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Here it is, the moment you’ve been eagerly waiting for all year: MGRM’s roundup of 2024’s essential albums. As always, our pool of contributors put their heads together to craft a unique list. This year’s touches on everything from ambient jazz to death metal, but with a strong emphasis on artists pushing earthy rock ‘n’ roll to new, modern heights. Put on your favorite flannel, crack an IPA, and dive in! — Music Editor, Ted Davis
Honorable Mentions:
Fat Dog – WOOF.
Heems & Lapgan – JLAFANDAR
Sabrina Carpenter – SHORT N’ SWEET
Fontaines D.C. – ROMANCE
Pissed Jeans – HALF DIVORCED
Lightning Bug – NO PARADISE
Sarah Jarosz – POLAROID LOVERS
Underworld – STRAWBERRY HOTEL
C Turtle – EXPENSIVE THRILLS
Wendy Eisenberg – VIEWFINDER
ARTMS – DALL
50. Kali Malone – ALL LIFE LONG
Genre: Ambient, Drone
The only way out is through. Stockholm-based composer Kali Malone contorts the organ drones of her past work into a haunting, beautiful amalgamation of liturgy and experimentation on ALL LIFE LONG. Compositions are explored in different arrangements and dispersed throughout the album, breaking apart like ice caps beneath the sun’s piercing gaze. Remarkable in its dynamism, it begets a glance into Malone’s expansive future—horns, drones, chants, and all. [Aly Eleanor]
49. Mount Kimbie – THE SUNSET VIOLENT
Genre: Indie Rock, Electronic
Dubsteppers-turned-indie-rock-sky-gazers describes Mount Kimbie at present. The band’s founders Dominic Maker and Kai Campos are perpetually in a transitory state, swerving from one genre into another as they reinvent Mount Kimbie with every release. 2017’s LOVE WHAT SURVIVES was their starkest change, moulding their metallic, collage electronic into the shape of indie rock—a turn more often occurring the other way around. On The SUNSET VIOLENT, they’ve gone full gung-ho into the band concept, enlisting live drummer Mark Pell and keyboardist Andrea Balency-Béarn as full band members. Together, they’ve reached the summit—THE SUNSET VIOLENT is Mount Kimbie’s most realized record, thawing the stoic coldness of their predecessor by engulfing its sound with warm, fuzzy guitars and introspective songwriting.
A bittersweet flavor is omnipresent. Dream pop, indie rock, and post-punk come together in this honey-dripped record where hints of Sweet Trip’s enduring indie pop (the shared vocal duties with Maker and Balency-Béarn on “Dumb Guitar” and “A Figure in the Surf”) and The Fall’s patchwork “Paintwork” (the glazy “Yukka Tree” owes its existence to that song) render this record timeless. “Shipwreck” is a triumph, an urgent lament on failing to find the one, which glistens with scything guitar riffs. King Krule, who previously graced Mount Kimbie’s captivating single “Blue Train Lines,” returns and kills it. He appears twice, first on “Boxing,” a Stereolab-esque, reverb-heavy guitar jam, then on the exceptional “Empty and Silent,” an uplifting, krautrock groove where his bellowed, stream-of-consciousness words coat the tune. The latter song displays both artists’ strengths, but more so reveals how Mount Kimbie remains oozing with ambition. [Dom Lepore]
48. Hoorsees – BIG
Genre: Indie Rock
While the Parisian indie rock quartet continues to fly under the radar of most publications in the States, Hoorsees has been one of the most fun bands to follow over the last five years. Much like their previous album, A SUPERIOR ATHLETE, BIG features nine solid tracks of flashy power pop guitar riffs (“Presidential Holiday”) and charming-as-hell lyrics (“Art School”) in league with New Zealand’s The Beths. BIG also sees bassist Zoe Gilbert step in on lead vocals for three tracks, including the immaculate indie pop track “Charming City Life.” [Jack Probst]
47. Parannoul – SKY HUNDRED
Genre: Shoegaze
Everything that Parannoul has built and experienced thus far has led to SKY HUNDRED, clawing open the clouds to expose the fraught emotions floating through the orange-hued skies. It’s packed with Parannoul’s rawest and untethered songs to date, where every expression coming through each word, melody, and instrument is packed with burnished intensity. It is a quarter-life crisis that clings onto every possible memory that matters to Parannoul, cherishing the fullest extent of the saudade now immortalized in his music. [Louis Pelingen]
46. Wildflower – GREEN WORLD
Genre: Americana
The first track on Wildflower’s GREEN WORLD takes up a quarter of its runtime. The song is called “Seabirds,” a pastoral odyssey through Americana, soft rock, and chamber jazz elements to perfectly set up the seven tracks that follow. Even before pressing play and being greeted with brushy acoustic guitars and rushes of saxophone, though, the titles alone give a hint into where it goes: “Water’s Edge,” “Summer Wind,” “Walking Weather.” It’s a placid, soothing listen, one that for 40 minutes makes the whole world feel safe, that makes the GREEN WORLD feel achievable. [Zac Djamoos]
