Stuck in a Dream: The 90 Best Albums of 2024 (#90-46)
Damn, Cindy Lee just missed the cut...
New blue daughter: Nala Sinephro (Photo by BLACKKSOCKS)
90. The Smile, Cutouts
Unlike Radiohead, the Smile knows they’re a groove band. As Chris DeVille avers, they’re essential when showcasing Jonny Greenwood’s sound effects (“Zero Sum,” “Eyes & Mouth,” the late-Jon Hassell tribute “Don’t Get Me Started”) and merely mellifluous otherwise, though almost every song builds to the Good Part. This comes on like a collection of sessions more than anything else Thom Yorke’s done in the band format, though that would be news to the swells of orchestration on “Tiptoe.” The meanings just happen to be clearest when they lock into something bracing and off-kilter. In a word: cool. Let them become prog-rock’s premier singles act, if they could only be trusted to pick the singles. And “The Slip” is ripe for “Tequila” horns.
89. Burial, Dreamfear/Boy Sent From Above [EP]
I thought I was sick of Burial a lot longer ago until the magisterial, unnecessarily reshuffled Tunes 2011-2019 comp convinced me he had a lot more going for him than just a third of that timespan. But sometime around the listless Antidawn and collaborations like Shock Power of Love, I really did get sick of Burial, to the point where even an offering this raucous (chant it with me: “Back from the dead / Fucked up in the head”) doesn’t quite move me. Worse, I think the production is why; hard to feel the ghosts in the machine from all the way across the airport, where it sounds like he mixed it. That changes on “Boy Sent From Above,” the kind of split-atom synthpop fireworks I wish Daniel Lopatin hadn’t exhausted from his own bag of tricks. Guess post-imperial nostalgists gotta stick together. But I’m still awaiting Lopatin’s best in years.
88. Fred Again.., Ten Days
What Fred reminds me of is the Disclosure/Sam Smith amalgamation that failed to impress me a decade ago except he displays a knack for an amazing breadth of melodic possibilities, shamelessly corny ones by EDM standards which is why he’s taken the festival industry by storm. Romanticized as all get-out are not just his calling-card YouTube samples but his guest vocalists, the happiest house divas to wear their pixelated hearts on their sleeves since Avicii and Aloe Blacc turned Walgreens into Electric Daisy. As unabashed as Zach Bryan with more resourceful tunes. “Fear Less” will upgrade your Bon Iver free of charge, but on the whirring stunner “Glow,” he beckons you to imagine an Owl City that’s actually spectacular. Yeah, that corny.
87. Oranssi Pazuzu, Muuntautuja
I’ve dug these mood-metal Finns since the shrieking hypnosis of 2016’s Värähtelijä soundtracked a memorable drive to semi-rural PA for the Bates Motel haunted hayride and the electronic whirligigs of the title tune are a hooky reminder of why. One of the most sonically interesting heavy bands I’ve encountered, they nail industrial clang to a maelstrom of played instruments rather than industrial gridmapping and come out hypnotic all the same.
86. Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross, Challengers [OST]
I haven’t kept up with Reznor/Ross’ Hollywood streak but it wouldn’t take much convincing. The Social Network and Soul burbled to life with the cartoon-sinister sound design I’ve always returned to NIN for, and I can’t wait to see Zendaya play tennis and get rotisseried to these Depeche Nails workouts that reach back to ravier beginnings than the Prince-informed Pretty Hate Machine. Sometimes they’re even the same workout; repetition can be crucial when you’re thrusting in the sweet spot.
85. Melt-Banana, 3+5
How annoying can you strive to be before your achievement is compelling? These Japanese noise legends weren’t the first to posit the question and they certainly won’t be the last. But since at least 2013’s Fetch, their discovery of digital processing pulls their guitars like taffy into addictively unnatural sound effects (try the Lightning Bolt-esque “Stopgap” or the halting-to-a-screech “Flipside”) and the way they’ve swirled in pop devices (Yasuko Onuki harmonizes with her own squeaky-toy register on “Code”) come together in euphoric ways; the instruments on “Scar” simulate car-revving before building to a layered, anthemic climax that can only be described as grindcore Dan Deacon. Their paintbrush and palette for strange blobs of sound to fling at your ear is markedly vivider than other crossover noise bands (who admittedly didn’t coexist with the shiny evolution of J-Pop) which is refreshing 30 years after their debut — and a little depressing for Model/Actriz, Girl Band, and Mandy, Indiana. In a world increasingly replacing humanity with bill-of-goods AI technology, they’re the rare band to actually improve after laying off their live drummer and bassist.
