The Top 50 albums of 2024, and a resolution for 2025
It’s almost a new year. While you wait, here are 50 great albums from the last one.
Hey! It’s your friend, Gannon. It’s good to be back.
It’s been more than a month since I last published any music writing.
In that time, I’ve packed up my Quad-Cities apartment, moved to Minneapolis, applied to probably a hundred jobs, assembled roughly as many pieces of IKEA furniture, flown westward for Thanksgiving and Christmas, thrown in the towel on my retirement savings and bought several large coats.
This month has been both tumultuous and affirming. Most recently, I had my faith restored outside a sold-out Wilco show at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul, where a man handed my girlfriend and I two tickets, refused a thank you, and ran off without elaboration like some sort of alt-rock Clarence Odbody.
Inside the venue, Tweedy & Co. played a setlist of B-sides and deep cuts and I stood, tipsy and joyful. My heels slipped backward against a step into the packed pit. I craned my neck to see the band. The fans around me were a show of their own.
During “At Least That’s What You Said,” I watched several people to my left mumble lyrics under their breath. Their lips were pursed into a constant, content smile.
When I sat down on the bed next to you
You started to cry
I said, maybe if I leave, you'll want me
To come back home
Or maybe all you mean is "leave me alone"
At least that's what you said
They closed their eyes. I could tell that this Wilco song, for a moment, was their God. So was the next one. And the one before it.
I knew that feeling.
On my first night in the Twin Cities, I saw Young Mister — one of my favorite songwriters — at The Green Room in Uptown Minneapolis. My back was sore from six hours in a U-Haul seat. I ugly-cried to “American Dream Come True.”
The summer sky surrenders to fall
The autumn air gives way to the cold
So on and so forth, they say
Somewhere between go and stay
There's a place pretty close to the ground
Where you can settle without settling down
‘Cause there's always tomorrow
To do everything, did you know
That yesterday was your last chance
To take it slow
And then I cried a little bit more to this bit from “Familiar Colors.”
Sometimes I can't move my body in the morning
I feel like Cameron Frye, just paralyzed in bed
Nostalgia hits me with the weight and without warning
So I scroll through the pictures and captures
Man, it's almost like I'm there
There is a feeling of rebirth that comes with this time of year. But right now, it’s even more tangible, given that I’m living in a new apartment in a new-ish city, seeking a new job and starting a new music blog. (That’s this one!)
New Year’s is my favorite holiday for a reason: New is good.
I love the feeling of setting resolutions every Eve. There’s optimism that some of them might just come true. Let’s see how last year’s fared…
The winners:
Cover a music festival
Write something longform that I’m proud of
Log more than 100 movies on Letterboxd
Write a poem
Go to Disney World with my family
Start a Substack
This is at the buzzer, but it counts!
Get published in one of my favorite music outlets
The losers:
Read all the books on my shelf
I actually accumulated MORE books
Delete Twitter
See above hyperlinks
Run five miles a week
Get a dog
Drink less coffee
Listen to more new music than last year
It’s a mixed bag, but resolutions always are. Nobody runs as much as they wanted to.
That last one is sticking with me, though.
In 2024, to tell you the truth, I had a complicated relationship with music. It was my first full year as a full-time entertainment reporter. I worked for the incredible Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, where every week, I wrote a music column called Sounds Good.
That column was one of the greatest gifts of my life so far.
Through Sounds Good, I found confidence in my voice as a writer. I found a greater sense of home in the Quad-Cities. I connected with strangers on a shared love of music and riled up a few folks who wrote angry letters to the editor. I interviewed artists like Hippo Campus, Wilderado and Clover County. I compared the Buffalo Bills to an Alvvays song, and wrote an ode to “A Long December.” I opened up about my relationship with my dad, my mom, my siblings, my girlfriend, my friends, my dog, my favorite albums, my search for a feeling of home and my losing battle with nostalgia.
It was deeply fulfilling and I wouldn’t change a thing.
But I also think I burned myself out.
As a full-time entertainment reporter and weekly music columnist, the lines between work and play got blurrier. I stopped listening to albums that challenged me. I leaned on artists that brought comfort instead. Seeing live music no longer felt like an escape from work. It was work.
So in 2024, I listened to roughly half as much new music as I have in years prior. Worse yet, I felt a distance from the music I did listen to. I wasn’t connecting with it emotionally or analytically the way I did in 2023 or 2022. It was all fodder for the next piece of writing. The joy was gone.
With this in mind, I’ve felt like a constant imposter in my field. I’ve questioned my worthiness in a full-time music writing job — a dwindling position that I wondered might be better allocated to folks more in-tune than I am.
That feeling has been pretty creatively and emotionally stifling. But so has being without work. So I think the problem lies within me and not without. And I’m not giving up on these William Miller dreams.
That’s why I’m setting a different kind of goal for 2025.
Almost every resolution from last year involved more. More music. More movies. More reading. More running. More. More. More.
But in 2025, I want to dig deeper instead of wider. By constantly putting pressure on myself to consume, consume, consume, I’ve sanitized my relationship with music. It doesn’t feel romantic anymore. Those God-like moments — like the ones I witnessed at the Wilco show or felt at Young Mister’s — have got fewer and farther between.
I plan to sort this little crisis out in 2025 by continuing to write about music, but finding a better why. I hope you’ll follow me along the way by subscribing to this newsletter/blog/Substack/column/diary/etc.
It’s free, and I promise they won’t all be this long.
For now, I’m calling it Sounds Great. After all, it’s a spiritual descendant of Sounds Good — the music column that got me here — but we’re aiming higher this time around. So if you enjoy it, share it with a friend or two.
Sounds Great is kicking off with a Best Albums of 2024 list. In a year where I found it harder than usual to connect with music, these are the 50 records that rose to the surface.
If you’d prefer to listen as you go, I’ll put a sampler playlist at the end with three songs from each of the top 50, plus three songs from 50 more albums I loved this year but didn’t write about.
50: yungatita - Shoelace & A Knot
Shoelace & A Knot is everything rock should be. It’s abrasive, rough around the edges and catchy as hell. Each song teeters between synth-rock and emo-pop (think Kicksie, Worry Club or Winona Fighter). “Descenda” does it all. There are fuzzy screams of the word “sauce” as a bass lick spins like a playground firepole. Seriously, this thing rocks. “Whiplash” and “Pack It Up” are two of my most-listened-to songs of the year for a reason.
49: Danielle Durack - Escape Artist
I’ll sing the praises of Danielle Durack forever. The folksy pop songwriter from Phoenix, now based in Nashville, was the subject of one of my first music features in 2021. I was a big fan then — shortly after Durack released the outstanding No Place — and I still am. On her latest album, Escape Artist, Durack sings with Bareilles-esque hook sensibility and her lyricism flows like water. “Dean” grapples with the loss of a loved one. “Ice Caps (Live Laugh Love)” tackles the juxtaposition of hope and fear. The ice caps are melting, but Durack is gassing up her car to get somewhere. She’s escaping. There’s promise in that.
48: Rapsody - Please Don’t Cry
Rapsody’s Please Don’t Cry is a 65-minute mosaic of self-affirmation. Across 22 tracks, the rapper studies womanhood, identity, criticism, commercialism, Black artistry and more. The production — on “Marlanna” and “Diary of A Mad Bitch,” particularly — is as impressive as the songwriting. Transitions between frustration and sentimentality feel effortless. “Asteroids” is a Best Rap Song nominee at the Grammy Awards next year. I wouldn’t complain if it wins.