45. Folly Group – DOWN THERE!
Genre: Post-Punk
Rock subgenres don’t often have that Taylor Swift-ian defining album of the year. If there was one, it’d clearly be DOWN THERE! Folly Group’s debut is a smattering of rock’s biggest hits: the sing-talk of Squid, the demeanor of Shame, and the danceable rhythms of MSPAINT. Yet amid that sonic familiarity, the band are tireless innovators, pushing ideas and boundaries in such a way that you can see a group of geniuses effortlessly coalescing. It’s way up there in the ways that important rock records oughta be. [Chris Coplan]
44. Mdou Moctar – FUNERAL FOR JUSTICE
Genre: Psychedelic
It has been a whirlwind 2020s for Mdou Moctar. After experiencing a true international breakthrough with 2021’s AFRIQUE VICTIME, Niger’s most ferocious guitarist sought to follow up his exposure to new audiences with his most pointedly political work yet, taking up the mantle of cultural ambassador for the Tuareg people and his Saharan homeland. Then, while the band was overseas during the album’s production cycle last summer, Niger’s elected government was overthrown by a military junta that remains in power today, preventing them from returning to their families during the unrest and lending an even greater sense of urgency to the music they had already been working on. The result is FUNERAL FOR JUSTICE, a powerful blend of assouf psych rock with much to say about Africa’s post-colonial landscape, the struggle to keep one’s culture alive, and the irrepressible desire to go home again. Moctar is not just one of our greatest modern guitar gods, but also a blazing beacon of charisma as a performer and profound thinker. His music not only flows like a river of flame, but carries with it an immense personal and spiritual import. [Jacob Martin]
43. Late Bloomer – ANOTHER ONE AGAIN
Genre: Punk, Alternative Rock
Are guitars in right now? Are they out? This kind of myopic cultural framing has, fortunately, faded away in recent years (don’t worry, it’ll be back). But for a band like Late Bloomer, whose identity is extremely local and whose interests are rooted in an unadulterated canon of dudes rock artists whose broader mainstream appeal has been slowly fading for years, this question is irrelevant; when we talk about Late Bloomer’s influences, we’re talking about, say, the Replacements and Guided By Voices—acts that have spawned thousands of weekend warrior garage rock guitar heroes, and regardless of where the zeitgeist goes in five weeks or five years, will spawn thousands more as time goes on. ANOTHER ONE AGAIN, Late Bloomer’s third album and their first in nearly six years, finds the band continuing where 2018’s WAITING left off, with a renewed emphasis on big guitar solos and hooky choruses that would have gotten them signed to a major label in the early ‘90s. The sound and production are a step above the DIY world they seemingly occupy in Charlotte, North Carolina, but also a step above where they started back on 2014’s THINGS CHANGE—that warm pedal steel on “Mother Mary” should tell you everything you need to know. Once upon a time, long after R.E.M. had struck gold, North Carolina was defined by a college rock sound honed by artists like Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, and Polvo; Late Bloomer carry that torch loudly and proudly, and deserve praise for doing so. [CJ Simonson]
42. Being Dead – EELS
Genre: Garage Rock, Rock ‘n’ Roll
If imaginative lyricism and variety are up your alley in indie rock, Being Dead’s EELS is a must-listen. The duo of best friends Falcon Bitch and Smoofy are adept at making entertaining, unpredictable records, clashing folky Americana with raucous, electric rhythms. They touch on all emotions, serious and not—of note is “Godzilla Rises,” a surreal indie surf banger combining lost love and the image of caressing Godzilla. Standout single “Goodnight” succinctly captures Being Dead’s musical chops, melding three songs into one: a lullaby begging for love, an anthemic mantra spouting the titular phrase, and a blast of discordant noise rock. The ever-changing traversal across EELS will keep the listener on their feet throughout its duration. [Dom Lepore]
41. Mabe Fratti – SENTIR QUE NO SABES
Genre: Experimental
Mabe Fratti, Mexico City cellist and experimental composer, got into Lenny Kravitz and we reap the benefits. Her latest album, SENTIR QUE NO SABES, may not sound like “Fly Away,” but it benefits from the confrontational directness of pop and Fratti’s unending curiosity. She is relentlessly prolific and collaborative, yet sounds like no one else as she unwinds textures and melodies into punchier songs than ever before. The future is a shifting vision in her hands. [Aly Eleanor]
40. Ka – THE THIEF NEXT TO JESUS
Genre: Hip Hop
On October 12 of 2024, Kaseem Ryan passed away at the age of 52, less than two months after the surprise release of his newest album. THE THIEF NEXT TO JESUS is by no means a farewell record, but it stands tall as a final statement from one of the greatest writers of a generation, a typically measured dissection of Christianity’s role in both the broader Black experience and in his own life. Set against a backdrop of largely drumless gospel samples, Ka embarks on an odyssey from slavery to the present day, taking on the church two minutes at a time armed with nothing but a razor-sharp pen and his own wrought-iron voice. The title of “your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper” is one that gets thrown around a lot, but Ka was truly one of one, and the outpouring of shock and grief from the hip hop community upon his death reflected the legacy of a man who made permanent impressions on everyone he met and everyone who took the time to listen to what he had to say. THE THIEF NEXT TO JESUS is the work of an artist who had many more ideas left in the tank, and his passing is an incalculable loss for all of us. [Jacob Martin]
