My yearly collection playlist always has a name, and this year was obviously “2024 Sucks OK.” Which, obviously, it did. Every year sucks in its own way, but man, was 2024 a doozy. Disappointment, the realization that stasis of post-pandemic living, awful politics, genocides, unending wars. Your idols are dead and your enemies are in power. Everything feels too Weimar for its own good.
Still, there were good parts to the year, as there always are. Great books, great movies, some stellar albums. There were a lot of great records this year, actually. I could have done 200 for this entry if that weren’t such obvious overkill. I managed to know 40 entries on the Quietus’ year-end list. Usually I only know single digits – This despite listening to an average of 1100 albums a year.
Also I managed to get six short stories published this year, which is pretty good if you ask me.
Here are the 100 albums that best exemplify this year, this moment, this lifetime.
#100: Porridge Radio – Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me
Released October 18th, 2024 on Secretly Canadian Records
Dana Margolin is the watchword for songwriting as therapy. On her band’s seventh album she writes her way through a particularly intense breakup. At times it’s as though her pen is on fire. At others there’s a touch of the surreal guiding you through a maze of emotions and longing. Like the filming of Radioactive Man, Margolin relives her trauma again and again from different angles before finally coming to the conclusion that it’s all going to be okay.
#099: julie – my anti-aircraft friend
Released September 13th, 2024 on Atlantic Records
Shoegaze is back, baby, but not all shoegaze is created equal. L.A.’s julie deal in the fuzzier, bubble-grunge end of the genre, making a salad out of slabs of overdriven guitar and mournful androgynous vocals. Like the remains of fried brown sugar, my anti-aircraft friend is all sharp edges and hard parts of tasty caramelization.
#098: Nia Archives – Silence Is Loud
Released April 12th, 2024 on Universal
At the forefront of the drum ‘n’ bass revival, Manchester’s Nia Archives fuses sleek modern British pop with itchy jungle drum programming, creating a set of tunes that are radio-ready in as many channels as possible. The guitar-driven songwriting could easily be scribbled from the Blur vs Oasis battles, while the songs themselves split the difference between Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys. All, of course, backed with those massive UK jungle riddims that tear 30 years of calendar pages away and drop you into the nearest rave.
#097: Bad Moves – Wearing Out The Refrain
Released September 13th, 2024 on Don Giovanni Records
Pure New Pornographers-esque energy that is awash in the markers of modern punk rock like Jeff Rosenstock and White Reaper as well as bouncy ancient surf pop/rock. Oh, also it rags on the odious parts of religion, the cops, the vapidity of modern media, and similar topics. It’s political pop punk that leaves aside the stinkier parts of political music, pop music, and punk rock.
#096: Horse Jumper Of Love – Disaster Trick
Released August 16th, 2024 on Run For Cover Records
The first album the Boston slowcore band has ever recorded sober, Disaster Trick picks up exactly what Codeine was putting down 34 years ago when they did Frigid Stars. That is to say, it’s a little rockier, and a little more jumped-up than their previous efforts – it sounds like the band has come to life five albums in and is ready to clear away the confused detritus of a shoegaze band growing up.
#095: Couch Slut – You Could Do It Tonight
Released April 19th 2024 on Brutal Panda Records
Squalling noise rock missives of illicit substances, illicit sex, and illicit violent art projects so vicious you can imagine the singer smashing themselves in the face with their own microphone repeatedly until the blood runs down their face. Which, bee tee dubs, is exactly what Megan Osztrosits does before taking the stage.
#094: Ducks Ltd. – Harm’s Way
Released February 9th, 2024 on Royal Mountain Records
The latest C86 heroes clock in at a cool 28 minutes and do exactly what they came to do: get wistful with the melodies and motoric with the rhythms. God, that George Best record really did a number all those years ago, didn’t it? You still have bands, every few years, trying to capture that same magic the Wedding Present did, that perfect balance of Orange Juice, the Buzzcocks, and the Smiths. As Chris Roberts once asked of Dave Gedge, “Has no one ever told you that all your songs sound the same?” As Neil Young once said, “They’re all one song.”
#093: Velvet – Romance
Released February 23rd, 2024 on Candlepin Records
Then there’s another branch of shoegaze, the one from the scene that My Bloody Valentine came out of in the late 1980s. This one involves hooking pedals into absolutely ridiculously massive walls of amplified guitar noise and drowning out nearly everything else in the song, so that the extraneous stuff – drums, vocals – is subpoenaed to the movements being wrenched out of the guitar. It’s also the one that black metal ended up hooking up with, for the record.
#092: Jane Weaver – Love In Constant Spectacle
Released April 5th, 2024 on Fire Records
Jane Weaver makes psychedelic pop rock the old fashioned way – sturdy backings and otherworldly vibes. A little bit of fey folk pop here, a run of noisy guitar skronk there. Underneath everything, consistent rhythms led by a lot of head-nodder bass lines. There are many great pop records this year, but maybe none so ethereal.
#091: Earth Tongue – Great Haunting
Released June 14th, 2024 on In The Red Records
This is heavy psych music in a nutshell – the slamming hard riffing, the headbanger drums, the soaring Ozzy-esque vocals. Like Black Sabbath, and unlike a lot of Sabbath’s rank imitators, Earth Tongue show some flair for going full-on frippy pop and not apologizing for it. The fact that they’re a duo – a kiwi duo at that – just shows how drilled-down you can get that sound and still make interesting things with it.