47: Muted Color - take i lovely you
As an admitted shoegaze novice, I say that take i lovely you, from Chicago band Muted Color, is a perfect starting point for those looking to get into the genre. It’s punchy, dreamy and endlessly re-listenable. “acid rain” is a personal favorite, with siren lead guitars and lead vocals that drape over you like a broad paintbrush. This is my favorite shoegaze record of the year, a title held in previous years by Funeral Homes and she’s green. Minnesota’s 12th House Sun gets my unofficial silver medal.
46: Hippo Campus - Flood
It was a great year for Minnesota bands. So of course it was a great year for Hippo Campus, too. At Hinterland Music Festival in August, I talked to these 2010’s indie-pop legends about Flood. In our interview, they scoffed at the promotional notion that this is the “best Hippo Campus album yet” and instead conceded that this is just the “best Hippo Campus yet.” That maturity comes across in the music. Songwriters Jake Luppen and Nathan Stocker write with impressive clarity on this album, which sounds starkly more restrained than 2022’s jittery LP3. It’s gloomier and more contemplative, a contrast that works in the band’s favor. The singles are especially spotless. I’ll even dare to say I enjoy Flood as much as any record in their discography. Yes, including Landmark.
45: Various Artists - I Saw The TV Glow (Original Soundtrack)
It’s rare that I put soundtracks on year-end lists. But 2024’s best movie deserves a nod. “Starburned and Unkissed” might just be one of my favorite songs from Caroline Polachek. Its needle drop in the movie is pure catharsis. “Riding Around In The Dark” from Florist is the perfect walking music for a Midwestern winter day. Sadurn, Phoebe Bridgers, The Weather Station, L’Rain and others round the soundtrack out with a set of songs that turn a good film in to a great one.
44: Liquid Mike - Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot
Y2K revival is all the rage right now. Taco Bell commercials are playing “Flagpole Sitta.” Linkin Park is back. Kyle Mooney’s got a thriller about the computers coming to life. We’re probably not far from an “American Pie” reboot. But none of that sounds as good as the onslaught of early-aughts reminiscent emo bangers on Liquid Mike’s Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot. If we lived in a just world, “Mouse Trap” would be “In Too Deep” levels of big. It’s that good. These guys rip live, too.
43: This Is Lorelei - Box for Buddy, Box for Star
Many, many music writers have written about this one with more dexterity than I could ever wish for. But I’ll do my best in unscientific terms — Box For Buddy, Box For Star sort of sounds like the answer to the hypothetical question “What if 100 gecs had a Slaughter Beach, Dog-style indie-twang side project?” That’s a good question, and the album is an even better answer.
42: Susto - Live From Codfish Hollow
I’m breaking my own rules and putting a live album on a year-end list. Normally, I’d rule it out. But Live From Codfish Hollow, recorded at the greatest music venue in America, has been getting me through the winter.
For those that don’t know — Codfish Hollow is a barn in rural Iowa, a short drive from my former home of the Quad-Cities. There’s no service. A repurposed school bus drives you from the parking lot to the entryway. Barn dogs dip between your legs. The beer is cheap. No matter who takes the stage, you’re guaranteed a one-of-a-kind live music experience.
On this album, Susto makes the place sound like heaven, especially on the group’s classics like “Diamond’s Icaro,” “Hard Drugs” or “Smokin’ Outside.” They cover Oasis and Lana Del Rey, and Q-C legend Mike Steele screams the album intro. For this former Quad-Citian, it sounds like home.
41: Billie Eilish - HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
I don’t really get riled up by the popstar NASCAR races on stan Twitter. No matter how often they drift onto my feed. But for my money, Billie might be the best we’ve got. She’s such a skilled songwriter and brings something new to the table with every record. HIT ME HARD AND SOFT hits all the orchestral notes that Happier Than Ever enjoyers certainly loved, while delivering the sort of dreamlike gloom that drew me to When We All Fall Asleep. “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” is as good of a pop song as you’ll hear this year. “SKINNY” is one of 2024’s best openers, a deft reflection on fame, pressure and growing up in the spotlight.
40: Heart to Gold - Free Help
I recently saw Twin Cities emo band Heart To Gold at Fine Line in Minneapolis. I went with a friend I made online, the way all small emo shows should be attended. It was as good as I anticipated, based on my obsessive listening to Free Help the last few weeks. The A-side of this album alone is a wallop of a boxing match. “Surrounded” and “TNT” are instant classics. The hooks are anthemic. The guitar riffs are crunchy walls of catharsis. And then there’s “Pandora” hidden on the back side, a crescendo-ing rock ballad that rivals the band’s 2018 track “Smo’” as one of their best ever.
39: Tyler, The Creator - CHROMAKOPIA
Death. Taxes. Tyler, The Creator releasing cohesive, genre-bending albums that age like wine. On CHROMAKOPIA, he makes the most of his features. Breakout star Doechii puts on a clinic on “Balloons,” because of course she does. Daniel Caesar delivers two great guest appearances, too. “Sticky” is the gold standard, though. Over an absurd, brass-heavy beat you can expect to hear covered by marching bands forever, each feature (Sexyy Red, GloRilla, Lil Wayne) one-ups the last. It gives “Not Like Us” a run for its money when it comes to the year’s most addictive song.
38: LL Cool J - THE FORCE
Here’s another rap record that makes the most of crisp production and a killer guest list of features. This one just caught me a little bit more off guard. Maybe I’ve been a bit ageist about hip-hop the last few years, shying away from new albums by the greats. But I’m glad I didn’t put THE FORCE in a discard pile.
LL sounds simultaneously vintage and new on tracks like the catchy “Runnit Back” and the wordplay wizardry that is “Passion.” Saweetie and Busta Rhymes add great verses to the album. The trio of Mad Squablz, J-S.A.N.D. and Don Pablito all crush “The Vow.” But rap’s original prince is still the one who’s going to knock you out.
“True story, I'm a walkin' crematorium,” LL raps on the outro. “Helpin' rappers earn urn obituaries from historians.”
Sheesh.
37: NewDad - MADRA
After hearing MADRA, I’ve come to the conclusion that Irish indie band NewDad is one of those acts that I’ll see on festival lineups for the next several years. Each year, they’ll be put on larger stages, at later times, in front of bigger crowds, and I’ll be grateful I was in on the ground level. “Sickly Sweet” and “Where I Go” are fuzzy, dreamy, certified earworms that have to be at least triple platinum on college radio station playlists.
36: Porridge Radio - Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me
My favorite kind of albums are the ones where every song feels like it could be a finale. Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me, from British indie band is that kind of album. On it, lead songwriter Dana Margolin wrestles with identity and the way we push ourselves aside for others, for love, for work, for creativity.
“I wake up crying through loving you,” goes “God of Everything Else.” “I'll go everywhere just to get away from you.”
35: Downey Chase - Downey Chase
This year, I can’t shut up about how insane that it is that New England indie-folk band The Brazen Youth wrote their debut album, The Ever Dying Bristlecone Man, when they were teenagers. Teenagers! It’s genius. It’s one of my favorite records of all-time. It’s statistically one of my most-listened-to albums this year. I’ll probably write a whole Substack about it someday.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise that Brazen Youth vocalist Nic Lussier’s solo debut under the name Downey Chase is profound, too. A lot of the indie-folk revival music coming out right now seems to wear wanderlust as a costume. Lussier doesn’t. He writes about fields and storms and conjures images of pine trees with a self-studying eye. It’s not a mask. It’s a mirror.
Subtle lap steel accents the harmonic “Highwaymoon,” the album’s biggest stand-out. In my current state of aimlessness, one lyric feels particularly incisive.