39. Fievel Is Glauque – RONG WEICKNES
Genre: Lo-Fi, Jazz
There is a mystique that Fievel Is Glauque conjures through RONG WEICKNES, their most compelling record to date. The extension of their jazz-pop spontaneity now brings a playful energy to their splendid sense of rhythmic charm, causing their grooves to flick, poke, and snap at every angle. It’s an album that dwells in its tongue-in-cheek winks—filling the room with smoke and mirrors, alluring the listener to listen close to this band’s thrilling melodic flutters. [Louis Pelingen]
38. Blinder – DRUGS OF THE SUN
Genre: Shoegaze
The 11-track album hits big genre tent poles from lithe shoegaze (“Empty Fists”) to brash punk (“EHS”). But whatever the idea at hand, this Pittsburgh crew expertly manage their robust sonic feats with technical prowess, efficiency, and earnestness, a record that’s exciting without being overwhelming, unpredictable without being unrelatable. There’s a heftiness as much as a level of unassuming craftsmanship to their brash ways that imbues the LP. It’s like a great strain of sticky icky, and it’ll hook you mind, body, and soul forever. [Chris Coplan]
37. Peel Dream Magazine – ROSE MAIN READING ROOM
Genre: Dream Pop
Continuing to move past the buzzy shoegaze of the early records in their catalog, the recording project of Joseph Stevens has become surprisingly gentle, delicate, and graceful. Within the first few seconds of their newest album, Peek Dream Magazine hit the perfect mix of Sufjan Stevens (no relation) and Stereolab by way of Belle and Sebastian’s entire discography. Stevens continues evolving his project’s sound in fascinating, organic, and seemingly effortless ways. [Jack Probst]
36. Boldy James & Harry Fraud – THE BRICKTIONARY
Genre: Hip Hop
Boldy James has released three full-lengths in 2024, each a collaboration with a different producer. November’s THE BRICKTIONARY is the best of all. Harry Fraud’s production is varied and rich, filling in every open space with dazzling guitar samples, silky vocal coos, and clattering percussion. To top it all off, Boldly James sounds above it all—confident, cool, and totally unbothered, even as he delivers lines like, “All my karma came back tenfold / This shit a vicious cycle.” [Zac Djamoos]
35. Julia Holter – SOMETHING IN THE ROOM SHE MOVES
Genre: Art Pop, Ambient
On her latest album, art pop songstress Julia Holter paints intricacy into the minimal, reflecting on the love she feels for her newborn daughter and others. It’s odd to suggest that these are particularly “happy” songs; they feel more like the pleasant, still moments that make up a day in between a busy schedule. It’s an attainable happiness, and not one so plastic as is often depicted in pop music. Most Beatles songs about the sun are the worst on the record, and the namesake of “happy” in modern popular music is most associated with Minions. SOMETHING IN THE ROOM SHE MOVES is serene, exploratory, and rather evokes a peaceful happiness. Holter uses her voice as an instrument on these gently dizzying songs, with lyrics that read like the formula for contentness paper-shredded and rearranged. It’s a record that even the most miserable cynic can find some joy in—let’s hear that one about the sun again. [Jaden Amjadi]
34. Jack White – NO NAME
Genre: Rock ‘n’ Roll
Artistic comebacks are almost always written about with hyperbole, yet everything about NO NAME is hyperbolic. From the opening notes of “Old Scratch Blues” to the theatrical proselytizing of “Archbishop Harold Holmes” to the thundering “Terminal Archenemy Endling,” Jack White’s ferocity is on full display throughout, recalling the glory days of his time with the White Stripes without shamelessly rehashing the hits of old. In simple terms, it’s White’s passionate playing and vocal delivery which seems to elevate this material above the rehashed blues he’s put out for the past decade, and the result is music you can’t help but jump around to. [Connor Shelton]
33. charli xcx – BRAT
Genre: Pop
“When I go to the club, I wanna hear those club classics” sings Charli XCX on the aptly-titled “Club classics.” “Yeah, I wanna dance to me, me, me, me, me,” she continues on the bouncy track—safe to say she will, along with the rest of the world swept away by BRAT’s garish green grandeur. BRAT appeared like a supernova, rebranding Charli XCX as the face of what modern pop is capable of—audacious hooks with deep dives into insecurity. Questioning self-worth (the bubblegum bass of “Sympathy is a knife”), lamenting loss (the SOPHIE tribute “So I”), and pondering motherhood (the indietronica “I think about it all the time”) are some of BRAT’s defiant, intimate glimpses into Charli XCX’s psyche. Her introspections are decorated with a sound palette somewhere between bloghouse and PC Music’s hyperpop output, with A.G. Cook, Hudson Mohawke, Easyfun, and Gesaffelstein readying her reflections for the dancefloor. “Von dutch” alone pays homage to mid-2000s electro house. The eventual remix album enlisting a huge roster of talent (pop royalty such as Billie Eilish, Lorde, and Troye Sivan penned the most viral collaborations) only helped prolong her heartfelt party. BRAT has proven Charli XCX’s raw bravado is unmatched. She may be the party girl, but if we can take anything from her emotions, it’s that she’s human like the rest of us. [Dom Lepore]
32. Jessica Pratt – HERE IN THE PITCH
Genre: Folk