84. Carly Pearce, Hummingbird
I’ve had a chip on my shoulder about this one ever since she beat me to releasing my own liability/ability-to-lie play, so I’m obliged to give her credit for “Heels Over Head,” which I’m a lot more jealous of because I didn’t think of it at all. Wish there was a single way to describe her style, though. Whip-smart traditionalists like Megan Moroney (plainspoken drawl), Brandy Clark (matter-of-fact wit puzzles), and Lori McKenna (the wisdom is coming from inside the house) all have some recognizable flavor to their particular grain of formalism without varying the medium drastically. This one’s merely keeping tradition alive: another smart woman with Kevlar songcraft who deserves a bigger chunk of Chris Stapleton’s market share. That’ll be the day, but “We Don’t Fight Anymore” (not a happy song btw) is a beautiful start.
83. JPEGMAFIA, I Lay Down My Life for You
Having finally proven his digital scrap-heap barrage is not only listenable but addictively pleasurable when tasked with propping up a pre-rehab, label-limbo Danny Brown for the comeback masterpiece Scaring the Hoes, Peggy settles into a groove. Even if the 2024 bar for drum sounds wasn’t so low, his excavated fills would still knock, as do sample-hiss vérité noises fresher than Burial’s. He’s decided rock-riff squeals make up the chaos difference as he sticks to a reasonable 4/4 so Vince Staples, Buzzy Lee, and a show-stealing Denzel Curry can fill in for Danny on A-list rhymes. If Peg’s overall ballast is less forceful than Death Grips — whose best album titles the song after the one named for Pantera’s best album; he’s always been on the nose — it’s more resourceful. That’s why instead of more garbage-disposal guitar, “Exmilitary” repurposes the same “Tearz” sample as Ariana Grande’s excellent “Fake Smile.” Of course it’s less of a shock to the system than the Danny record — the hoes will see it coming. Self-examination: “I’m so terminally online, goddamn / I don’t respect myself.” Also him: “I’ve been ratchet since Kenan and Kel.” Bring the noise anyway.
82. Tems, Born in the Wild
Can’t tell if it’s reassuring or depressing: Except for the requisite Asake amapiano cut, the best “Afrobeats” longplayer I’ve heard yet dispenses with the prison of any genre’s signature beat in the time-honored tradition of one of those garden-variety, cosmopolitan-pop travelogues. But it’s mostly just exceptionally pretty R&B; the lone guitar blues of “Boy O Boy” would’ve fit neatly onto the SZA. And as with “Smoking on My Ex Pack,” the album screams back to life on the star’s requisite MC turn, endearingly dubbed “T-Unit.” It’s followed by an almost as endearing love title: “You in My Face.” Less bland than Tyla, less steely than Jill Scott. And I admit, it could use more beats.
81. Astrid Sonne, Great Doubt
Knuck if you ML Buch.
80. Fucked Up, Who’s Got the Time & A Half
A man of simple tastes, I first enjoyed this band for prophetically trying to bend hardcore as far as they could without breaking, which thankfully meant a lot more of the Sugar-style jangle from “Crooked Head” on David Comes to Life, one of the least replayable albums I’ve ever Pazzed — no one needs a 77-minute hardcore opus, no matter how hard it tries to be other things or how astonishing its first 33 minutes are. (Weirdly, the highlight-happy, double-disc Couple Tracks is less exhausting than David or their dumb-Jung breakthrough The Chemistry of Common Life, which it fixes part of.) Made, livestreamed, and sold for just 24 hours, this excellently titled raver is just 31 total, and half of that is power-pop by way of Slumberland or Madchester depending on who’s relieving Damian Abraham of bellowing duties, which I was surprised to learn no longer includes Young Guv mastermind Ben Cook. (In the best song, it’s Kiwi Jr.) The other half is the most traditional hardcore they’ve ever blasted out, rebelling against a spotlight moment for the genre that they could lay claim to laying the groundwork for. Making this was more punk. More tuneful too.
