Well, 2024 was.....something...a year that is thankfully over. A year marked by personal challenges highlighted by the passing of both my father and father-in-law. It included my wife taking over the family towing business and, of course, ended with the re-election of the worst president in history. A lot of shit to mark the last year of my first half century on the planet.
As it's always done for me, though, music finds a way to address how I'm feeling and show me that the human experience does not happen in isolation. Sharon van Etten perfectly channeled the feelings around the deaths of my father and father-in-law in the absolutely moving song Afterlife, which has the rare distinction (shared only by Fairytale of New York) of being a song that can always elicit a tear. And as the year got closer to November and it became more and more apparent that the US was going to re-elect a twice-impeached con man and convicted criminal, my music choices got angrier and angrier and reflected some of the issues (like racism, xenophobia, and misogyny) that this country doesn't seem to have any interest in solving.
All that said, this was a music year that sees a lot of familiar faces top my list. Even as I continue to wait for the follow-up album from the Wrens / Car Colors to actually be released - going on 20 years now - we got new releases from Sunset Rubdown, Beth Gibbons (of Portishead), Kim Gordon, and a couple others that you'll see in the list. We also got one last middle finger from Steve Albini before he passed away suddenly. Personally, the year was marked by finally getting to see the Rolling Stones live as Mick and Keith and company still put on a 3 hour long set, which is incredibly impressive for a bunch of octogenarians.
Great Singles from Albums that Missed the List
I'm paring this list back down to a top 10 from the top 20 that I did last year. But that means that there's a lot of great songs from albums that I didn't quite love as much as the rest. Tuareg rock god, Mdou Moctar, gets the distinction of the first album that just missed the cut but put out a bunch of angry hard rock directed at the long history of political mismanagement in Africa.
The next two just missing the cut are The Last Dinner Party and IDLES. The Last Dinner Party was on my bands to watch list from last year and they put out a great album. I also saw them live and they put on a great show though I felt mildly creepy / out of place being a 40+ year old man in a show that was 90% 20-something women wearing vintage clothes. They definitely suffered from overexposure as there was a clear, concerted PR campaign around this album that got a little tiring. IDLES is consistently great and put out another great album this year. It just suffered from being not as great as past IDLES albums. There's a consequence of setting the bar high.
It's also worth highlighting the absolutely mental performance that Gojira put on at the Olympics that terrified white Christian conservatives across the US. Terrifying conservative Christians has got to be the mission statement of all metal bands. Mission accomplished. Knocked Loose would go on to similarly terrify Christian conservatives later in the year on a Jimmy Kimmel appearance but nothing can match Gojira's performance, which is now part of their most recent album.
Beyond those, MJ Lenderman put out a great stoner, alt-country album that includes fabulous lyrics like "Well, I got a beach home up in Buffalo and a wristwatch that's a compass and a cellphone and a wristwatch that tells me you're all alone.". The Bug Club put out an album full of 2-minute long tongue in cheek punk bangers including a song about the footwear worn by chavs everywhere. Norah Jones put out a completely under-the-radar album on Blue Note. I'm generally not a fan of pop alternative but I do admit to liking some of the mass market fare from Glass Animals and Grandaddy. And Faye Webster put out an entire album of lo-fi, slow burn tunes that got more catchy the more I listened to it.
Two Great Albums That Don't Really Fit The List
Finally, in the category of great albums, that should make some list somewhere but don't really fit the rules of this list, we have Rome by The National. It's one of the only concert albums that I think is actually worth owning. Live albums are, almost always, straight up money grabs by the record label. The recordings usually sucks, there's way too much time spent on crowd banter, etc. Rome captures the experience of a National show. This album came out shortly after I saw the National in Napa so I feel like I can vouch for it. From the crowd singing all the lyrics to Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks to Berninger letting lose on Mr. November, this is everything I want out of a live album.
