The Music of 2024
For those reading this substack and following me on the various social media, you’re probably doing that for things related to football rather than this. So if you’ll permit me this one indulgence on providing a long listicle (ugh) on the music of 2024, then we’ll get going.
We all take in music differently. Some stick to playlists, some still cling to the radio and some do the very nerdy things I do - log every album you listen to on a spreadsheet and rate everything.
I appreciate that option three there may reveal more about how my mind works than it offers a sensible way for cataloguing musical intake, but it helps me keep track of things, gives me a target to aim for and incentivises me to find new things to listen to. Much like how licking envelopes can be fun if you make a game of it, cataloguing music can broaden your horizons if you make a habit of it given that it encourages me (at least) to go find stuff to add.
This article will contain three lists - the top three releases of 2023 that I didn’t get round to until this year and then the top ten songs and albums of 2024 and maybe some honourable mentions if this doesn’t balloon in length to something utterly unreasonable. Which it probably will.
It’s worth noting some excellent resources before we get into this. The subreddit Indieheads puts together a weekly list of (almost) every new album released with genre as well which gives at least 4-5 releases a week to listen to, many of which are a) entirely new artists for me or b) relases from artists I like but needed reminding about. The website beehype’s annual best list compiled nation by nation is basically my Q1 entirely sorted - their new releases playlist is also well worth keeping track of (even if I’ve not been as diligent this year as normal). On other reliable websites, the Canada-centric Exclaim along with Stereogum and, of course, Bandcamp Daily cover a good breadth of music and reliably get me on things I’d missed. Hence why the first section is things I’ve missed…
Top three albums of 2023 that I only got round to in 2024
3 - Sleep Leaps (碎梦飞跃) - “You don’t want to be stuck here”
This and the Run!Novel album were very good Asian albums I didn’t catch in 2023 on release. “Standardized Youth” is an absolute banger as is much of the album. If you’re sleeping on Chinese music, you’re sleeping on one of the best scenes around given it’s one of the few scenes where arguably the most popular indie band is also the highest quality one (side note - it’s obligatory at this point to recommend listening to Omnipotent Youth Society, who may only have released 2 albums in their near three decades together, but both are stone cold classics).
2 - Alexandra Streliski “Neo-Romance”
There’s always at least one really good classical album that I inevitably catch onto late. Previously, this was Kivie Kahn-Lipman, this time it’s Streliski. As the name suggests, it’s a new interpretation of the romantic era of composers and, if you like a bit of Chopin, you’ll like a bit of this.
1 - To Athena “The Movie”
Wrestling fans will no doubt know the character Timeless Toni Storm, a peacocking Sunset Boulevard of a 1950s delusional starlet harking back to former glories in tremendously entertaining fashion. This is the musical equivalent of that - a swooning depiction of the world as a movie accompanied by an orchestra in which Tiffany Limacher (the name behind the pseudonym) is both orchestra conductor and circus rinigmaster.
It might not sound promising, I know, but the project is pulled off very well toeing the line between playfulness and cynicism with aplomb, backing it all up with some incredibly lush and deep arrangements. As an album, it identifies Limacher as a huge talent and surely places her at the forefront of a Swiss scene that always seems to produce at least one talent worthy of a breakout each year - if she maintains this standard, she surely will have that breakout soon.
The Top Ten Songs of 2024
Should I confess that I don’t rate Parannoul as highly as a lot of people? Many see them as the best thing going and I’m more just that they’re good. “Backwards”, however, is them at their epic best.
9 - Yndling feat Tuvaband “Regrets”
Yndling is generally a very slight, ambient artist. Tuvaband are dark. Put the two together and you get a wonderfully moody and atmospheric few minutes.
A side project for members of Electrelane and Wire, this one is just a brilliantly floaty, psyche singalong with some excellent guitar work. Love.
7 - Froukje “Nu Ik Niet Meer Over Je Schrijf”
Froukje has had a heck of a year and will surely pick up all the gongs at the 3FM awards. The amount of exceptional music coming out of the Netherlands (and WIES’ comeback “Drijfzand” could easily have made this list) is ridiculous and Froukje has been the main character of 2024. You could easily pick a few songs from her album but I’ve gone for this one, perhaps the most spoken-word of all her songs.
