The awards:
- top ten albums released in 2024 (with honourable mentions)
- top song released in 2024 (with honourable mentions)
- best artists discovered in 2024
Here's a playlist to listen along to selections from the prizewinners in 2024...
Top ten* albums of 2024
White Roses, My God by Alan Sparhawk
I'm not usually a fan of ultra-processed vocals. Nor of solo albums where the artist is trying so hard to make an aural break from previous bands (in this case: the majestic Low, the raucous Retribution Gospel Choir and funky Derecho Rhythm Section).
But Alan Sparhawk, my God.
And while I'm a massive fan of Low (seeing them live at Bodega in 2016 is probably a top five gig), I wasn't so high on the glitchy, electronic sound of Double Negative (2018) and HEY WHAT (2021), so to take that glitchy, electronic angle and turn it up to 11...
But Alan Sparhawk, my God.
Of course, after the death of your life partner and band mate (Mimi Parker) you want to obliterate old selves. But to forge something so listenable from such angular parts? The best grief-stricken record since Hummingbird?
Whether you come to this record from a rock, slow-core, hip hop or electronica background, chances are it'll speak to you.
My God, Alan. Bless you.
Lived Here for a While by Good Looks
Album opener 'If it's gone' might have been my song of the year, if top ten albums didn't render themselves ineligible. Tracks like 'Self-destructor', 'White Out', and 'Can You See Me Tonight?' aren't far behind. But repeated listens allows slower tunes to rise up. 'Broken Body' is about disability, childhood and regret. 'Why Don't You Believe Me?' about a mother-son relationship where it's the son's turn to let the side down.
These guys are from Austin, Texas, but sound (to me, at least) Australian. In researching their origins I learnt about the disastrous lead-in to this album.
The day after they released their 2022 debut, the clairvoyantly titled Bummer Year, guitarist Jake Ames was nearly killed in a hit-and-run. After a long recovery, the band got back and they road, only for their van to catch fire and destroy all their gear, instruments, laptops, and merch.Lived Here for a While is infused with the knowledge of how bad things can get, but also the joy of not being done just yet.
Big Swimmer by King Hannah
The first track I heard from this Liverpudlian duo was 'New York, Let's Do Nothing', a talk-sung indie track in the vein of Dry Cleaning Cassandra Jenkins, Wet Leg, The Weather Station, Bongwater, Life Without Buildings, Young Marble Giants (and, of course, the Velvet Underground)...
So of course I loved that song, but King Hannah has other modes.
The title track is a big, seventies style ballad, replete with backing vocals from Sharon Van Etten (who reappears later in the album). 'Suddenly, Your Hand' sounds like Courtney Barnett in her calmer moments. 'Somewhere near El Paso' is more of a noise-rock jam in the vein of Sonic Youth or Swans. 'Davey Says' is straight-ahead garage pop-rock. Elsewhere, there's moments of Bill Callahan's chugging guitar and ironic vocals. Other artists, like Slint and John Prine are name-checked directly.
And yes, I like the fact that Hannah Merrick talks to/mentions her guitarist Craig Whittle in her anecdotes.
He first me five years laterSaid that Craig and I worked too well together(New York, Let's Do Nothing)
Craig and I have beenCraig and I have beenWatching quite disturbingDocumentaries in the evenings(Suddenly, Your Hand)
More songs should talk to Craigs. We're good people.
My Light, My Destroyer by Cassandra Jenkins
Speaking of Cassandra Jenkins, she's followed up her big hit (for a talkie indie track in the age of streaming) 'Hard Drive' from the 2021 album An Overview of Phenomenal Nature, with a more diverse, more musical, more confident collection of tracks.
The field recordings and found samples are still part of the mix, but Jenkins puts herself front and centre from the opener. 'Devotion'. Her delicate, reedy voice then morphs into a kind of Sheryl Crow/Natalie Hemby clone suitable for fronting a country-infected, rock-driven album standout. It's gutsy while also still being whispery. 'Petco' and 'Only One' are similarly poppy (though in different ways), helping to balance out the more experimental and ambient tracks.
Lighthouse by Francis of Delirium
Is this the greatest band from Luxembourg ever? Even ignoring the bonus points they scored for calling a song 'Cliffs', I think it is.
They play big songs about big feelings. Every time I listen to the album I think I have a different favourite track: today, it's 'First Touch'... 'Cliffs' being ineligible due to a conflict of interest. Actually, now it's 'Blue Tuesday' (take that, New Order). Or maybe it's 'Ballet Dancers (Never Love Again)?
(Parenthesis ftw!)
Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee
I felt like I'd placed other Waxahatchee albums in my top ten before, but searching this site suggest the closest Katie Crutchfield came was an honorable mention for Ivy Trip back in 2015.
Well, this here album feels like the apotheosis of what Waxahatchee has been building towards. It's sooo confident. The vocals are so far forward in the mix. The choruses are the kind you can lose your voice to. The rhythm section is gruntier. We've moved from barbeque playlist to spring cleaning with your headphones on.
The duet with MJ Lenderman, 'Right Back To It', is the greatest duet since... ('Islands in the Stream' is all I can think of right now... Karaoke brain)... And Lenderman provides backing on some other tracks, but this is all Crutchfield.
Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman
I've put this album lower in my ranking than my gut wants me to, because a) I wanted to give Waxahatchee some non-reflected glory, b) Boat Songs made my top ten in 2022 and c) I'm excited about seeing Lenderman with full band live in March next year, so I'm not a reliable witness.
Where Boat Songs felt very influenced by Jason Molina, Manning Fireworks has more of a Neil Young vibe (not just because there's a 10 minute song called 'Bark at the Moon').