But how do you find who you might be,
if who you might be is a lie that you own?
And that’s all that it is, and that’s all it comes from?
34: Keep For Cheap - Big Grass
Would you look at that? Another Twin Cities band!
Keep For Cheap describes their sound as prairie rock and I’m not going to argue with it. Like the fields that speckle the corners of this band’s home state, there’s a spaciousness to Big Grass. You can see the entire horizon in folksy tracks like “Yours/Mine,” which ends with a plucky, patio-worthy guitar lick.
There’s also a real sense of place. “Lakehouse” starts with some ambient river noise and references the drift of Canadian wildfire smoke that I remember hovering over Minneapolis last summer. “Ski-Doo” is a love letter to the loon, Minnesota’s “sweet state bird” that sings right back to vocalist Autumn Vagle.
This is not just any Minnesota album on a Minnesota-heavy year-end list. This might just be the most Minnesota album of 2024.
33: Sinai Vessel - I SING
First, the good news: I SING, from North Carolina’s Sinai Vessel, could fairly be called this year’s most poetic record. On my first listen, I had to stop several times per song to re-hear a line, hoping to recreate the magic of hearing it for the first time. The imagery is tangible and visceral, with a matter-of-fact delivery reminiscent of Phil Elverum or David Bazan. There’s a stream-of-consciousness story about driving on “Laughing” that’s a personal contender for 2024’s best verse.
Conscious that staying the course isn’t my first choice
I start to look away from the road a little too long
Reading the fine print on billboards —
Why do they put fine print on billboards?
I guess it’s for a passenger to read, but I’m driving alone
Where am I going? Where the fuck am I going?
Laughing to myself
Now, the bad news: Songwriter Caleb Cordes shared in October that Sinai Vessel won’t be releasing new music anymore. The news came in an announcement full of flawless, devastating prose about dreams and concession. The uncertain storytelling on “Laughing” feels a bit like a flare gun, now.
“I’ve tried for a long time to untangle making music from the sick cycle of hope,” Cordes wrote. “But I can’t.”
I hope to see Cordes release music again. But until then, I’ll have to keep on revisiting I SING. I’m better off because of it.
32: Darryl Rahn - Dusk
This is going to sound strange, but Darryl Rahn has the Ben Gibbard gene. He simultaneously sounds both boyish and as wise as a sage, a juxtaposition that makes every song hit just a tad harder on Dusk. The album features guests like Free Range and Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith, and it’s one of this year’s best lyrical records.
“Nothing Ever Happens” puts existential anxiety into the most digestible of terms. “Heaven’s A Dive Bar” imagines the afterlife exactly how I’d want to. “Still Apart” and “Company” are required listening for someone dealing with a break-up.
The one that hits me hardest, though, is “The Pharmacist,” a track about a woman who feels crushed by the responsibility and hours of life in a pharmacy.
Sometimes she envies the front desk
Selling packs of gum and chapstick and shampoo
She’s only back there for the check
Which never feels worth half the day that she’s been through
It’s one of my favorite songs of the year, because the first verse verbalizes an anxiety that’s always been tough for me to describe.
As a reporter, it’s the feeling that creeps up on the drive home from any day where I wrote a big story. I wonder… Did I misrepresent someone’s art? Did I misspell someone’s name? Did I get a fact wrong? Did I ask shallow questions in that interview? Did I misquote somebody? Did I ruin someone’s day? What was that bump in the road? Did I just hit a dog? Am I a horrible person? Surely, I am.
There are no dogs. But the spiral goes, getting more and more irrational as it circles the drain. The pharmacist gets me.
Now the day swims through her head
She replays every prescription that she filled
While her son’s asleep in bed
She’ll convince herself that she got someone killed
31: Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk
Imaginal Disk is on just about every year-end list for a reason. It’s inventive, boundary-pushing pop music with a clever concept. That kind of music should always be celebrated.
But vocalist Mica Tenenbaum makes just about every song sound singular. “Image” understandably seems to be the track that’s getting the most love. But I’ll die on a hill for “That’s My Floor,” where the warping electronic accents and sick drums build the baseboards for the glossy la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la hook. “Vampire in The Corner” is another personal favorite, if only because I can’t get that “bees do their buzz” line out of my head.
30: Angry Blackmen - The Legend of ABM
If you are just completely and utterly tired of this shit, this album from industrial rap duo Angry Blackmen — a.k.a. Brian Warren and Quentin Branch — is for you.
Come for the haymakers thrown at racism and consumerism. Stay for the film and pop culture references. There’s a song called “Stanley Kubrick.” Pitchfork catches a stray. At one point, they rhyme Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Charlie Kaufman. “Dumbledore ya dome, shooting spells at ya body, bitch,” goes one line. Crash Bandicoot gets name-dropped in a song about contemplating suicide.
“I’m on I-88 cruising listening to Prodigy,” goes Warren on “FNA.” “My tank stay on E from this fucked up economy.” Then later on the track, Branch drops to a whisper, a reprieve from a beat that seems to be slamming a percussive wrench into your forehead. This duality makes Angry Blackmen one of rap’s best duos. And it makes The Legend of ABM one of 2024’s best albums, too.
29: Jake Xerxes Fussell - When I’m Called
We’re jumping into the twangiest section of this list with North Carolina songwriter Jake Xerxes Fussell. Every song on When I’m Called works as a lullaby, warm in a Nashville Skyline kind of way. Gentle strums and muted horns color the periphery. It sounds something like a winter day where the sun is still hanging overhead.
On “Leaving Here, Don’t Know Where I’m Going,” a wanderer’s hymn, Fussell stretches just five phrases into what feels like five years of being nomadic. “Gone To Hilo,” which features vocalist Robin Holcomb, feels like a thematic sequel. It’s yet another song about the call of leaving and the burden of who gets left behind. Much of the album is about the elusive feeling of place. There are nods to many locations — Glasgow, Salt Lake City, Alabama, Rio, Georgia. When I’m Called is an album of traveling songs for someone weary from the ride, laying down in a hotel bed, ready to hit the road again in the morning.
28: Adeem the Artist - Anniversary
It’s been a year since I saw country’s most charismatic crooner Adeem the Artist perform at Davenport’s Raccoon Motel. I thought I couldn’t love their music any more than I did then. But this year’s Anniversary somehow intensified my fandom. It’s got everything I’ve come to expect from an Adeem LP.
“Rotations” looks at death and finality with kind eyes. “Nightmare” digs at the bigotry baked into religion, managing to do it with both humor and empathy.
“I promise not to tread on you, if you don’t tread on me,” they sing. It’s one of those lines you wish you could just shout from a rooftop overlooking the culture war.
“Wounded Astronaut” is my go-to scrupulosity song this year. It weighs hindsight guilt about relationships gone by, a feeling that eats at me all the time.
I was insensitive and hyper sensitive
A duality not lost on me
I thought that love was just these feelings
With no regard for what a lover needs
Then, later, a conclusion:
Were that I could go back
Into the past with a letter
Perhaps I could do better in that timeline
27: Rosali - Bite Down
Speaking of artists I saw shred the Raccoon Motel stage, Rosali’s Bite Down was one of this year’s first albums to truly knock me off my feet. The guitar tones here from top to bottom are one-of-a-kind, especially on the front end of “Hills on Fire” and the back end of “Slow Pain.” The lyrical ambiguity works in this album’s favor, too. It shapes meaning with each listen. But it’s always tender.
26: Johnny Blue Skies - Passage du Desir
Each track on Passage du Desir, Sturgill Simpson’s debut under the moniker Johnny Blue Skies, contains about an album’s worth of thematic material.