Friko will probably be a very big deal and “Get Numb To It” will be that song from their first album that will be still on setlists in 15 years time as a fan favourite. It’s a big, goofy, smiley song about being really depressed and trying to shield yourself from dread. It’s a song that demands you listen to the album and it’s in a list that will praise that album highly in a bit…
5 - UTO “Napkin”
When you think of how many times Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy” gets featured on best song lists, it’s a surprise fewer artists mine it for inspiration but UTO have mined it, refined it and delivered an absolute banger in “Napkin”. Two albums in and UTO have certainly established themselves at the forefront of French music - “Napkin” is their best work so far.
If there’s a genre I listen to most, it’s probably shoegaze so consider this the shoegaze song of the year - a driving, pulsating three minutes that’s what Sleater-Kinney should be doing now rather than disappointing everyone. The streaming era has eroded the amount of alternative bands we have just doing solid 3 minute long accessible songs with hooks and a good chorus and this does that to a T..
This song could have been an offcut from David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters…” which is quite the compliment in this household. By quite some way the best opening song on any album this year, the album as a whole has only one direction to go from there (much like Bowie’s 80’s). The riff itself is one of Graham Coxon’s best, evoking exactly the era he’s after and, while he’s never going to be the best vocalist, works well with what he’s got. On top of it, it has good use of a saxophone and if I can tolerate sax in indie songs, then you know you’ve pulled it off well.
2 - Chappell Roan “Good Luck Babe”
Yes, it borrows so liberally from Last Christmas at the start that merely listening to it risks Whamageddon at this time of year, but if you’re going to wear an influence so clearly, at least be glad it’s a good one (and, as an aside, Chappell does duet with Sabrina Carpenter to cover Wham in the latter’s Xmas Netflix special). In a year dominated by a trio of amazing female artists, Roan, unlike Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter, didn’t have an album out, just this one single.
But what a single. While Chappell Roan’s use of LGBTQ+ motifs is liberating for an entire community, the vocals soar, the middle eight is incredible and the rallentando close works a treat. It’s a three and a half minute lapping of her competition that established Roan as a superstar, as if The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess hadn’t been evidence enough.
1 - Camera Obscura “Sugar Almond”
I’ll admit that the Camera Obscura return album didn’t really catch me for most of it. After the 11 year wait, it was a little Camera Obscura by numbers which, while still better than most bands, by their incredibly high standards was not quite at the level.
Until this. You had to know that, at some point, the band were going to deal with the death of Carey but few songs have ever dealt with the subject of losing someone so head on and in such a raw manner. For a band with a LOT of highlights, this is the best three and a bit minutes of their career. So many songs are about moving on, this is a song about how we remember and commemorate after moving on. Sometimes the most beautiful songs are the simplest but which carry the most weight - this is simple and carries an elephant’s worth of grief on its back as ably as you will ever hear.
The Top Ten Albums of 2024 (and in video form)
Honourable mentions…
Froukje’s debut album and live album both hit the mark. I’m not really sure what her ceiling is because, y’know, she’s doing it in Dutch and I imagine some record suit will be sat asking how she can do stuff to appeal to more than about 18 million speaking that language. The music is there already. Arab Strap’s revival continued with another fine effort, in spite of iffy artwork. Hope of the States’ return has gone well so far and “Long Waits in A+E” probably wasn’t the best of the new tracks on their live return - they’ll do something to watch in 2025 assuming a LP is in the works. Elias Ronnenfelt’s solo bow reconfirmed that that Iceage acoustic album was really good and that he was why. Finally, spirit of the beehive’s “you’ll have to lose something” was a worthy followup to “Entertainment! Death!”. 2024 has had an awfully large cohort of very good albums that any will have missed out on.
10 - Crack Cloud - “Red Mile”
It’s a Clash album. One of the good ones. In a way, that’s all you need to know about this one which is an evolution of the group from standard post-punk to something altogether more unique. It reaches peak Sandinista on “Blue Kite” and takes this Clash-y path via a bit of Iceage and, as such, it’s a guarantee that I’ll like the album because that’s two bands there aren’t enough copies of. If nothing else, Crack Cloud have got everyone’s intrigue ahead of whatever they do next.