The ebbs and flows of time seem to preoccupy the mind of Jessica Pratt. HERE IN THE PITCH is an album both trapped in and totally unmoored from time, beamed in from another dimension but somehow familiar, classic, and eternal. Pratt’s newest 30-minute slab of hypnagogic folk is frighteningly easy to get lost in, yet passes by in the blink of an eye, demanding to be heard again as soon as it begins. Pulling upon sparse and ghostly visages of classic Motown and bossa nova, her songs feel as fleeting as the wind and yet linger in view for hours, her bewitching lyrics full of imperfect and pluperfect tenses: It was, it had been, it has been, it is. The ultimate coup thus lies therein: By teasing and prodding at the machinations of time, Jessica Pratt has conjured something that sounds utterly timeless. [Jacob Martin]
31. Liquid Mike – PAUL BUNYAN’S SLINGSHOT
Genre: Power Pop
Marquette, Michigan’s own Liquid Mike’s PAUL BUNYAN’S SLINGSHOT was highly anticipated in power pop circles ahead of its release early this year for good reason. Like a crisp can of Vernors on a cold night in the Upper Peninsula, the album is chock-full of fizzy pop with enough bite to clear your sinuses. Anthems full of classic pop punk fodder like small-town angst and Midwestern malaise are rendered with a distinctly Pure Michigan ennui, capturing snapshots of the distinctly weird and isolated scene they inhabit. The band’s fifth release in about as many years finds Mike and the gang rip-roaring through 13 tracks in 25 minutes, bringing to mind Joyce Manor at their blink-iest and GBV at their riffiest. In about as long as it takes to drink a couple roadies in a deer car on the way back from the party store, PAUL BUNYAN’S SLINGSHOT will be making you say “Holy wah!” like a true Yooper. Say ya to da Liquid Mike, eh? [Luke Phillips]
30. Tapir! – THE PILGRIM, THEIR GOD AND THE KING OF MY DECREPIT MOUNTAIN
Genre: Post-Punk, Folk
Tapir!’s debut album is crafted with a triptych structure, flowing from different sceneries as swells of indie folk caress the questions being pondered by its wandering protagonist. Gently composed and curiously written, Tapir! embarks upon the quest for enlightenment that gives more questions than answers at the end of the journey. The destination may show deep-seated uncertainty, yet what matters is the reflective spirit that continues to reside within, taking Tapir! to lands that’ll uncover the answers they truly seek. [Louis Pelingen]
29. Dehd – POETRY
Genre: Indie Rock
There’s poetry in leaning into your own sound: Perfecting it, rather than evolving it, growing into it, rather than moving away. A common review of Dehd’s last few records has been exactly that, for better or worse—it’s what they’ve always done, it all blends together. I can’t say I disagree, but I can certainly say as a fan that I don’t mind. Dehd remains true to their jangly garage rock sound on their latest, POETRY, with a riotous and flirtatious ethos that has made a home in mainstream indie rock. Despite the seeming chaos of their sound—with two leads often battling against each other’s extremely individual vocal expressions—there’s an underlying control on each sigh, welp, and moan that is mathematically curated to elicit the perfect emotional release. Dehd wants you to be louder, to let it go, to fall in love. POETRY aimed to chip away at our self-imposed emotional suppression. It’s true that you can visit any of their albums for a similar feel, but you can’t deny they’re getting increasingly convincing with each new release. I say the more, the better. [Devyn McHugh]
28. Punchlove – CHANNELS
Genre: Shoegaze
Everybody wants to make shoegaze, but nobody wants to make good shoegaze. Punchlove stands out from the rest of the genre by remembering the key ingredient: good songwriting. CHANNELS has its fair share of LOVELESS-style smears of noise (“Breeze,” “Elapse”), but also branches out without straying away from the genre. “Birdsong” ebbs and flows from humming verses to bludgeoning hooks, and the stripped-back closer “Corridor” reveals that, even peeling away the fuzz, Punchlove just knows how to write a great rock song. [Zac Djamoos]
27. Friko – WHERE WE’VE BEEN, WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
Genre: Indie Rock
Not to peel back the curtain too terribly much, but when we compile this list we send around a ballot to contributors and one of the questions is about the Best New Artist of the Year. Spoiler alert: Nothing was going to slow down ‘ol Chappell Roan this year. But it wasn’t the least bit shocking to see Friko’s name get thrown into that mix by a few writers. Both musically and culturally, WHERE WE’VE BEEN, WHERE WE GO FROM HERE is something of a slow burn. While Friko are firmly rooted in a hungry, slapdash rock tradition that is wholly American (the band hail from Chicago), the album features the operatic opulence and sweeping orchestral flourishes that have defined UK post-punk for the last half-decade, through acts like Black Country, New Road and Squid; it has massive pop melodies and fried, wigged-out choruses—sometimes in the same song (see highlight: “Get Numb To It!”)—musical refrains are re-referenced both directly and indirectly, and the vocal performances are grippingly theatrical. And even though it came out in February, the band’s breakthrough moment is as much yesterday as it is today. This is an album that is enriching, enthralling, and familiar in equal measure, and the fact that it is continuing to organically cut through the cultural noise to find an audience is a rare win for indie music in 2024. [CJ Simonson]
26. Geordie Greep – THE NEW SOUND
Genre: Theatrical Rock