I would be willing to spend at least a dozen songs exploring the story behind “Jupiter’s Faerie,” an outlaw country ballad with astrological curiosity. In it, our friend Mr. Blue Skies — not to be confused with the ELO song, please — remembers an old partner from years ago. He ponders what they might be up to nowadays, only to learn they are gone now. The survivor’s guilt is crushing.
I'm sorry I wasn't there, I wish I'd known
I would've tried to give you love it'd been so long since I'd shown
But then had I, maybe you'd be here today
Suffering and crushing from sadness and its weight
The Moondance-esque, crushingly self-immolating outro “One For The Road” is a Song Of The Year candidate in my eyes. It would be, even if it was only five minutes long and cut off after Simpson uttered the last lyric. But it’s not. It gets even better. It turns out that one he’s giving us for the road is the year’s best guitar solo, a nearly four-minute singer that moved me as much as any riff this side of MJ Lenderman’s “Heartbreak Blues.”
HALFTIME BREAK: Honorable Mentions
I’m indecisive, so here are a few more albums that I didn’t get a chance to write about:
Horse Jumper of Love - Disaster Trick
Carpool - My Life in Subtitles
Wild Pink - Dulling The Horns
Bedbug - pack your bags the sun is growing
Carly Cosgrove - The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty
Little Kid - A Million Easy Payments
sundots - Honeyspot
Joe Stamm - Memoirs
Barely Civil - I’d Say I’m Not Fine
Runnner - starsdust
JPEGMAFIA - I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU
Soft Idiot - All the Same Dark
Conor Lynch - Slow Country
acloudyskye - There Must Be Something Here
Now, onto the top 25…
25: oso oso - life till bones
There might not be a band in the world more consistent than oso oso. Every few years, the Long Island emo rockers drop a new one-of-a-kind LP, and it feels as natural as the changing of the seasons. The season that comes to mind is almost always summer, because there’s just something about singer Jade Lilitri’s voice, coupled with those coastal strums, that makes a heart warmer.
“all of my love,” with its infectious hook, handclaps and lead guitar melody, is as good of a single as the band has ever put out. So is “that’s what time does,” one of this year’s great break-up songs. But even though this record sounds beachy, the “island ain't much like it used to be,” as Lilitri puts it on “skippy.”
There’s a ticking clock to every song. An impending doom and anxiety about time. A feeling innate to anyone who has ever sat and thought too long about midnight.
“Life is a gun, now I know what you mean,” Lilitri goes on “seesaw,” an acoustic track and my personal favorite. “If we can't get off the ride, are we really free?”
24: Cottonwood Firing Squad - growing old & dying in your sleep
It’s remarkable how effortless Cottonwood Firing Squad makes it look. The California-based bedroom folk songwriter is prolific, yet always profound. They’ve released five full-length albums in the last three years and several EPs, too.
Every CFS release has been exactly what I needed, with fuzzy atmospherics that sound like the warm glow of a street lamp and guitar licks that are as grand as they are subtle. But growing old & dying in your sleep might just be my favorite. It’s certainly the most melancholy. It’s the kind of album that hits like a pill and a pillow at 3 a.m. It’s headphone music for when you’re taking a walk and putting off sleeping because sleeping means maybe not waking up.
“I don't do much these days, I just think a lot,” goes the title track.
The album-opening “living in the aftermath of tragedy” and the delicate “soft & pretty” are my two personal favorites. The spritely “a lifetime of nothing” begs for the sun to come up. And thankfully, it will. It always does.
Don't want to talk about the good old days
And how the wall clock on the floor's my only down time now
23: Tapir! - The Pilgrim, Their God, And The King of My Decrepit Mountain
I vividly remember jotting one note down when I first heard this three-part Tapir! record: “Harry Nilsson with a Bandcamp?”
That’s a sort of reductive explanation, but it gets The Point across.
Seriously, this visionary alt-folk masterpiece has all the fantastical storytelling of Nilsson’s The Point with all the indie leanings of a lo-fi folk singer. It’s somewhere between Big Thief and Black Country, New Road, with mythical folktales and scenic imagery deft enough to take you to another land without even closing your eyes. It’s especially imaginative on the grandiose “Gymnopedie” and “Mountain Song,” two of my favorite songs this year.
22: 1999 WRITE THE FUTURE - hella (˃̣̣̥╭╮˂̣̣̥) ✧ ♡ ‧º·˚
The first half of this year was full of compilation rap records. Some weren’t great — Lyrical Lemonade — and some had highs and lows — Pigeons & Planes — but only one was perfect. That’s hella (˃̣̣̥╭╮˂̣̣̥) ✧ ♡ ‧º·˚., the genre-bending indie-hop mixtape from 1999 WRITE THE FUTURE.
This ensemble was put together by 88rising, a label that boasts artists like Joji and Rich Brian. Those two appear on here, and so do big-name guests like Ghostface Killah, Smino, Rick Ross, Souls of Mischief, Westside Gunn and Offset. The list of genres is as extensive as the list of contributors.
The California-hot second track “SPIKY BOiz” has a Smino verse that sounds a little Anderson .Paak-ish. Joey Alexander takes one of the several jazz fusion interludes. On the back half, Eyedress shreds a shoegaze-skater-stoner anthem called “rUN tHE FaDE,” with a whole verse about Garfield and a music video that features Tim Robinson. Rook Monroe writes not one, but two songs about the PlayStation 2, with one of them sounding like it could be on Channel Orange. YOON MIRAE gives a hard-as-hell, Korean-English bilingual, Sade-referencing verse on “VOoDOo BOogie.”
There’s an emoticon and a song for everyone on hella (˃̣̣̥╭╮˂̣̣̥) ✧ ♡ ‧º·˚.
21: Stay Inside - Ferried Away
On my last day in the Quad-Cities, I stopped by the apartment of a fellow reporter who has become a great friend and mentor of mine. He told me to stay in touch. I said I would. I asked that he do the same. Then, more seriously, more sternly, he reiterated it — “I mean it.”
Last week, I visited some old friends from high school for the first time in a while. We sat on a trampoline, the same one where as teenagers we once risked concussions trying to test the buoyancy of an exercise ball. These friends used to know everything about me. I knew everything about them. When we sat down to catch up last week, I had to ask almost all of them what they’re up to nowadays.
Oh. I get it. I mean it.
This is my long-winded way of saying that I’ve been thinking a lot about people this year. How easy it is to lose them, how hard it is to get them back, how little I’ve done to stop that tailspin. Ferried Away, the latest album from New York punk rockers Stay Inside, puts that feeling into words. It paints people as scars, painful reminders of where we’ve been — and who we’ve been — before.
“An Invitation” (like “Jupiter’s Faerie” from Johnny Blue Skies a few blurbs above) reckons with losing someone you’ve already lost:
Are we ever gonna speak again?
I used to think I wouldn’t have to ask
But now I'll meet you at a casket
Hope the flowers give us something to say
While we’re reckoning how this one got away
“A Town To Give Up In” takes on nostalgia:
There’s a slope to my shoulders now
I swear we only float in the shallow end
“A Backyard” puts its simplest:
Your daughter, your neighbors
I wish they knew my name
I’ve spent so much of 2024 missing people that I’m probably missing people.
Ferried Away is the soundtrack to that paradox. It just feels better.
20: Pedro the Lion - Santa Cruz
It shouldn’t shock anyone that a David Bazan record has some of my favorite songwriting of 2024. But it certainly shocked me the specificity with which the virtuoso behind Pedro the Lion pierced me with Santa Cruz.