9 - UTO - “When All You Want to do is be the Fire part of Fire”
In the songs list also, “Napkin” is hardly the only great track on this album that confirms that UTO should be considered at the forefront of this generation of French music as successors to the likes of Phoenix and Air. This is more dancefloor focused synthpop but they get the hooks right without fail on the likes of “Unshape” and “Zombie” but they keep you on edge by keeping an unsettling tone that speaks to the difficult experience the band stated they had making the album. Much of the album, like “Napkin” mines very different and less well trodden ground for its inspirations in early 90s dance, making for a rougher and more authentic experience than many of their peers who seek smoothness.
8 - The Fauns - “How Lost”
If 2024 has been headlined by bands coming back together after years away The Fauns have had perhaps the most effective reformation of the lot in a creative sense. Little considered in their first incarnation, this hard lean into electronic shoegaze is a stunning capturing of the dawn/dusk mood on record that, like the very best of its genre, lives on the cusp of darkness and light. Opener “Mixtape Days” sets that mood from the off. The band state it’s an album designed to get fans dancing and it’s very much an album for just before or just after the dancefloor - for the get-ups and comedowns - and, with any luck, we won’t have to wait another 11 years to see what the band have in store next as their second go at the business could hardly have had a more promising opening chapter.
7 - The Cure - “Songs of a Lost World”
It’s not perfect, but the only issue with it is a minor quibble in that it possibly goes a little overboard on the amount of long intros, but of the major artists to release something this year, The Cure’s return is both perhaps the most welcome and the most worthy. More luscious than “Deconstruction” but visiting the same creative seam that was so fruitful in their earlier career, “Songs of a Lost World” lands just outside my top five but near the top of the remainder and that’s about right. 2024 has been a very solid year with far more in the way of very good albums than 2023 so to be near the top of the cohort just behind the properly exceptional is still a heavy endorsement of this. It’s The Cure, guys. You shouldn’t need my recommendation to sell it to you.
6 - Origami Angel - “Feeling Not Found”
Likely quite high in anyone’s list of “well, I didn’t expect this in this list”, then I’m happy to confound expectations and confirm that I’m in the Gami Gang. And you should be too.
It’s pop-punk/emo, which will never be the most critically acclaimed of genres, but “Feeling Not Found” has the chemistry of the music down to a fine art. If anything, you could compare it to Japandroids’ “Celebration Rock” - it’s an album built from and for live performances with a duo at the peak of their synchronicity and, crucially, their technical skill (and there are few better drummers around than Pat Doherty).
As a result, everything is fine tuned and refined to a point where all the right things are done at the right time while they’re confident enough to reach that little bit further than before and talk directly to their audience that bit more than before. “Secondgradefoofight” starts a closing four tracks that deliver in abundance in an album that should mean they advance up the scene to their inevitable festival headliner slots which will no doubt be closed by the closing and title track, a song built from the ground up to close sets from here till they hang it up.
5 - DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ - “Hex”/“Sorcery”
I’m not choosing and I’m not limiting myself to having just one so it’s a double entry for DJSTTDJ, whose “Destiny” was my 2023 AOTY and “Bewitched” was number 2 in my 2022 AOTY.
You could claim I’m a fan. DJ Sabrina is a cult artist not in the sense that that means her fanbase is of a size that is just sort of bubbling under true popularity but in the sense that her fanbase will go on about her like they’re about to knock on your door and ask if you’ve welcomed DJ Sabrina into your life. No-one vanity searches social media or is permanently online to the extent of DJ Sabrina and, at times, it’s a wonder how on earth she finds the time to release the sheer volume of music she does. Because, with this pair, that’s about 8 hours in the last 18 months which possibly raises the question how she actually has time to eat or sleep.
“Hex” is the darker of the pair while the December release “Sorcery” is more the projects that didn’t fit thematically into Hex due to being too cheery and, if anything, “Sorcery” serves perhaps as the first time DJSTTDJ has produced a starter kit to introduce the world to her on, what along with multiple versions of past releases, classes as her 20th album in the last 7 years. The quality doesn’t dip in either of this year’s pair and both manage to be worthy entries into DJSTTDJ’s ridiculous pantheon so take your pick because I didn’t want to.
4 - Magdalena Bay - “Imaginal Disk”
First off, given the album cover and how reminiscent it is of the Jojo’s manga, has anyone ever asked what stand disk is being pulled from her head? That’s kind of an important piece of plot for me.