And Panda Bear has been promising new music to be released next year but continued to mine 2022's Reset. This year he released an EP of covers from that album that included a collaboration with Mariachi Cutberto Perez of the song Danger. There is a slow realization up in this part of North America, that mariachi is a modern art form and I love seeing it slowly integrated into rock, hip-hop, and electronic. This version is so much better than the original.
The Top 10 Albums of 2024
10. Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch
9. The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
It will come as absolutely no surprise to you that there was a period in my life where The Cure was the only band I really cared about. The Cure exists for mopey suburban kids who are really into literature. I find it so re-assuring that Robert Smith can still be a mopey suburban kid into his 60s as he sings "This is the end of every song we sing. The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears....We toast with bitter dregs to our emptiness". Ah, yes. Uplifting it's not. But this is a real throwback that fits right alongside every Cure album I've ever loved.
8. Jack White - No Name
Back to back throwbacks here. And another album from an artist I loved back in the early 2000s. Back when standing in line for concert tickets was a thing, the White Stripes were one of those bands that I would wait in line at Rainbow Foods for hours so that I could snag a ticket that represented a large proportion of my meager grad student salary. Back then, Jack White was the king of riffs. Each song was a 2 minute thrill ride built around a single riff. Even now, you can probably pull from memory the riffs to Seven Nation Army or Fell In Love With a Girl. All of which made the last 20 years of sustained mediocrity pretty disheartening. In fairness, he has built up a great little record label in Third Man Records and dabbled in acting and a number of other projects. No Name is finally the album that brings me back to those White Stripes days. It's just stripped down riff-driven rock. That's How I'm Feeling gets all the radio plays, but the album is full of riffs the best of which is on songs like What's the Rumpus.
7. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven
2024 was a year that I finally got to see Bikini Kill live and bands like Shannon and the Clams and Amyl and the Sniffers made a lot of noise (pun intended). But, for my money, the modern Riot Grrl band to rule them all is Mannequin Pussy. Unlike those other bands, Mannequin Pussy has some range. They can scream with the best of them but they can also bring the hooks. They're particularly good at doing the Pixies thing of quiet, quiet, LOUD. Sometimes was a mild indie radio hit, but the whole album is one you listen to in the car, with the windows and volume up. Loud Bark is a particular favorite.
6. Kendrick Lamar - GNX
As the musical history of 2024 is written, spare one moment to remember Drake who thought it was a good idea to start a rap war with the greatest rapper of all time. We all knew where it was going and, sure enough, Kendrick dunked on Drake over and over and over and over again. Drake kept coming back for it and Kendrick finally dropped him with one of the most listened to songs of the year (Not Like Us) which addresses rumors of Drake's dating life with the epic diss "Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A-minor". Maybe it was all coordinated, but what amazed me was how quickly Kendrick could turn out a new diss track and just pile it all on top of poor, hapless Drake. What's even more amazing is that he came out with GNX a few months later and it contained none of those songs. Nothing. All completely new material. The man is the Paul McCartney of rap. And, just like every other Kendrick record, it's good from start to finish. Barack included Squabble Up in his annual round up of best songs but there's a lot on here including wacced out murals which reminds me a lot of the very first Kendrick jam ever.
5. Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
Way back in 2007, the Bastard Fairies made my top 10 list with Memento Mori. On that list, I noted that they had made the bold choice to only release the album on streaming services and YouTube. Of course, it was only a few years until everybody would release albums on streaming services long before any hard media was available. But, hey, at the time it seemed pretty crazy. Fast forward to 2024 and Cindy Lee (who is the drag queen alter-ego of Canadian indie rocker, Patrick Flegel) dropped an out-of-nowhere triple album that was only available as a single 2 hour long YouTube video or as a series of .WAV files on a GeoCities (!!) website. As of this writing, that is still the only way you can listen to this album. Physical media is supposed to ship in February 2025 and I assume it will be available on the streamers after that. I really thought GeoCities was one of those archived websites that only GenX people knew about (a la Homestar Runner). I feel pretty confident predicting that the music industry is not going to follow Cindy Lee's lead on this.
