This year has been an absolutely ridiculous year for music. We were spoiled with some of the best work from current established and upcoming artists, solo ventures from members of legendary bands, as well as comebacks from all-time greats. It was very difficult to choose my top 10 albums. There are so many great albums that I have included 20 honorable mentions, and these don't even completely cover all the really good albums this year. I will link a Spotify playlist at the end of this post if you want easy access to the albums mentioned.
Disclaimer: I am not a music critic, I am just someone who listened to a lot of albums this year and wanted to list them. Don't expect ground-breaking analysis or anything. I also didn't spend nearly enough time giving a lot of the albums here the playtime they deserve, this year was so stacked. That means this list is very heavily biased by what I listened to more and what struck me most on my first listen. It's not trying to be some objective list, it's just my 10 favourites. With that out of the way, let's get into it.
Honourable Mentions:
Here is a list of 20 great albums that didn't make my top 10, along with their genres, in no particular order.
- Iglooghost: Tidal Memory Exo (deconstructed UK club)
- samlrc: Lonely Sinner (post-rock)
- Chelsea Wolfe: She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She (art rock / trip-hop)
- Xiu Xiu: 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips (experimental rock)
- The Lemon Twigs: A Dream Is All We Know (soft rock / classic rock)
- Joey Valence & Brae: NO HANDS (hardcore hip-hop)
- Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven (indie rock / punk)
- JPEGMAFIA: I Lay Down My Life for You (experimental hip-hop)
- Vince Staples: Dark Times (hip-hop)
- Ka: The Thief Next To Jesus (underground hip-hop)
- Tyler, the Creator: Chromakopia (hip-hop)
- Clairo: Charm (soft rock / pop)
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor: "NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD" (post-rock)
- Father John Misty: Mahashmashana (singer-songwriter)
- Thou: Umbilical (sludge metal)
- Nala Sinephro: Endlessness (space / jazz fusion / ambient)
- Arooj Aftab: Night Reign (jazz / ghazal)
- St. Vincent: All Born Screaming (art rock)
- Doechii: Alligator Bites Never Heal (southern hip-hop)
- glass beach: plastic death (indie rock / art rock)
Okay, onto the top 10!
10. Blood Incantation: Absolute Elsewhere
This progressive metal album has two 3-song-long phases: "The Stargate" and "The Message". There are a lot of different cool passages, mainly a mixture of 70s prog and heavy metal, and a really strong spacey atmosphere that matches the album cover well. The whole thing comes together to create a really enveloping listening journey.
9. Chat Pile: Cool World
This noise rock album is super grimy, sludgy and messy. It touches on subjects like war in a very visceral and violent way that matches its sound. Very loud and heavy and great for rocking out to.
8. The Last Dinner Party: Prelude To Ecstasy
One of the albums I listened to the most this year, especially towards the start. The Last Dinner Party are a band with a very strong visual theme and the musical concepts on this album tie into it perfectly. Lead singer Abigail has a very posh and light delivery, the whole thing feels very grand and theatrical (there are a lot of Queen-esque rock opera moments), and there are is a lot of inspiration from classical music to tie the whole high-society performance theatre themes together. It's a fun escape and watching them perform live was even more wonderful.
7. Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown
Beth Gibbons of Portishead came out with a solo album and as expected, it's absolutely enchanting. The trippier production she usually sang over on portishead is replaced with a more folksy style on this one, which is lovely and comfortable but also very grand at some moments, and really lets her voice shine in a new light.
6. Geordie Greep: The New Sound
Unfortunately black midi is iver, but lead singer Geordie Greep very quickly came out with a solo album. The production, as expected from his work with avant-prog band black midi, is incredibly inspired, with some absolutely insane prog riffs mixed in with a lot of influence from Brazilian music. It's (a bit) more approachable and casually listenable than hellfire, but it does not lose any of the amazing intricacy and ambitious but cohesive theming. The insanity of the lyrics and the character played by Greep match the production perfectly to create an intense experience, and he nails the ridiculous over-the-top vocal deliveries in a way that not many others could.
5. SHEBAD: Music Is The Answer
I absolutely loved the single “Black Walnut” from this album for a while, then when the whole thing came out I was still pleasantly surprised. A really sweet and soothing neo-soul album with a lot of inspiration from jazz, R&B and art pop. It evokes a lot of the wonderful soothing feelings of the greats of soul but with a more modern twist on the sound.
4. Kendrick Lamar: GNX
Kendrick surprise dropped this album late in November, and I think it's his best since “To Pimp A Butterfly”. It shows a different side of Kendrick than the rest of his albums, continuing on from how he handled the Drake beef. The album is more about his humour, his punchiness and his ability to make super catchy west-coast hip-hop bangers. He shows off more incredible beats like not like us, more super catchy flows and vocal deliveries (MUSTAAAARD is the most famous of them, but the album has loads). It shows another aspect to his rapping ability that makes it an incredible addition to his discography. It's not missing in lyrical content or technical ability, however: “Reincarnated” and “Gloria” are two of the best written storytelling songs on his entire discography. The album is consistently great and still shows a strong amount of variety.