“So many places where you don’t belong,” goes album closer “Only Yesterday,” a song about the malice and miracle of memory. “Can’t fight this feeling like you’re almost home.
“It won’t be long.”
The album is the threequel of place-named, autobiographical records Bazan’s put out under the Pedro the Lion project the last few years. It follows the incredible Phoenix and Havasu. It’s a high bar, but Santa Cruz might be my favorite of the three.
Bazan’s storytelling is rich as ever, but the range of instrumental color sets this one apart. The selfless “It’ll All Work Out” and the bouncy “Spend Time” are defined by charged synth tones. “Modesto” has quiet verses and cacophonous hooks, with the guitars buzzing like a Dinosaur Jr. track. Lyrically, that one is about those God-like music moments. Bazan recalls getting a mixtape from a co-worker at a guitar store.
What I heard in my walkman headphones
Pacing by the speakers and PAs
Was a beautiful hilarious tragic mess
That sent tears streaming down my face
I hope he knows his music has that same effect.
19: Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood
Waxahatchee — easily one of favorite live performers I’ve seen this year — manages to bring something new with every album. Her lo-fi 2012 American Weekend remains an all-timer in my books, and the 2020 country opus Saint Cloud is, too.
Tigers Blood picks up where the latter left off and goes even further. Relationship worries decorate the edges of This Year’s Best Country Song “Right Back To It,” which features harmonies from the great MJ Lenderman. Toxicity dominates the restrained “365,” which ends with the album’s best guitar lick.
As I’m writing this, I’m realizing just how many of my favorite songs this year are about the passing of time and the departure that comes with change. I’m starting to feel like a broken record and a cliche. My apologies. But, I have to admit, this catchy “3 Sisters” chorus is my favorite moment on the album:
It plays on my mind
How the time passing
Covers you like a friend
18: Hurray for The Riff Raff - The Past Is Still Alive
Now, we move from one Americana maestro with a punk rock spirit to another.
I heard The Past Is Still Alive, from Hurray for The Riff Raff, for the first time on a drive through rural Wisconsin. Middle America rolled by my window. I saw beautiful dairy farm fields and ads for cheap gasoline and patriotic bumper stickers and the sweet smile of my love in the passenger seat. This record felt fitting over all of it.
On The Past, songwriter Alynda Segarra puts bits and pieces of their life story into every song. These anecdotes are painted into beiges and blues by lap steel, acoustic guitars and harmonies from S.G. Goodman and Conor Oberst. Every story is honest and brazen. Segarra is throwing shit. They’re hiding from the cops in Nebraska. They’re sleeping on a tour bus.
But again: it’s the albums and songs about time that hit me hardest this year. Here goes “Hourglass,” my favorite of the bunch:
Then the moment's over
And suddenly a boulder is just sand
In an hourglass
17: The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick - The Iliad and The Odyssey and The Goalie’s Anxiety at The Penalty Kick
Every song on The Iliad and The Odyssey and The Goalie’s Anxiety at The Penalty Kick feels as expansive as the title itself. There are whole galaxies in the crevices of a couch, or the crannies of a calendar.
While this record loves to reference the clock — there are nods to months, weeks, days, and the hyper-specific birthday on “April 25” — there’s a real timelessness to The Iliad. The name is a nod to Homer’s literary epic. The cover art is inspired by a J.M.W. Turner oil painting from 1829. The outro, “Claire de Lune,” is a cover of a classical Debussy piece.
There’s also a real tranquility to it. The whispers and simple acoustics of “Midwestern Home” are cozy. The sweet string accompaniment on the build of “System of One” sounds straight from a serene seaside. I have a hunch that this is one of those albums that’ll change shape for the better with each listen in years to come.
16: Macseal - Permanent Repeat
Earlier this year, New York emo band Macseal gave BrooklynVegan a list of 10 things that influenced their summery 2024 LP Permanent Repeat. The list explains a lot about why I love this record. On there: Slow Pulp, Goo Goo Dolls, Alvvays, early 2000’s music nostalgia via tracks by Rob Thomas and Jimmy Eat World and — most crucially, for me — the bass line on the bridge of The Fray’s certified banger “Over My Head (Cable Car).”
Anyone who has ever been with me to a karaoke bar knows that “Over My Head” is my go-to song. But I’ve also been known to sing “Iris,” “3AM” or “The Middle.” And if they were on the playlist, I’d be picking songs from Permanent Repeat, too.
The title track, perhaps, where the magnetic “It felt just like my favorite song on permanent repeat” chorus becomes sort of meta every time I put the song on repeat. Or the sandcastled “Beach Vacation,” which sounds as spritely as you’d think despite the fact it concedes a trip to the beach cannot, in fact, fix you.
If you're not happy with nothing
Surely won't be happy with a beach vacation
Especially on your own
The mostly acoustic “A + B” and “Dinner for Two” give the tracklist some counter-weight, and make the 32-minute runtime feel like half that. The guitar breakdown on single “Golden Harbor” is somewhat reminiscent of the Oso Oso masterpiece “gb/ol h/nf.” In fact, there’s a homely, wait-a-minute-I’ve-heard-this-before quality to the entire album. Maybe I’ve sung it before, too.
15: Fend - Disc
I told you there’d be more Minnesota on this list and I wasn’t lying. Minneapolis indie rock act Fend has my favorite record from the state in 2024.
Their 13-song Disc finds meaning in small things: the extra hour of Daylight Savings Time sleep (“1:59 AM”), being high at a show (“Wet Garden”), buying beer at the grocery store (“Angel One Million”).
“Ghost Ship” has my favorite verse on the album:
Between the hours of working and not
I find myself frozen
For sure I'm sure this tendency will pass
This habit of not telling time
Valentines, another February passing by me
Passing me by
Frontperson Josie Villano has such an emotive voice that any single word they utter could sound like a full sentence — especially the “by” at the tail end of that lyric above. Backing vocalist Kate Malanaphy, also of Keep for Cheap, adds a real density with their harmonies, too.
The guitar riffs are varyingly shortcake sweet and sledgehammer sturdy. Yet somehow, the band somehow sounds even better on-stage. Their album release show at 7th St. Entry was my first local gig after moving to Minneapolis. I could see them headlining next door at First Avenue eventually. Jump on the bandwagon now.
14: Riley! - Keep Your Cool
If we’re measuring purely on the quantity of catchy emo singalongs — an IMPORTANT metric in my eyes — Keep Your Cool could be Album of The Year. This absolute heater from Texas emo band Riley! earns the group’s stylistic exclamation point and maybe a few more.
Opening track “777” throws you to the wolves with a “hell yeah” worthy guitar riff and a shoutable chorus: “When I think of YOUUUUUUUUUU.”
It only gets better as the album progresses, as the outraged “Keep Your Cool, Man” and “Kill Yr Boss” let out similar levels of catharsis. The kickdrum-driven “Ego Peek Mid” was one of my favorite songs I’ve seen live all year, and the dynamic closing ballad “Talk It Out” saps up all the remaining tears.
13: Ok Cowgirl - Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut
There’s a refreshing bluntness to New York indie band Ok Cowgirl’s LP Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut. Take “Larry David,” for example. It’s this year’s catchiest indie-rock track, and it gets right to the point.
“Everything is fucked!” exclaims lead singer Leah Lavigne, as guitars explode behind her, as if they’re packed into a suitcase and about to break the zipper. Eventually, they do, ripping the teeth apart and giving way to more exclamations:
“I am not a fad!”
“New York doesn’t care!”
“I am zoning out!”