To the music, it’s rare to see what is ostensibly an indie dance-pop album push itself to 53 minutes in the streaming era and even rarer to see not a minute of that wasted. It’s airy with a bit of darkness at its heart and seems to always know what it is. It’s thematically and sonically consistent, making the most of the album format to do what a band should: put together a suite of songs that work as a whole and follow a thread from beginning to end. “Killing Time” and “That’s My Floor” are just outright bops and hardly alone in that on this career high.
3 - Whispering Sons - “The Great Calm”
Post-punk is in a weird place as a genre. In the UK, it’s been taken over by people who think that speaking over angular rhythms is all it is, led this year by the likes of High Vis, Honeyglaze and others who are, bluntly, mediocrities.
Whispering Sons, instead, want to let you know they’ve listened to some Interpol albums and are intent on beating the originators of post-punk’s millennial revival at their own game, a trick they pull off with ease. Fenne Kuppens low voice stands in stark contrast to the airier or pointedly aggressive voices of her peers with a Nick Cave like malevolence while, on this third album, the music itself has gotten more expansive and confident. “Oceanic” is the sort of confidently LGBTQ+ ballad that would make even Chappell Roan think it leant into it a bit heavily while the opener “Standstill” stands as one of the best opening tracks of the year - one where you can feel the bruises from the pit at a concert blooming as you listen. In a way, they are the Belgian equivalent of The Visual in terms of vibe and, most importantly, quality. “The Great Calm”, quite simply, is the elevation of Whispering Sons from a band to watch to the group at the forefront of their entire genre.
2 - Friko - “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here”
Just after the release of this album, I hopped onto an AMA with Friko and asked if they’d used Wolf Parade’s “Apologies for the Queen Mary” as inspiration for this to which they replied “Ooh, I’d not heard of that” which is a delightful way to make me feel old af.
In spite of reminding me of my own mortality, Friko’s full-length debut (their 2022 EP was an excellent release also) has that knack of timelessness with a sound that seems transplanted from the peak of the mid-noughties alternative scene when the likes of Arcade Fire, etc could come through and go big worldwide based solely on internet word of mouth and matches that sort of album on sheer quality. It’s the sort of album which feels like it should have been illegally downloaded, stuck onto a CD-R and have the title written on it in pen. In doing so, it reaches out to Friko’s own Gen Z and millennials needing a bit of a nostalgia kick and pulls that off with aplomb.
On top of that, Friko come with a rare combo of savviness and likeability that can’t help but endear them to people - this album is already on its second special extended version just 10 months into life yet each little aded track has maintained the high bar of quality from the original, which is quite the feat. I doubt there’s an album I’ve listened to more this year and, on the basis of one EP and one album, Friko are merely the step of sticking the landing when they make their sophomore album from catapulting themselves into being a really very big deal.
1 - fantasy of a broken heart - “Feats of Engineering”
I make no apologies for liking silly things and this album is undoubtedly that. If this is something you don’t like, I get it because it doesn’t achieve its greatness in a straightforward way. I describe this band as “What if LCD Soundsystem were really into musicals” which is quite a strange synopsis for a band but covers neatly the sort of sonic neighbourhood that it covers - angular, dancefloor melodies while also including the word “bippity-bops” in the lyrics.
It really, really shouldn’t work. But it really, really does. Each song jumps between subgenres and time signatures, the lyrics are almost constantly winking at you and the backing is very much more is more. The band themselves are a side-project from members of various bands in Brooklyn and that perhaps explains the wide range of influences and why the album itself is less like a menu item at a restaurant and instead one of the secret menu items of things that are better than what gets offered to the masses who don’t know the code.
Each song feels distinct in the path it takes be it the bubblegum of “Loss”, the lo-fi of “Ur Heart Stops” or the almost suite that make “Tapdance 1” and “Tapdance 2” the big combo in the middle. It’s all so disparate yet it combines to be greater than the sum of its parts. If Friko are the band I’m confident will be big, fantasy… are the one for whom I expect this will be an utterly glorious one-off because it’s such a bizarre tightrope to have walked successfully in the first place, but they pull it off with as much cool and artistic merit as Philippe Petit at the World Trade Centers.