There's still the sharp as a Stanley knife lyricism ('Please don't ask how I'm doing / draining cum from hotel showers / hoping for the hours to pass a little faster'), but now it's matched musically. And songs like 'She's Leaving You' show Lenderman can tone down the lyrical audacity and just deliver a SONG.
In Lieu of Flowers by Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties
Sometimes an album comes along that teaches you how to appreciate a genre you never really "got". So it is with In Lieu of Flowers which sent me down an emo (or emo-Americana) wormhole in 2024, but Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties remained pre-eminent.
I love the conceit. Dan Campbell, frontman of The Wonder Years, writes songs from the perspective of fictional frontman, Aaron West: a character study conducted through music.
I've written elsewhere how compelling I find artists who admit the charade while still performing it (see: Lana Del Rey, Dave Wyndorf). On the face of it, it seems harder to do this in a genre like emo where so much of its power supposedly derives from the baring of raw emotion and the punk-inherited conceit of having no conceit, than pop or heavy metal.
But it works.
The album opens with the sound of barroom chatter. "Aaron West" starts singing along with an acoustic guitar and the chatter continues as West ramps up the volume of his vocals, until the two-minute-thirty mark where its as if the E-Street band has burst on stage and it's like sunrise in a My Morning Jacket song or a profession of undying love in a Dolly Parton song... Like: spine-tingling. Like: levitational. Like: "How did this make me feel this?"
In the narrative of the song (and the wider fiction of the Roaring Twenties), West is suddenly joined on stage by his estranged bandmates ('The burst of applause, a sudden eruption / Catherine nods in my direction, I turn my head / and outta nothing there's the band").
Though this is the third Aaron West album, I got chills starting just with this song.
I missed you motherfuckers badOver again and over again and over againI missed you motherfuckers bad
Dude, you had me at "sudden eruption".
Rebuild Report by Hockey Dad
Okay, these guys sound Australian and are Australian (despite band name giving Canadian vibes).
Exhibit A: 'Wreck & Ruin' (can't believe this hasn't been released as a single)
If they sound happier and more naive than Good Looks, that's understandable. Far from wishing van fires or traffic accidents on these lads from Wollongong, I hope they stay upbeat and pop-inflected for ever.
Honourable Mentions: Albums
For those of you counting along at home, I know that's only nine albums. Hence the (*) in the heading.
Some years, there's a natural break in tiers that doesn't fit into base ten. This year, there's a gap between nine and two clusters of albums: the very good from 2024 and the great-but-while-I-first-listened-to-them-in-2024-they-actually-came-out-earlier-so-must-be-disqualified.
Best of the rest from 2024
- Pedro The Lion - Santa Cruz
- Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand
- ILDES - Tangk
- Friko - Where we've been, where we go from here
- Everything Everything - Mountainhead
- Quivers - Oyster Cuts
- Margaret Glaspy - Echo The Diamond
- Arborist - An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeroes
- Gord Downie - Lustre Parfait (not sure I can ever live the shame down of missing this when it came out) - and while I'm at it, I also missed and liked Paul Langlois Band's Guess What.
Best song of 2024
'Lagunita' by Lizzie No
This song starts like a runaway delivery truck. The lead guitar peel reminds me of Rob Baker from the Tragically Hip. The verse takes things down a notch to match No's careful, lightly country-fried vocals, then accelerates again for the chorus. The song proceeds as great songs do, familiar yet fresh, loud yet crystalline. The third verse acts as a bridge, and features what I think is a güiro.
It's just perfectly put together.
You just want to listen to it again as soon as it finishes. So you do, and find the güiro is there in the first verse as well. New layers keep emerging.
The lyrics gain weight each time.
"The angel I wrestled in darkness / he's pulling his socks on / withholding my blessing".
"Tell me you care for me, tell me a secret that you've half forgotten / Thieving and dying in the arms of love."
"And I’ve learned to love the sinner and the sin / See the brush in the painting, taste the calf in the gelatin."
"And I’ve learned to love the sinner and the sin / See the brush in the painting, taste the calf in the gelatin."
Sometimes you don't need nonsense syllables to make a gem.
(NB: While this song was released as a single in late 2023, it appears on an album released in 2024, which is where I discovered it, so it totally counts based on my own made-up criteria).
A close second:
Drunk by Maggie Rogers
Similar to 'Lagunita', but even louder, more breakneck.
Best "new" old artist: Radney Foster
Whew.
Foster's original clears the Hootie cover (which feels rushed and breathless). But it may not be the best song on Del Rio... that's probably 'Nobody Wins' (which has 69x more plays on Spotify). Both are superbly crafted country rock songs.
The way the fine line between right and wrong in the first line of the chorus of 'Fine Line' moves from metaphor to geography in the next ("He's been crossing over that border way too long" - earlier we learn our married trucker has another woman "down in Georgia").
Or the profusion of rhymes in the pre-chorus (used/truce) and chorus (lose/bruised/fuse).
Foster is great at building engines to make human beings sing.
Digging deeper into his discography gets a little weird, with the nostalgia for a bygone America implied in his debut album's title doubled down on with songs like 'Texas in 1880' when he was part of the duo Foster and Lloyd (unfortunately, it's another banger).
Honourable mention: Richard Buckner
It's oddly structured, oblique. His singing is not objectively good. But it worms its way into your head and your soul. I mumble-hum this song A LOT in the shower. (I can also recommend 'The Ocean Cliff Clearing' from 1998's Since).
Is it possible for an artist to be 100% vibe?
These days he performs concerts in people's living rooms, which is kind of perfect for how to consume his music: so close and personal it's both awkward and euphoric.
Now to see how much it'd cost to get him to Dunedin...
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