The album isn’t always combusting, though. In fact, it’s the emotional range that makes it one of this year’s best. Just two songs before the Curb-stomping “Larry David,” there’s the delicate, slow-burning rock ballad “Our Love,” where Lavigne mourns a relationship gone by. She drops the album title in the first verse.
Maybe it was need
More than even wanting me
Too much responsibility
Too much taken, too much owed
For my 20-something bones
Lavigne eventually comes to the most hopeful of conclusions, a breath of fresh air for anyone who has ever missed anyone:
Screw the tyranny of time
We shared something so divine
Days and years could never really measure
Our love
This epiphany is backed instrumentally by a burst of cymbals and killer guitar work. It’s immediately followed on the album by the lovely, selfless “Mars Cheese Castle.” Later standouts include “Abbey” and the existential outro “Nighttime Thinking.”
Ok Cowgirl gets the award for This Year’s Best Newcomer To My Ears.
12: Bloomsday - Heart of The Artichoke
Bloomsday songwriter Iris James Garrison writes songs with oracle-like omnipresence. They point out the simplest of truths with the grandest of orchestrations. They turn lush, vintage folk songs into spacious psalms, like they’re expanding the eye of a needle to fit the eye of a storm.
“Dollar Slice” especially feels like a gift from the heavens. Garrison recalls a tender moment with a loved one, where they explain a dream that cuts through the noise of the city bus, the internet feedback loops and the pressure to do something, with a sticky hook that might as well be scripture:
You said, "You won't believe this,
I saw God buying a dollar slice"
He said, 'Won't you try to let go and live your life
Instead of wasting it?'"
More upbeat tracks like “Object Permanence” and the horn-incorporating “Bumper Sticker” give The Heart of The Artichoke equilibrium. “Carefully” is another favorite of mine, where Garrison’s words of advice read like those of a trusted parent or mentor. The guitar strokes on this track are soft as fur, and so are Garrison’s vocals. They offer the sweetest of reminders, gently nudging you toward the kind of life you want to live.
Oh, see how you've grown
In your window
On your bedside
There is a home
11: Foxing - Foxing
I speak in hyperbole often. But I really mean this when I say it: The one-two punch that opens Foxing’s fifth album might just be the greatest two-song opening I’ve ever heard. Forward my best regards to Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.
Track one: “Secret History,” a sonic bisection between a weepy, glitchy opening verse by vocalist Conor Murphy and a supernova second half.
“They took all your dreams, didn’t they?” Murphy consoles early on, mourning an idea dried in the sun. His voice gets worn and wispy, sort of like a peak Matt Bellamy (of Muse) chorus. You can hear years and years and years of angst and artistry underneath.
“Make your mother proud, you’ve got to,” Murphy reminds himself.
Finally, the anger boils to the surface. Every instrument detonates.
“Sold! The dream! For arms! And legs! To work! To eat! To sleep! Repeat!”
Track two: “Hell 99,” a sort of origin story that references Limp Bizkit’s New Year’s Eve performance from 1998 and brings the nu-metal instrumentation to match. It’s explosive, unforgettable, and ends with a rock and roll symphony.
“Hell 99” lays the groundwork for Foxing, an album-length autobiography with descriptors like: self-titled, self-produced, self-mixed, self-released.
“Greyhound” is an 8-minute, climactic heater where Murphy proclaims that he feels like a blue whale in the Table Rock Lake (in the band’s home state of Missouri), drowning in the last ten years. He comes up for air for a bit only to land supine on a bench on “Kentucky McDonald’s,” crushed by the weighty reminders of someone, triggered by every car passing through the fast food drive-thru. The penultimate “Hall of Frozen Heads” is driven by a lead piano and Murphy’s somber vocals. A sister set of lines on the final refrain tells this record’s dichotomy perfectly:
What does it matter?
What doesn’t matter?
10: MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
Surprise, surprise. MJ Lenderman has done it again. You could argue the Asheville singer-songwriter-guitarist has the Album Of The Year for the last three years — Boat Songs, And The Wind (Live and Loose!), Manning Fireworks — and I really wouldn’t fight you on it. With fewer sports metaphors but just as much gravelly perceptiveness, this newest LP from Lenderman rivals the previous two. It’s endlessly quotable and always groovy. Lenderman’s guitar licks meander like rivers eroding paths on their way through Appalachia.
The plucky B-side “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In” is the type of song you’d throw on at the lake, gazing at a blue sky and thinking, thinking, thinking. The slacker-folk breakup anthem “She’s Leaving You” piles on. It’s one of this year’s best songs, period, and one of the best in Lenderman’s already stacked discography, too.
“It falls apart, we’ve all got work to do,” Lenderman chants on a chorus that sticks in my head a few months a week.
Manning Fireworks is full of Lenderman-isms, little bursts of American imagery that evoke a certain sort of “I’m doing the best that I can” with impressive simplicity. Over the course of the album, MJ references, with devastating wit: a half-mast McDonald’s flag, John Travolta’s bald head, a bowl of Lucky Charms, Lightning McQueen, a Kahlua shooter and a DUI scooter.
“Wristwatch” is one of the album’s best songs. It gave us the now-iconic “Himbodome” lyric but it also gave us the titular “wristwatch that tells me I’m all alone,” perhaps the ultimate MJ symbol. You can have everything and feel like you have nothing, it says. You can also have nothing and feel like a king.
9: Beyoncé - COWBOY CARTER
I recently saw Interstellar — one of my favorite movies of all-time — in IMAX for the first time. It blew me away, like it always does. But this time, it dawned upon me how eloquently it is able to do Everything. It’s a movie about ambition, parenthood, love, America, technology, climate and cool space shit, juggling them all without dropping anything. It changes meaning depending on your mindset going into it.
That’s how I feel about COWBOY CARTER. It’s a record that does Everything, without losing anything, both instrumentally and thematically. Across 27 songs, one of the world’s greatest pop stars manages to touch on motherhood, religion, racism, empowerment and more, all through the lens of Black music history. It drifts at times between orchestral electronica (“AMERICAN REQUIIEM”), true country (“16 CARRIAGES”), folk balladry (“PROTECTOR”) and hip-hop (“SPAGHETTII”). “YA YA” does it all at once, energetically interpolating nods to the Beach Boys and Nancy Sinatra with a rodeo-ready delivery.
It’s sort of a middle finger to the country radio homogenization of this century and sort of a “look at me” from one of the world’s richest musicians. At times, it feels like Bey — the most-nominated, most-winning Grammy artist in history — is looking the listener in the eyes and saying, “Run me my overdue Album Of The Year now, thanks.” But despite all that, COWBOY CARTER never really feels self-serving.
The outrageously eclectic list of features all deliver, too. This is the most I’ve enjoyed a Miley Cyrus track in a long time. Before you could hear him pouring up a double shot of whiskey in every bar, stadium and frat garage in America, Shaboozey was crushing features on both “SWEET HONEY BUCKIIN’” and “SPAGHETII.” Jean Dawson adds production on the opener, which is thematically revisited on the closing “AMEN.” Post Malone sounds great as ever on “LEVII’S JEANS.”
In cinema and in music, I admire when somebody can do Everything. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when it’s Beyoncé that pulls it off.
8: Kendrick Lamar - GNX
The greatest rapper of all-time capped off 2024 — a year he’s basically slapped a trademark on — with GNX, one more piece of Kendrick Lamar perfection. The 12-song tracklist doesn’t really miss.
“squabble up” is a tour de force that I can’t wait to see at the Super Bowl. “luther” brings together the sweet vocals of both Vandross and SZA. “tv off” feels like an equally killer B-side to the song of the year, “Not Like Us.” “wacced out murals” is Kendrick’s best opener since “Wesley’s Theory.”
