yet another triumph in a career rife with them, Holter used the twin experience of motherhood during the pandemic to attempt to capture the playful nature of child’s play and nursery rhymes. In a year spent watching my toddler grow, few albums resonated better or were better shared.
7. Blood Incantation, Absolute Elsewhere		The Denver death metal band put the world on notice with their instant-classic sophomore album in 2019, and twisted perceptions with a purely ambient third album in 2022. For an encore, they crafted a self-styled “soundtrack to a Herzog-style sci-fi epic about the history of/battle for human consciousness itself, via a '70s prog album played by a '90s death metal band from the future” – two 20+ minute epics of absolute mastery, a wildly veering journey that combines Morbid Angel and Pink Floyd into a naturalistic whole. The most fun you could have in 2024.
6. Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee		Former Women guitarist and shape-shifter Patrick Flegel scored the year’s most unlikely triumph with this panoramic two-hour collection of absolute lo-fi aesthetics and girl-group stylings contemplating imperfection with a hauntingly distant vocal croon, which is still only available as a single YouTube video or for paid download via a Geocities website (my Angelfire website salutes with a single tear). An avant-pop masterwork that caught lightning in a bottle, and showed how this year we fled back to the familiar sounds of old.
5. Magdalena Bay, Imaginal Disk		A level-up of epic proportions from an already formidable debut, the synthpop duo of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin have crafted one of the decade’s defining works, a maximal effort filled with mirrors and identity, and enough hooks in their gumbo of psychedelic prog-pop to land a blue whale.
4. Jessica Pratt, Here in the Pitch		The Los Angeles artist’s “hippie era” inspired fourth album plays like a miniature Pet Sounds in a jewelry box, a staggering walk through a turbulent LA city-space, a hypnagogic folk collection of nine haunted tracks where each instrument shares space with the silence around it, lush and inviting and instantly repeatable at only 27 minutes long.
3. The Last Dinner Party, Prelude to Ecstasy		Though it scans on paper as a mirage, the debut from this collective of five LGBTQ artists lives on the strength of its songs – and what a bunch of songs! A dream-pop manifesto come true, you will hear echoes of ABBA, Kate Bush, Florence, Stevie Nicks and a host of others in service of the female and queer experience, a debut album that plays more like a greatest hits. More of this, please.
2. Beth Gibbons, Lives Outgrown		Time is a cruel master; you may recall the endless 11-year wait between Portishead’s second and third albums, and blanche when you realize that it has now been 16 years since Third. Gibbons’ solo debut under her own name is likely as close as we will get to a fourth album, and she makes it worth it – this is a flawless and ravishing collection of haunting folk transmissions, an examination of what makes life worth living. The answer, apparently, is “albums like this”.
1. Charli XCX, brat		After years of being music-blog-famous, Charli stormed the world with a nauseating color scheme and became famous-famous by wondering, in the midst of the hyperpop tumult and brazen living, whether the fame itself would be worth it. It has been rare to have an album so completely dominate the landscape in a calendar year, and if you could argue that this is maybe Charli's third or fourth-best work, it misses the point that brat summer was for everyone, and she ratcheted up the tension for months with bonus tracks, additional guest stars, and the grand finale of hosting/performing on SNL. She said it right at the start: "it's so obvious I'm your number one". 2024 was brat.