#070: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Flight B741
Released August 9th, 2024 on p(doom) Records
The Aussie psych band – who have set new meanings for the term “prolific” – only actually put out one studio album in 2024. It’s a sharp detour from their 2023 output, too. The two albums they released then were an apocalyptic heavy metal epic and a weird Kid A-esque electronic record. This year, they’ve opted for feel-good ’70s style American freewheeling rock ‘n’ roll, like the Dead if Jerry had gotten into coke instead of heroin. It’s the perfect soundtrack for the long, strange trips we’re all on.
#069: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Wild God
Released August 30th, 2024 on PIAS
After a trio of albums – Push The Sky Away, Skeleton Tree, and Ghosteen – that veered away from the raucuous rock ‘n’ roll records that had come before them, it was fun to hear Nick Cave and company stretch out and get their groove on again, relatively speaking. Wild God was never the loud lamentations of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and Abattoir Blues, but it was a definite return to the wild, chaotic joy that the best of the Bad Seeds has always encompassed. Rather than hard rock, though, it draws heavily on big gospel gestures to fill the air instead.
#068: Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown
Released May 17th, 2024 on Domino Recording Co.
It took the Portishead singer twenty years to follow up her first solo record, 2002’s Out Of Season, but the best things in life take time to create. When she did Out Of Season she was only 37, still young. Now nearly 60, Gibbons has taken the time to ruminate on the changes she’s seen on her journey through life. Lives Outgrown is a rich, timeless album about mortality, grief, and love that is bursting with musical ideas that range through the more mysterious parts of folk and jazz.
#067: Rosali – Bite Down
Released March 22nd, 2024 on Merge Records
Rosali Middleman sings like a folk queen and her backing band jams out like Crazy Horse. Literally what else are you looking for? I bet it sounds amazing in a small venue.
#066: Bill Ryder-Jones – Iechyd Da
Released January 12th, 2024 on Domino Recording Co.
Turbulent and marked with loss, Bill Ryder-Jones’ latest soars for heights previously unknown nonetheless. It’s trite to call things “Beatlesesque” these days but Iechyd Da comes across like the perfect middle ground between McCartney and Harrison, with none of Lennon’s tiresome cynicism or pretension. It delivers pain with a spoonful of sugar, just like Mary Poppins intended.
#065: Previous Industries – Service Merchandise
Released June 28th, 2024 on Merge Records
A trio composed of Open Mike Eagle, STILL RIFT, and Video Dave, Previous Industries put together an underground hip hop notable full of that age/wisdom intersection and a grimey 90s nostalgia that hits like a brick. Most of these songs are titled after stores that are long since gone, consigned to the same capitalist vampire death that left shopping malls haunted by bankruptcy and the ghosts of adolescent dreams now turned to other pursuits. That’s basically the record – aging can be heavy, but the memories you make can be bliss.
#064: Jon Hopkins – Ritual
Released August 30th, 2024 on Domino Recording Co.
This isn’t playlist music. Jon Hopkins’ seventh record (in 23 years!) is a solid beginning-to-end journey of ascension. Each piece builds on what came before, so by the time you get to the end you’ll be left looking back to the beginning and wondering who you were when the whole thing started.
#063: Party Dozen – Crime In Australia
Released September 6th, 2024 on Temporary Residence
Jazz punk? Leave it to the Australians. Crime In Australia mixes gritty 70s funk, modern jazz movements, and blizzard-cold early-80s no wave into the soundtrack for an esoteric cyberpunk police procedural (The City & the City, I’m talking about China Mieville’s The City & the City). It’s wild and loud, a jazz record so far removed from what people stereotypically think of as jazz that it’s practically on another planet entirely.
#062: Julia Holter – Something In The Room She Moves
Released March 22nd, 2024 on Domino Recording Co.
There is magic in the world, but most of us have been trained not to see it. Julia Holter pulls back the curtain of reality to show us that, in the midst of experimental art-pop, we can find enchantment and wonder without having to have it franchised, doled out, and preyed upon to make us feel something. Pure jazz-inflected romance.
#061: Midwife – No Depression In Heaven
Released September 6th, 2024 on The Flenser
People like to use hushed as an adjective for an artist’s performance, but Madeline Johnston takes it to an entirely different level. Midwife has always taken the concept of ‘quiet storm’ extremely literally, but No Depression In Heaven applies her style to an examination of grief that is bleak, but oddly affirming in its bleakness.