It’s less thematically focused than prior Kendrick works, but just as dense. Ever since he eviscerated Drake and danced on his grave, rap’s most precise songwriter has put down the sniper. He’s holding a gatling gun, now. Get out of his way.
MUSTAAAAARRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
7: Adrianne Lenker - Bright Future
songs is one of my favorite records of the last decade, so I’ve been waiting four years for this Adrianne Lenker solo release. I knew it would devastate me. It happened faster than I expected, though. Here goes the first verse of “Real House,” a whispery piano ballad about constantly leaving and wanting to stay:
Do you remember running?
The purity of the air around
Braiding willow branches into a crown
That love is all I want
Later in the song, there are memories of seeing your parents cry, seeing your dog die, feeling like magic might just be real as you settle into a new home. There’s one anecdote that sticks with me in particular, eerily reminiscent of the apocalyptic nightmares of my youth:
When I was seven
I saw the first film that made me scared
And I thought of this whole world ending
I thought of dying unprepared
Again — this is just the first song. Bright Future manages to continue to get better from here. “Real House” is followed by the ethereal “Sadness as A Gift,” with its weeping string accompaniment and sweet embrace of the unknown.
“You could write me someday, and I think you will,” goes the chorus. “We could see the sadness as a gift and still feel too heavy to hold.”
Later standouts include the trancelike “Ruined” and the extrapolated wordplay exercise “Evol.” Lenker’s own version of “Vampire Empire” is on here, and I like it more than the Big Thief cut. “Free Treasure” is perhaps this year’s sweetest love song. Lenker paints a picture of a partner making dinner late at night. It smells so sweet, just because they’re making it. Even in those delicate moments, there are the creeping fears. The anxiety of peace is the little devil on your shoulder telling you that you shouldn’t have it this good. Or, as Lenker puts it:
There's a guy on the nape of my neck
And he hangs out there all day
He quantifies my every thought
And tells me not to play
6: A Place For Owls - how we dig in the earth
Denver rock band A Place For Owls opens how we dig in the earth with a confession.
Go on and say it
Go on and say it all
You’re not okay
You’re not okay at all
This is a band who describes themselves as “goofball prophets” in the album bio. This is a band whose discography, internet presence and real-life personality could most briefly be summed up as “bear hug from a friend you haven’t seen in 10 years.”
But yet, on their new LP, this is a band with their back against the coldest and most callous of walls. “go on” gives way to the thunderous, heart-splintering “hourglass,” a visceral song about loss. It holds nothing back. You can hear vocalist Ben Sooy’s throat shattering as he describes processing grief in a Starbucks across the street from a hospital. He settles on patience, deferring dreams to days ahead.
Still I will wait with you
For a promise we both can see
And I will build with you
A house where our kids can sleep
And a garden where we can breathe
Every song after that feels like a plea for photosynthesis. In one way or another, it works. The garden gets greener.
That’s thanks, in part, to the precise, pulsating instrumentation of Owls members Daniel Perez, Nick Webber, Ryan Day and Jesse Cowan, most of whom get writing credits at some point on the album. It’s a team effort. On “tattoo of a candle,” Perez is even mentioned by name. The affirming “find your friends and hold them close” has a song title apt to be the band’s motto. “Hope is a weapon,” a line from “tattoo of a candle,” would work, too.
Sooy’s songwriting savvy is most apparent in the middle section of the record. He processes the complex emotions of losing a step-father in “desmond hume,” an acoustic, teary-eyed smoke break of a track named after a Lost character. The sepia “broken open seed,” the album’s dynamic lead single, evokes echoes of A Black Mile-era Manchester Orchestra. The band duets with Elliott Green — who released my favorite album of 2023 — on the horn-utilizing “haunted,” a harrowing highlight. By the time you get to the closer “help me let the right ones in,” you can smell the soil under APFO’s nails.
This is a soul-searing album about growth and watering the plants. Even the plants that are covered in snow and shedding their leaves. Especially those ones. They need you right now. You need them, too.
5: Joey Valence & Brae - NO HANDS
This has been one of the toughest albums on the list to place. But I’m putting it in the Top 5. Because every week, when I open my phone to decide what to listen to, I’m drawn like a magnet to this primary color-laden cover. The one that looks like it was plucked straight off a 2008 YouTube thumbnail. More often than not, if you see me bobbing my head, I’m listening to NO HANDS.
The sophomore record from rap duo Joey Valence & Brae is an absolute fucking blast that I can’t get enough of. Equal parts referential and unrivaled, NO HANDS has the brashness of an early Beastie Boys record, the production detail of an El-P Run The Jewels beat and the reckless infectiousness of a Lil Jon hit.
The humor on this record is ridiculous. On the bouncy, catchy “WHERE U FROM,” Valence asserts that he’s a Civic, but “bitch, you a Prius.” He feels “like Michael Cera in his swag era.” On the club-ready “WHAT U NEED,” Valence’s got "the burger with the green (lechuga).” On the title track, record scratches and a brassy, jazzy breakbeat are the background for bars like this:
When I was ten, I was sippin' Shirley Temples
Present day, I'm still sippin' Shirley Temples
Danny Brown gets in on the action with “PACKAPUNCH,” asserting that he’s got “your face fucked up like a 2K scan,” perhaps the funniest bar of 2024.
“OK” and “THE BADDEST” are the biggest hits of all, placed back-to-back at the center of the brisk 31-minute runtime. The bass-knocking latter is going to be on my pregame playlist for the rest of eternity.
I got 7-Up in my cup
I got bubbles up in my tub
I'm the baddest bitch in this club
4: Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties - In Lieu of Flowers
Every year, there’s a part of me convinced that the Vikings are going to win the Super Bowl. No matter the data. No matter the quarterback. No matter the Vegas win-loss total. Even when it’s unreasonable, impossible and unrealistic, I sit down for every single game thinking and fantasizing about a world where things go right.
Maybe this year I’m right.
This irrational hope unique to sports fandom is the kind of feeling being chased in Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties’ latest release, In Lieu of Flowers. It even gets two explicit nods. First, on the firecracker second song “Roman Candles”:
Each spring the Mets will win the Pennant
And your grass is gonna grow
Ain't that the fucked up thing about hope?
Then later, on “Runnin’ Out of Excuses,” one of the most optimism-invigorating songs of 2024:
In a snow storm, I watched the Bills lose
In the playoffs, from the common room
On the first night I checked in
Another replay of a lost youth
Thought it was our year, I guess I always do
In Lieu of Flowers is the closing act in a trilogy of “AW20” albums — the semi-fictional, emo-twang side project for The Wonder Years frontman Dan Campbell. This one wraps a bow on West’s story. We find him fighting healthcare costs during the pandemic, feeling stuck in his hometown and reminiscing on the grimy green rooms of a rock tour. Every hook is catchy, with Campbell’s iconic voice driving the lyrics home. Once in a while, a new one-liner will come to my memory, like a dream from adolescence. These three, especially:
“No one told the birds the world is ending,”
“Someone stole a catalytic converter from the front yard,”
“I take a train to the city, it feels like my life's playing back in reverse.”
The album is startlingly well-paced. Opener “Smoking Rooms” is first acoustic and later cataclysmic, getting on base like any good lead-off hitter. The Runnner-produced, lap steel-laden “Whiplash,” offers an acoustic elegy for the A-side, a needed breath before the emotional triumphs of the second act. That one’s got horns. Others have stunning saxophone melodies, like “Runnin’ Out of Excuses,” which has my money for the year’s best bridge.