For his solo debut, Geordie Greep went real weird with it. THE NEW SOUND plays like Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” on acid. Greep’s lyrics weave intricate character driven narratives into incredibly dense and erratic songs, delivering his stories in a voice that is instantly identifiable; he has a flair for the theatrical, with layers of horns, strings, and additional percussion make the songwriting, which is already dense and intricate, sound even bigger. [Jake Mazon]
25. Kit Sebastian – NEW INTERNATIONALE
Genre: Psychedelic Folk
In an age where music is made accessible by the mere swipe of a finger (and all manner of genres have been brought out from under the sun), there’s very little art which qualifies as weird. While far from the strangest thing on the planet, NEW INTERNATIONALE certainly scratches that quirky itch which so many desire. It’s a melting pot of styles, ranging from psychedelic rock (the title track) to traditional Turkish music (“Göç Me”) to straight-up soul (“The Kiss”), all of which create a truly delicious soup that’s one of a kind thanks to the immaculate musicianship that K Martin and Merve Erdem bring to the table. [Connor Shelton]
24. Good Looks – LIVED HERE FOR A WHILE
Genre: Countrygaze
The new album from Austin group Good Looks feels like catching up with an old high school buddy after you’ve been apart for two decades. It manages to seem familiar but has so many detailed stories you’ve somehow missed out on as your lives started to grow apart. It’s a soundtrack for road trips, getting lost, and remembering the stale taste of late-night coffee at the diner you used to hang around in your hometown. Let LIVE HERE FOR A WHILE be the warm hug that keeps you feeling connected to the faraway friends you hold dear. [Jack Probst]
23. Kendrick Lamar – GNX
Genre: Hip Hop
After the heated generational rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, you’d be forgiven for thinking of GNX—the album Lamar surprise-released a week before Thanksgiving—as a mere victory lap, a way to keep K.Dot in the conversation ahead of his Super Bowl Halftime Show performance. Instead, I consider GNX the strongest set of Kendrick tracks since DAMN., which is probably the closest sonic and spiritual antecedent in his discography. Through and through, this is a Kendrick Lamar record, with West Coast anthems and street-level bangers surrounding more introspective cuts. MR. MORALE & THE BIG STEPPERS—Lamar’s 2022 album released after a couple years of pandemic era inactivity—was a gnarled effort where Kendrick diaristically exorcised personal demons and insecurities in an often confrontational way. It was a difficult album that I didn’t really want to revisit again after hearing it the first time. GNX is similarly guilty of egregious navel-gazing, although this time Kendrick is surveying the landscape from the top of the mountain, exasperated at what little he finds. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. [Luke Phillips]
22. Father John Misty – MAHASHMASHANA
Genre: Pop Rock
As he returns to the website formerly known as Twitter, Josh Tillman returns to his natural ambitious tendency for cartwheeling lyrics and scorned wisdom, rendered vividly amidst funk struts and suite-like ballads. The cynicism of PURE COMEDY is put through a distortion pedal, refined by his recently resplendent escapades into ‘70s songcraft, and sits to introspect. Father John Misty’s “self-erasure” album is rich and overflowing with personality and wit, inverting the trope of soul-baring, acid-burned singer-songwriter. [Aly Eleanor]
21. Chat Pile – COOL WORLD
Genre: Heavy
On COOL WORLD, Oklahoma metal band Chat Pile follow up their debut with a considerably more direct style of songwriting. This is the band’s most fest-ready material, but there’s no compromise on the sonic and tonal intensity that made GOD’S COUNTRY catch like a burning oil refinery—it’s something like if Sleep were to cover Slipknot. The comparatively approachable song structure doesn’t make vocalist Raygun Busch’s rotting rollercoaster ride through the underbelly of the rustbelt any less harrowing, nor the riffs any less skull-crushing. Chat Pile presents a diorama of a country—a Rube Goldberg machine of rusty hacksaws and syringes that inevitably funnels its most vulnerable to drop just outside of an ever-shrinking safety net. It’s a cool world, after all. [Jaden Amjadi]
20. Charly Bliss – FOREVER
Genre: Punk
FOREVER, Charly Bliss’s third full-length, captures the Brooklyn four-piece at their best. Synthesizing the fizzy, guitar-heavy sound of their 2017 debut, GUPPY, and the sleeker pop of 2019’s YOUNG ENOUGH, there’s enough of both on FOREVER to keep fans of any era happy. It helps, too, that the songwriting is sharp; “How Do You Do It” and “In Your Bed” are some of the band’s biggest hooks, and Eva Hendricks balances wry humor and tender sincerity as well as she ever has on “Last First Kiss.” [Zac Djamoos]
19. Magdalena Bay – IMAGINAL DISK
Genre: Internet Pop
Magdalena Bay’s brilliantly themed sophomore album mashes together the lush and surreal tones of the synthpop revival they helped pioneer with a new confidence in their songwriting and exciting new genre fusions. IMAGINAL DISK is one of the most potent and inspiring albums of the decade so far. Its mix of instant-magic pop and thoughtful slow-burners make it euphoric and demanding of your patience across its 15 tracks, that lightning-in-a-bottle kind of album where the duo’s command over their sound and creative ambition come together in absolute unison. [Lurien Zitterkopf]
18. Mount Eerie – NIGHT PALACE
Genre: Indie Folk