What makes it really wild, though, is that this album is incredible. It's something like 30 tracks and clocks in over 2 hours. It's a lot of music. If anything, it could probably do with some editing but it feels like Cindy Lee was just in a writing zone and decided to record it all. It's all jangly, fuzzy guitar rock that owes a lot to 60s girl groups. Be sure to set aside some dedicated time to fire up YouTube and listen to the whole thing.
4. Kamasi Washington - Fearless Movement
Kamasi Washington is taking jazz to places it hasn't been in 70 years. From playing arena shows this year to being name checked in Kendrick's diss track Not Like Us ("Hot key, keep a horn on me, that Kamasi"), he's gotta be the first jazz artist that non-jazz fans might actually know. And while his first two albums were sprawling double albums, Fearless Movement scales that back but takes chances in a completely different direction. This is intentionally a jazz album based in dance and electronic music. And it works. The final track, Prologue, seamlessly blends electronic rhythms, drum beats, and time signatures into what is distinctively a jazz piece. Songs like The Garden Path borrow more from R&B with a lot more focus on sung lyrics into what is still pretty distinctively a jazz dance piece. It feels like the most accessible jazz album in a long time that isn't lite jazz bullshit. I also love the Sun Ra Arkestra type ethic he's cultivating with something like 20 people on stage all in quasi-futuristic outfits.
3. Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us
Their first album without Rostam is as good as it's ever been. If you like Vampire Weekend, you're going to love this. They haven't lost any of the polyphonic rhythms that has become their staple. But what seems to have been added with Rostam's departure is a lot more fuzz, a lot more distortion. It's hard to find a clunker on here and with Prep School Gangsters, Ice Cream Piano, and Gen-X Cops you have songs that will fit right in next to the best VW songs. But, for my money, Capricorn is a top 5 VW song with the new distortion element fitting seamlessly in with the melodies you've come to expect from them.
2. Fontaines D.C. - Romance
This is really more of a 1B than a 2. And it hurt my soul a little bit to not make an Irish band number one, but that's more of a testament to how good the next album on the list is. This album easily has three of my favorite songs of the year in Favourite, In the Modern World, and Starburster. This album feels so much like the journey of another Irish band that released a number of great straightforward rock albums (called things like The Joshua Tree) and then paired up with a producer that had a very different sensibility and came out with a very different album that is still one of the best of all time (Achtung Baby). I realize comparisons to Achtung Baby are pretty heady and Romance is not quite in that category but the Fontaines have put out a couple great post-punk type albums. They've even shown up on this list previously. But, this is a very different album from them. There are still some straight-forward rock songs on here but the trippy Starburster with it's rap-like lyrics is probably my song of the year and the downbeat quasi love song In the Modern World make this a real departure and show a band that is evolving. Hopefully, their next album will be every bit as good as Zooropa.
1. Beyonce - Cowboy Carter
Beyonce closed out 2024 riding into the Houston Texans stadium like a fucking boss. And she can do that on the back of an album that isn't like any other that I can think of. There was a whole stupid shit storm about this album when it came out with people calling it Beyonce's "country album" and if it was okay for her to just insinuate herself into country music. It's not a country album. Yes, she covers Jolene although she takes it from a song pleading with Jolene to telling Jolene to step the fuck off. And the album features collaborations with Dolly and Willie Nelson and includes songs like the country influenced Texas Hold 'Em. But the album also has numerous collaborations with rappers (i.e. Shaboozey), there's a number of straight up R&B songs like Bodyguard and Tyrant, there's a song (Ya-Ya) that's a straight Nancy Sinatra take-off. Beyonce even sings the fucking aria of Caro Mio Ben in Daughter. Yet we didn't have to hear anyone from the opera community taking Beyonce to task for that. This is an album that spans 24 tracks across almost every imaginable genre. This is an album of someone who has the talent to span genres and doesn't give a single fuck what anyone thinks about it. And the reaction just goes to prove her point that the reaction to her dipping her toes in the country music world is based in racism and provincialism. That is essentially what the whole album is about.