Here it is in full:
So when I walk past the window, I tell the shadow on the wall,
”What a cosmic fucking miracle it is to exist at all?”
But I never asked to come, so I'm leaving when I want
I still got shit to do, so I'm staying 'til it's done
From start to finish, In Lieu of Flowers is a shedding of skin and a shredding of cynicism. It’s the best Aaron West album yet.
Take us home, Sam Darnold. It’s our year.
3: Good Looks - Lived Here For A While
Great songs sing about change and the best songs change you. Lived Here For A While, the sophomore LP from Austin heartland rockers Good Looks, does both.
A little bit Springsteen, a little bit The War On Drugs, every song on this record shreds like rubber on asphalt. The staircase guitar riff on “Desert” and gritty lead melody on “Broken Body” offer balance to lead vocalist Tyler Jordan’s gentle timbre.
Each song is a freeway. It’s going somewhere, but undoubtedly leaving a lot behind, too. Jordan has a knack for finding meaning and generosity in the exhaust. There’s a sweetness to the way Good Looks simmers in its see-you-laters.
“If it’s gone, say goodbye,” goes the hook on “If It’s Gone,” an earwormy opener that soundtracked my drive out of the Quad-Cities last month. “Say goodbye, it’s nice to meet you, yes I loved you for a while.”
Change takes various shapes on Lived Here For A While. There are the shifting neighborhoods of “White Out,” a song about gentrification on the album’s back half. There are far-gone relationships like those on “Vaughn,” which Jordan mourns with a grin, too.
In a year when everything was going wrong,
I’m so glad that I met you, Vaughn
Good Looks wrestles with the double-edged sword of religion on “Day of Judgment,” a song that ends with an amen and starts with a viscerally pictorial verse about an awkward, couch-side Spam and beans dinner where someone calls Vanna White a whore. Jordan gets jabs in, but always leaves room for the benefit of the doubt.
One change seems to underpin the entire album, though, and that is grief, a feeling that boils up to the conclusive “Why Don’t You Believe Me?” The six-minute outro goes down as comfortably one of this year’s best closers. In it, Jordan apologizes for not calling his mother on her birthday, fading off the B-side with the stumbling repetition of the same line: I wanted to.
Even on the most tragic of tracks, he concedes sympathy. It’s something we should all take notes on.
Love you, I still love you
Even when you fail me
You always fail me, it’s nothing new
2: Charli xcx - BRAT
There’s a part of me that has wanted and tried to be counter-cultural about BRAT. It would be neat to be one of those hot take factories on Twitter spouting off about how it’s actually not that good or irresponsibly glorifies drugs or completely ruined by the Kamala tweet or whatever the hell we’re saying, now.
But I can’t do it. This album fucking rips.
I’ve been a mild Charli fan for a little while, enjoying her beat-shattering singles like “Vroom Vroom” and early bangers like “Break The Rules.” But there’s always been something that hasn’t quite clicked for me. BRAT does the trick.
For one, it offers at least a half dozen of this year’s best pop songs. Maybe even more, if you count her follow-up Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, a remix record that’s actually transformative and clever and not just a cash-grabby excuse for further merchandising. Ahem.
The squeaky, thumping “Club Classics” has endless replay value. The bubblegum, bass-knocking lead single “360” sets up its just-as-good sister tracks “Rewind” and “365.” The destined-to-be-a-2000s-chart-topper “Talk Talk” gets even better with Troye Sivan on the remix. The fuzzy, synth-blasting ode to adult high school bullies “Mean Girls” hides a killer piano lick on the breakdown.
“Von dutch” is my personal favorite, because “Cult classic but I still pop” is a sort of a mission statement for the Charli xcx listening experience, and so is the hair-tossing delivery of opening line “It’s okay to just admit that you’re jealous of me.”
What separates BRAT from previous Charli xcx releases, though — aside from the sheer quantity of chart-ready hooks — is the ease with which she self-analyzes. She’s not just an It Girl. She’s a person grappling with what it means to be famous and what it means to be a woman in the music industry.
“Girl, so confusing” gets to the heart of that, and even offers some resolve on the chills-worthy Lorde remix released later. “So I” processes the grief of losing friend, collaborator and hyperpop pioneer SOPHIE. Piano-driven, interlude-ish “I might say something stupid” is one of many that breaks down Charli’s steel surface.
Either way, it’s damn near impossible for an album to achieve this type of commercial and critical consensus nowadays. But BRAT is deserving of it. So instead of nitpicking that, why not be bumpin’ that?
1: Friko - Where we’ve been, Where we go from here
Sometimes you can hear an album without hearing it. Does that make sense?
For example, based on the title alone, I knew this Friko record would be an instant classic in my mental music library. After all, that simple pair of phrases sort of sums up how 2024 has felt for me. And 2023. And 2022. And the last 23 years of my life.
Equal parts nostalgia and meticulous planning for an uncertain future.
But sometimes a name is just a name, right? I knew, logically, it was possible the album wouldn’t be as good as the title would suggest. But I pressed play on the opening track, “Where we’ve been.”
Now I don't know where we go from here
I spent one year and I gave it up
A sickness that brought you to your parents
A life of only errands will make a fool out of ya
Oh, shit.
The song ends with clamoring drums, gang vocals and emotive power chords. It’s an outro-style opener, the best kind. It immediately confirmed my priors. Where we’ve been, Where we go from here lives up to its name and then some.
Chicago indie band Friko’s latest album is both forward-thinking and allusive. At times, it sounds like the type of LP that would’ve become indie canon in 2005, conjuring memories of Sufjan, Bright Eyes and Funeral by Arcade Fire. But it also pushes the envelope with several bursts of electric guitar-lit dynamite, like on the violent “Crashing Through.”
Don’t get me wrong, there are moments of quiet on this album. After all, there are not one, but two, piano lullabies: “For Ella” and “Until I’m With You Again.” The former is a parenthood ballad that paints a beautifully nostalgic picture of an optimistic young girl splashing in puddles in a yard. The latter is an Elliott Smith-ish goodbye letter, accented by holiday bells and mallets.
But the best moments on Where we’ve been are the volcanic ones.
“Chemical” is a feedback-heavy bottle of TNT with unpredictable drum patterns and a vocal breakdown that trips over itself — “Chemical, chemic-chemical-chem-chemical.” Track two, “Crimson to Chrome,” follows a similar pattern, beating a line to death until the line beats back.
We're either too old, too bold or stupid to move
I guess we're caught on the wrong side of the shoe again
The album’s ending is as good as its beginning. Penultimate “Get Numb To It!” is the de facto outro. It starts with a choppy, acoustic humalong tune, gives way to a climax of frustration, and ends with a voice memo-style callback to “Where we’ve been,” rounded out by studio chatter and laughter.
“Cardinal,” the true finale, is more of an aftershock. It’s an acoustic tribute to the worst mornings after the best nights, the saddest sunsets after the best afternoons. Vocalist Niko Kapetan’s voice is angelic, grasping onto breath before each hook. The second verse has maybe my favorite musical moment of 2024. With wedding-worthy strings behind him and an overwhelmed smile behind his voice, Kapetan sings:
I've had better days, but none quite like this
The battle in my eyes is stuck between my lips
The white winter has kicked in at my new home in Minneapolis, and sometimes I can’t quite tell if it’s morning or evening. The sun sets too early. The sun rises into my east-facing window and forces me awake too early, too. Maybe I’m just a little too late.
Where do we go from here? I’m not sure. But I’m happy you’re here. I couldn’t do it alone.