On NIGHT PALACE, songwriter Phil Elverum wants to feed your curiosity about the world you live in. For more than 80 minutes, he acts as ferryman through the rising waters of post-colonial refuse with one question: “What is our responsibility to a land and the life that resides on it?” For some, Elverum’s focus on colonization may seem out of left-field, but fans of his 2005 endeavor, NO FLASHLIGHT, know he has spent the better part of his career considering the carving away of land in the anthropocene era. 19 years later, he’s only dropped the euphemism. What’s maybe most stunning about the album is how Elverum manages to take sonic notes from each previous release in his three-decade-spanning catalog. He smoothly wades into ambient, metal, folk pop—seemingly wherever his songwriting whims take him. NIGHT PALACE is a hike led by an experienced guide to see humanity’s dormant conscience—but maybe just a firm-enough pinch away from waking. [Jaden Amjadi]
17. Mk.gee – TWO STAR & THE DREAM POLICE
Genre: Pop, R&B
Mk.gee deserves the spotlight shining on him. TWO STAR & THE DREAM POLICE is a sign of where guitar-driven alt-pop is headed: greater care for multi-instrumental abstractions while respecting hooky songwriting. The result is uncanny, almost liminal pop music—an intentional design choice that Mk.gee, born Michael Gordon, has admitted. Traces of Phil Collins, Sting, Prince, Arthur Russell, Jai Paul, and even Frank Ocean faintly come into view across these 12 tracks, but Mk.gee’s glossy and lysergic production makes the sound his own. He’s never entirely imitating his spiritual forebears. Whether it’s the wistful new wave riffage on “Are You Looking Up,” the hypnotically percussive sophisti-pop of “I Want,” or the desertic, insular “Dream police,” Mk.gee’s pop rock subversion is its own liminal space. He’s found his calling to contort guitar and broader pop music and this is just the beginning. [Dom Lepore]
16. Kim Gordon – THE COLLECTIVE
Genre: Avant-Garde Rock
I’m not sure it was obvious at the time, but from the moment Kim Gordon dropped the trudging, industrial “Murdered Out” in 2019—her first proper solo material under her own name—the groundwork for “BYE BYE” was laid. The opener to Gordon’s latest, THE COLLECTIVE, is a stream-of-consciousness, post-industrial banger with staticky glitch-hop beats and epileptic drum ‘n bass blasts. It is a work of genius, both the most accessible thing she’s done since Sonic Youth ended and the kind of cutting-edge art pop that few artists, let alone those as prolific as Gordon, ever make. The rest of the album makes good on the musical ideas presented in “BYE BYE,” with blown-out, avant-garde rhythms colliding in full force with cool, drawling poetry and dizzying spoken word passages. The music Gordon’s released in recent years has often been intense and affecting—with the sparse art rock project Body/Head, in particular, there was a lonesome catharsis being exercised. But with THE COLLECTIVE, for the first time since Sonic Youth ended, she sounds like she’s having fun. [CJ Simonson]
15. Mannequin Pussy – I GOT HEAVEN
Genre: Punk
Over the last decade, Mannequin Pussy have crawled from the fringes of indie music into punk and hardore mainstream. They did it by being, well, really fucking good. 2019’s PATIENCE put them on the map in a broader way, but after five long years of touring, a stellar breakout EP, and a handful of various noteworthy projects. Later, I GOT HEAVEN arrives as nothing more than the ferocious follow-up that we fans have been desperately craving five years later. My official review is one of detailed appreciation for the blend of delicate melody and unwavering hardcore sentimentality that Mannequin Pussy have evolved into; it praises vocalist Marisa “Missy” Dabice for her fearless and confrontational lyrics and considers the inherently feminist affectation of her emotional range in each song—from taunting aggression to sensual subservience. That review champions the album as a curated congruence across theories of personal freedom, sexuality, control, and release. My unofficial review is that any member of this band can spit in my face and step on my throat if they want to, and I sincerely hope Missy does one day. We’re all lowly plebians in the light of Mannequin Pussy’s heavenly glow. Listen to this record on your knees. [Devyn McHugh]
14. Jlin – AKOMA
Genre: Footwork
Tiptoeing within classical spaces lets Jlin’s sharp footwork rhythms have playful winks amidst the stormy rattles, all confidently exposed in the pulsating beats of AKOMA. Leading you to a space where light and darkness eclipse one another, a clash of dualities is heard in Jlin’s striking experimental edges across a gleeful array of compositions, textures, and collaborations. Delightfully rambunctious, AKOMA could only come from the heart and soul of Jlin’s avant-garde magnitude. [Louis Pelingen]
13. Thou – UMBILICAL
Genre: Heavy
2024 was a banner year for heavy music, as metal and punk bands continued to find themselves better-equipped to address the issues and overall rancid vibes of the times than any other style of music could. It’s funny, then, that in a crowded field of highlight releases, Louisiana sludge and doom veterans Thou reached new heights on UMBILICAL by largely eschewing their usual anarchistic tendencies and instead turning their serrated knives inward, violently interrogating their own thoughts and behaviors while vivisecting the moral implications of their own station as artists. It just so happens that this project of self-flagellation is set to the most pulverizing music of the band’s career, marrying their typical downtuned, slo-mo destruction with a raucous drive reminiscent of the noisiest and most venomous strains of grunge. The title of the album gives the game away: This is IN UTERO broadcast from the pits of Tartarus, a twisted death ray of black rage and anguish that’s impossible to look away from. [Jacob Martin]
