#020: Honeyglaze – Real Deal
Released September 20th, 2024 on Fat Possum Records
English post-post-punk is going through its “difficult second album” phase but there are apparently many more bands waiting for the come up to put out their brilliant first. Never mind that Real Deal is technically their second. It fuses the new wave of post-punk to American legends like Pinback and American Football to grab you and tune your emotions expertly.
#019: Boldy James & Conductor Williams – Across The Tracks
Released June 28th, 2024 on Near Mint Records
Boldy James is one of those guys that, on his own, is a pretty decent rapper. He’s got good flow, decent wordplay, and an ominous sense of self that puts him above most of his contemporaries. When you pair him with a next-level producer, though, he becomes something altogether more – a great, someone who’s contending for the long haul. He’s already done a joint with the Alchemist, but his work on Across The Tracks with CONDUCTOR WE HAVE A PROBLEM CONDUCTOR Williams makes a case for him being, if not in the top 3 (like everyone was so concerned with this year) then maybe the top 10 right now. Williams’ hazy, jazzy work frames James’ hard-bitten tales perfectly, making as good a boom bap record as any to have come out in the last five years.
#018: Cassandra Jenkins – My Light, My Destroyer
Released July 12th, 2024 on Dead Oceans Records
Have you ever had a long period of illness filled with odd fever dreams? That feeling upon waking up one evening with the fever broken and your mind clear for the first time in seemingly forever? That’s what My Light, My Destroyer feels like – it’s an album that feels like finding your strength again. The stories she tells, and the characters that inhabit them, are as lived-in as any in great fiction, and you sometimes get the sense that she could have been a novelist and been as successful.
#017: Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood
Released March 22nd on ANTI- Records
I’ve been putting Waxahatchee records on these lists since Cerulean Salt came out over ten years ago and in that time its been fascinating to watch Katie Crutchfeld go from early neo-alt-rocker to the queen of alt-country. Tigers Blood, even more so than 2020’s Saint Cloud, completes her journey into folky country rock. With M.J. Lenderman as backup, she spins a record of weary love, visceral loss, and hard-bitten nostalgia for your roots, the place you grew up that isn’t really there any more, except in the forms.
#016: Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us
Released April 5th, 2024 on Columbia Records
When my eldest was 3, Modern Vampires Of The City came out. “Diane Young” was her favourite song as a very small child, and the album is still one of her favourites. She is now 14. In that time, the former Columbia dorm band put out one album, Father Of The Bride, which revealed that the band were actually a bunch of Deadheads. Who knew? They still inject that into their live shows – see their Coachella set from the past summer for further information – but Only God Was Above Us is much more of a ‘return to form’ for a band whose form was very much sui generis. When Contra came out I had hipsters disparaging them to my face, but it is now 2024 and those dorks have been consigned to the wind while VW can still get us all to sit up and take notice with those quick-snap drums and Ivy League campus melodies.
#015: Mount Eerie – Night Palace
Released November 1st, 2024 on P.W. Elverum & Sun Ltd.
Phil Elverum has been through a lot over the years, and his music has shifted and adapted to suit the needs of his emotional releases at the time. The last few Mount Eerie releases – and the last Microphones record – have all taken a similar form, dealing with the fallout of the death of his wife, his sudden role as a single, grieving father, and his rebound marriage and subsequent divorce from actress Michelle Williams. Night Palace clears all of this away and functions mainly as a clearinghouse for everything Elverum has done. You can find little bits of his career embedded all through the record, right up to and including the landmark Microphones record The Glow Pt 2, released on 9/11. It’s folk, drone, and stunning moments of hard rock, all wrapped up in the man’s singular vision of the world.
#014: Xiu Xiu – 13” Frank Beltrane Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips
Released September 27th, 2024 on Polyvinyl Records
Somehow, against all odds, the absolute weirdest bunch of post-industrial goths have discovered accessibility. It’s not precisely a pop record, but it bears a lot of vibe similarities with Trent Reznor’s old concept of hate pop, last seen in full form on Pretty Hate Machine. Frank Beltrane is a lot sharper than Pretty Hate Machine, of course. It’s lumpy, disconcerting, and will stab you with its titular knife if you get too close to it. But it’s still oddly danceable, and bizarrely hummable.
#013: Amyl and the Sniffers – Cartoon Darkness
Released October 25th, 2024 on Rough Trade Records
A good Amyl and the Sniffers song should be a lot like a punch in the face that leaves you reeling. With that metric, Cartoon Darkness is wall-to-wall good Amyl songs. The difference this time is that the band is playing with their borders, adding in bits of complication that point to a group that is rapidly coming into their own powers. Amy Taylor has gone to war with the music industry and has come away bloodied but unbowed – and in a vicious temper.
#012: Mdou Moctar – Funeral For Justice
Released May 3rd, 2024 on Matador Records
Niger’s very own Jimi Hendrix, Mdou Moctar has made a name for himself even among tishoumaren acts as being the most fleet of fingered guitarist in the entire canon of the desert blues. Funeral For Justice follows up his last album, Afrique Victime, by simply being better – tighter songs, more searing guitar work, and more ripping riffs from his fiery band. His lyrics match the scorching blasts coming out of his guitar as well, confronting the neo-colonial movements of the West and their impact on his homeland.
#011: Foxing – Foxing
Released September 13th, 2024 on Grand Paradise and Miscellaneous Recordings
There are a million and one bands out there and most of them never get anywhere. Of the ones that do, most of them fly under the radar of their particular genre and are only mentioned afterward by the hardcore collectors. Very few crossover and become Name Bands, and those are usually like that from the beginning. Once in a while, though, a band will suddenly come out of left field with a shining album that puts everything they’ve done previously into a different light, and makes it clear that there’s been a generational talent buried under a pile of problems, distractions, and fractured attention spans. Foxing is one of those records – the kind that makes you sit bolt upright and exclaim “Where has this been?” Looking back, parts of it have been here all along, but it’s not until the self-titled that the band has put them all together at once.
Fantastic roundup — the picks from 20–11 mix familiar favorites with great deep cuts, and your short notes make it easy to decide what to listen to next. I’ve already queued a few albums I’d missed — can’t wait to see the rest of the list!