3. Mount Eerie: Night Palace
This release from Phil Elverum (the man behind music projects “Mount Eerie” and “The Microphones”) was another one I completely didn't expect this year. I loved all of the singles that came out and I remember listening to this album on release day and it being exactly what I wanted. In a lot of ways this album feels like the glow part 3. It's got the classic fuzzy, noisy moments balanced with more lo-fi and melancholic sections, it's got the same very sonically all-over-the-place but still somewhat cohesive composition, and it touches on a lot of the same early Microphones themes.
It tackles the ideas of existentialism, the living world and feeling small in an infinitely large universe with an added maturity gained in the 23 years since the glow part 2, and has some beautifully poetic lyrics. It also ties these themes into explorations of land ownership and colonisation. There are some incredible noise sections and production in general, and it is very genre-bending and experimental even for Phil. While I don't think it's the most cohesive or consistently perfect work he's ever made, I absolutely loved hearing Phil come back with an excellent album that met or even exceeded my expectations.
2. Charli xcx: brat
Given its very high positions on year-end lists from publications and how the album and its already iconic anti-branding garnered most of the attention for music in the social media landscape, it seems that this album is set to be the instant classic that 2024 will be most prominently remembered for. I am well and truly part of the hype train, and think this album absolutely deserves all the praise and attention it's getting. To me it is Charli's most well-executed album yet, the perfect blend of her incredibly inspired experimental production with her ability to make easy to listen to dance-pop and 2000s club song revival bangers. A lot of classic sounds and ideas from 2000s pop are revived in a really effective way with Charli's own twists on them. While this album is far from as experimental as something like “how I'm feeling now”, there are still some incredibly inspired sections of production, such as the piano break in “Mean girls” or the acid bass ending of “365”.
It is also her best and most cohesive album from a songwriting perspective too. She poignantly explores her struggles with fame, being a woman in the pop scene and wanting to balance her dreams of family with living her youth with drugs and clubbing. A lot of the lyrics read like the standard vapid dance lyrics to be played in the club, but they are given a new light in the context of this album. “Von Dutch” might seem like a classic showboating club song, and it can function in that way when taken on its own, but when contrasted with songs like “Sympathy is a knife” it feels like a false projection. The reprise “365” is viewed in a completely different light to its counterpart “360” by the end of the album. The lyrics can be read as her using the blinding lights and loud music of the club, as well as drugs, to numb her internal pains and help her forget about her life. There's a sadness to how everything melts away into the acid bass at the end.
When talking about the songwriting, it doesn't feel right not to touch on “So I”. A beautiful tribute to late producer and artist Sophie who frequently collaborated with Charli. This tribute feels so much more real and vulnerable than so many others, as Charli is very honest about her shortcomings.
Yeah, this album is great. The bonus tracks and the remixes, while less consistently great, still have some absolutely incredible moments. The “brat summer” and onwards was wonderful to be a part of, and I hope this album's cultural importance does last well into the future.
1. Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk
If brat is the critics choice for album of the year, it seems like this album is the people's choice. It is the #1 album of 2024 on music ranking sites Album Of The Year and Rate Your Music. It's also my number 1. I'm “the people”. It's me.
This album dropped on a crazy day for 2024 releases. I listened to it an hour after it came out, just after Fontaine DC's “Romance” and just before Sabrina Carpenter's “Short 'n Sweet”. I had no idea what to expect, except that I wasn't a massive fan of their previous album “Mercurial World”. I don't hate “Romance” or “Short 'n Sweet” but on that day they, as well as my own expectations, got blown out of the fucking water.
Very few albums have ever had such a strong instant effect on me. On my first listen the album wowed me over and over again. The production is so unbelievably inspired, taking influence from so many places. It is a perfect maximalist amalgamation of the sounds of “Mercurial World” with influences from funk, jazz, rock, art pop and so many other different genres. It feels like a love letter to pop music. None of this incredible production, however, sacrifices the ability for this album to just be so nice to listen to. It has incredible heavy crescendos like the end of “Tunnel Vision”, super funky dance pop moments like “Death and romance”, hypnotising and trippy electronic moments all over, really relaxing almost bjork-like moments on songs like “Watching T.V.”, and beautiful softer moments such as “Angel on a Satellite”.
The lyrics, while far from the main focus, are still super interesting to listen to and fun to sing. Mica's voice is absolutely enchanting on some of the vocal peaks. The entire sound and branding of this album just fits it so well, and the whole thing is truly the creative peak (so far) of an incredibly inspired and genius duo. It's wonderful just to see such an incredible piece of creative expression. I wish I was able to go to the live show. I think albums like this, and the experiences I had listening, will stick with me my whole life. Listen to Imaginal Disk if you haven't!!!
Conclusion:
Thanks for reading my first real blog post! I hope you enjoyed and maybe find some good music to listen to through this. Feel free to message me and discuss the albums I missed and what would be in your top 10. Here is a Spotify playlist with a song from each of these albums for you to listen to if you're curious. Follow me on Spotify if you like my list because I listen to a lot of other stuff too. Bye!