12. Cassandra Jenkins – MY LIGHT, MY DESTROYER
Genre: Indie Folk
On MY LIGHT, MY DESTROYER, Cassandra Jenkins emerges from the grief of 2021’s AN OVERVIEW ON PHENOMENAL NATURE to mundane, everyday heartache and the beauty that sometimes accompanies it. Fans of AN OVERVIEW will find that she still knows how to float above an ambiance with ease—“Delphinium Blue,” “Omakase”—but it’s the songs where she gets the band back together—“Petco,” “Clams Casino”—that have made for some of the year’s unlikeliest earworms. These are unforgettable songs not just because of their catchy melodies and enchanting performances, but because of Cassandra Jenkins’ rare talent as a writer. Few writers maneuver the distance between uncertainty and admiration for the world the way Jenkins can. With only her third full-length record, Jenkins cements herself as one of the sharpest songwriters in indie today. [Jaden Amjadi]
11. Font – STRANGE BURDEN
Genre: Post-Punk
It’s not art rock or post-punk if it’s not totally weird and unnerving. Austin’s Font achieve just that as STRANGE BURDEN runs the gamut from glitchy hellscape (“The Golden Calf”) to quirky disco (“Natalie’s Song”). Along the way, the band effortlessly strike other beguiling configurations, with the only constants being their sonic wit, endless passion, and a dedication to both rhythmic joy and meaningful confrontation. It may not be an easy LP, but it’ll win you over with its extra curious ways. [Chris Coplan]
10. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – WILD GOD
Genre: Art Rock, Gospel Rock
As the great punk warrior poet Joe Strummer once exalted: “He who fucks nuns will later join the Church.” Nick Cave—elder goth vampire lord of Australia—is certainly no stranger to intersecting the sacred and profane. Christian themes and imagery permeate his writing, in song or otherwise, but never has Cave had a come-to-Jesus moment quite like WILD GOD. Cave has spent the past decade reckoning with unimaginable loss—his teenage son Arthur passed away suddenly in 2016, which chiefly influenced his previous two albums, the sparse and experimental SKELETON TREE and GHOSTEEN. WILD GOD resolves a trilogy of sorts focused on grief but also expands upon it, as he contended with the loss of another son, Jethro, in 2022, and his mother over the pandemic.
Despite these tragic circumstances, WILD GOD permeates with a palpable sense of holy buoyancy. Nearly every track crescendos into full-on spiritual space rock and damn-near-gospel rave-ups. Cave sounds simultaneously world-weary and exultant on each track, creating a powerful contradiction that is ultimately transcendent. The psychedelic Biblical imagery and recitations alluded to in Cave’s lyrics are coupled with the intimate, snapshot style of writing he has favored in the latter part of his career. After years spent traversing the depths in an ocean of personal pain, he has resurfaced anew, baptized, flowing with the Spirit and a renewed vigor, optimistically attempting to lead us down a road to redemption in an increasingly uncertain and hostile world. May God have mercy on our souls. Amen. [Luke Phillips]
9. Nala Sinephro – ENDLESSNESS
Genre: Jazz, Ambient
The 28-year-old composer’s second album is a gorgeous, expertly crafted step forward, trading the sumptuous blues that underscored her debut for spacious ambient passages and some of the most inquisitive pieces in her discography yet. With a roster of collaborators both new and returning, ENDLESSNESS’ looping arpeggio motif makes way for these 10 tracks to link together in unanticipated places, a multi-dimensional wonder of her signature jazz fusion style taken even further into the stars. [Lurien Zitterkopf]
8. Ducks Ltd. – HARM’S WAY
Genre: Jangle Pop
HARM’S WAY, the sophomore album from Toronto’s Ducks Ltd., shares DNA with the bands that rose from the Athens scene of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It’s reminiscent of all the jangly indie rock of early R.E.M., Pylon, Game Theory, or any other bands that Mitch Easter produced throughout his career. Every song on the record’s brief runtime is packed with catchy hooks, singalong lyrics, and crazy rhythms guaranteed to get stuck in your head forever. [Jack Probst]
7. Wishy – TRIPLE SEVEN
Genre: Jangle Pop
Nearly every piece written about Wishy and their masterful debut, TRIPLE SEVEN, has mentioned that it sounds like the ‘90s. But it doesn’t, really. Sure, it’s clear where and when their hearts lie, but what TRIPLE SEVEN really does is reconstruct the sounds of ‘90s indie, pop, and alt-rock from memory, resulting in a hazy, warbly sound that carries a genuine warmth. As usual, the memory of the thing is even better than the thing itself. [Zac Djamoos]
6. The Cure – SONGS OF A LOST WORLD
Genre: Goth
After 16 years, the Cure have delivered their most thematically cohesive album since their 1989 masterpiece DISINTEGRATION. The band is in top form on SONGS OF A LOST WORLD, creating beautifully lush and melancholic soundscapes to carry Robert Smith’s somber reflections on a long life lived. While there are a few hopeful moments of contentment sprinkled over the eight tracks’ 50-minute runtime, it is the Cure at their heaviest, fully committed to their darker tendencies. Smith’s voice sounds as strong as it ever has, and with songs this strong, he has firmly shattered any concerns that the Cure are an ‘80s legacy act resting on their well earned laurels. [Jake Mazon]
5. Cindy Lee – DIAMOND JUBILEE
Genre: Lo-Fi, Rock ‘n’ Roll
If you could transform the television’s glow into sound, blended with radio hum, it would sound like DIAMOND JUBILEE. A transmission from a dreaming past into a yearning future, Cindy Lee’s double album became a meteor-like indie hit, perhaps against its creator’s wishes. 32 tracks of foggy, eclectic pop and rock ‘n’ roll unfold into a timeless listening experience, especially when taken as a two-hour entirety. Song melts into ethereal song, one after another, exploring countless melodic nooks and guitar-shredding caverns. [Aly Eleanor]
4. Blood Incantation – ABSOLUTE EVERYWHERE
Genre: Progressive Metal, Dark Ambient
After what seemed like a one-time curiosity with ambient layers, Blood Incantation sticks that soundscape in close tandem with their death metal roots. ABSOLUTE EVERYWHERE nestles between meditative ambiance and progressive death metal, with enough psychedelia to give meteoric crescendos a flourishing impact. It’s an evolution of sound that allows Blood Incantation to diverge from their contemporaries, where their ravenous edges are now immersed with calming beauty, leaping across otherworldly planets with an absolute light. [Louis Pelingen]
3. MJ Lenderman – MANNING FIREWORKS
Genre: Rock, Countrygaze
Lenderman’s star rose greatly in 2024. Fresh off a live album recorded with his band The Wind, he was a featured player on labelmate and stylistic forebear Waxahatchee’s TIGERS BLOOD, contributing guitar and occasional vocals to every track. The early, pre-release singles for MANNING FIREWORKS were released at the height of BRAT summer, bolstered by a similar full-court press marketing blitz that positioned Lenderman as nothing less than the unproblematic heir to the throne vacated by Ryan Adams. The announced personal breakup of Lenderman and his Wednesday bandmate Karly Hartzman added a personal intrigue to a record poised to be his breakout. All of this would seem like overblown hyperbole if MANNING FIREWORKS was merely an okay album, but thankfully it is every bit the masterwork it’s been purported to be. Lenderman’s lo-fi slacker tendencies have been augmented and beefed up considerably: The riffs are thicker and knottier, the heartworn acoustics more spritely and tender, the arrangements more assured. Lenderman’s songs have always utilized humor, but this time his writing is much more wry and clever. The character portraits survey a coterie of losers, layabouts, and ne’er do wells—a songwriting staple of everyone from Newman to Zevon to Fagen that Lenderman cleverly updates for our currently decrepit and barren cultural landscape of male loneliness and MRA grifters. At the same time, it still functions as a haunting and oddly relatable classic breakup album. One must wonder—where exactly does Lenderman detach himself from the dumbasses he writes about, and how much does he actually relate to them? In any case, his ability to rend true pathos from these sad sack tales is commendable. [Luke Phillips]
2. Waxahatchee – TIGER’S BLOOD
Genre: Indie Folk
As cynical and divisive as Music Twitter can be (see the MJ Lenderman discourse hinted at above), sometimes there’s no denying pure, unadulterated talent. That’s what Waxahatchee’s latest Grammy-nominated LP happens to be. TIGERS BLOOD is stylistically familiar (it’s merely a few degrees removed from the work of Jason Isbell), but that doesn’t make the album any less striking. There’s just an undeniable level of craft and care Katie Crutchfield pours into these songs, whether it be the precise guitar crunch on “Ice Cold,” the double-tracked vocals in “Bored,” or the iridescent lyricism that peppers every track. It all results in an album that still sounds fresh and invigorating a whole nine months after its release. [Connor Shelton]
1. Wild Pink – DULLING THE HORNS
Genre: Heartland Rock, Folk
Memory is a fickle thing. Nearly five years on the heels of a world-altering pandemic, it’s hard not to look back and wonder when time started moving so fast, grasping at air where your own life should be. Oftentimes recalling the past feels more like connecting imagined dots on a blank page, holding on desperately to scattershot personal associations with songs or news stories, entire relationships reduced to singular, indelible images. It’s within these constantly shifting, reconstructed spaces that John Ross feels most comfortable, spinning vivid imagery from the ephemera of life, the stories that change a little bit every time you tell them, the seemingly inconsequential details that nobody else remembers, the dreams that don’t vanish the moment we open our eyes.
Wielding a dizzying array of guitar tones from suffocating to shimmering, Ross and his bandmates in Wild Pink are in peak form on DULLING THE HORNS, their songs covered in a dense textural fog that breaks only for select moments of bracing clarity. Wild Pink has always embraced contradiction in their music, and this album is no exception. In this world, joy and melancholy can coexist, the immortal will eventually die, and the mundane can matter more than anything. As we trek inexorably forward into an increasingly fraught future, the power to be found in these frictions feels more essential than ever, and DULLING THE HORNS manages to harness them in a way that both takes stock of the listlessness of the moment and challenges us to move forward without hiding our scars or turning away from pain. It’s the defining album of 2024, and a crowning achievement for a band that has quietly assembled one of the finest catalogues of the 21st century. [Jacob Martin]
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