79. Couch Slut, You Could Do It Tonight
I found the “The Donkey” (“Here’s what happened when we got fired from the haunted waterpark,” “The man comes back to the center of the room and he says ‘I’ve got the blood’,” etc.) a bit tryhard and it still is, but I’ve since succumbed to its tsunami of sewage like everything else here and it will probably feel classic when they break up a set with it. This band remains everything I’ve ever wanted from the Jesus Lizard or Melvins or Shellac or most noise-metal confluences except their interest in sound design ends at paint-peeling feedback. I’d call them redneck-cosplay horror-grunge; Couch Slut excel at surviving to tell tales of getting high in the wrong places. But just because it’s calcifying into shtick doesn’t make their abattoir-stench riffs any less effective, with just enough sinister changes to push forward the miserable lurch. Maybe shtick means they won’t make us wait another four years.
78. Omar Souleyman, Erbil
If you make the same album over and over, does it matter if the album is great? How many times can it be made before it’s no longer great? Artists as consistent as Omar Souleyman, treated as exotic by default when they’re introduced to new masses before the market returns them to the specialty audience — how consistent are they really? It is almost impossible for me to tell if Erbil is Souleyman’s best album in years or if the musical landscape and my own personal cycling of taste has reached the point where I’m fully receptive again after feeling burned out on him around 2015’s Bahdeni Nami, just two years after I really enjoyed 2013’s Wenu Wenu and four years after I absolutely fucking loved 2011’s Haflat Gharbia. The best evidence I have of these judgments is that every time I’ve tried Erbil, it’s given me the same-size thrill. But it’s also telling that just the thought of A-B’ing it with Bahdeni Nami exhausts me and brings to the fore my fear of killing said thrill. As with everything else, thrills feel scarcer in 2024. I feel confident that I hear more sonics; “Mahad Yadri” that trades leads between the usual electronic saz, a (simulated?) wind instrument, and even your garden-variety Western synth, with more audible support from keyboard block chords underneath. But as usual with this guy, it’s the definition of madness to try and distinguish further. Go with your gut feeling, and mine is that he’s partying harder again. At this time, that’s an achievement in itself.
77. Heems & Lapgan, Lafandar
Himanshu Suri’s first music in seven years doesn’t burst from the speakers like he’s been saving up sideways punchlines or righteous rants. In fact, it’s the first record he’s ever made where you can go stretches without ever registering the words in the sea of Lapgan’s wonderful, often South Asian sonics. But he’s still fucking great at rapping, and maybe even taking care of his health. He’s well-aware that Das Racist’s job has since been overtaken by memes, but that doesn’t stop him from “stacking bread off [his] mixtape reissues” or upping his multicultural cachet tenfold: “I’m in Mozambique with 30 Sikhs / I’m cooking turkey cheeks / You know I’m with some dirty freaks.” To be this excellent at 38 and sound at ease in a genre that eats its young can be all too mutually exclusive. Here’s to doing it again at 45.
76. A Place to Bury Strangers, Synthesizer
Dinosaur Jr. bassist Lou Barlow crows about his secret vice: “I really like being in the formula band.” So here I’ll kvell about my fave comfort bros: Dead Meadow, Dead Moon, and this goth-industrial unit that augments big basic meat slabs of garage-rock with Oliver Ackermann’s own Death by Audio tinkertoys you can purchase yourself with awesome names like the Robot pedal and Evil Filter (I sprung for a used Supersonic Fuzz Gun, with feedback so psychoactive I had to email the company to ask if it was working correctly; it was). But even with beloved samey acts, they have a way of disappearing from interest until your next hankering, so I lost touch after 2015’s dulling Transfixiation and reacquainted when I learned the package of this seventh full-length is a circuit board you can build into a synth yourself with a $200 kit they also sell. Perks include their most straightforward tunes in a decade, including the lead “Disgust,” the poppy-until-that-degraded-effect-comes-in “You Got Me,” and yet another offering at the altar of Kevin Shields, “It’s Too Much.”
75. Ekko Astral, Pink Balloons
The year’s brattiest album deffo wasn’t by the one who admitted Taylor Swift tapped her insecurities; it’s by the punks named after a (jesus god) 12-year-old Death Grips lyric. For those of us who wanted more “Von Dutch” and less “I Might Say Something Stupid” in our so-called Brat Summer, this one’s proudly dumber than shit, from “Head Empty Blues” to “UwU Type Beat,” from “Vincent Van Go-Kart” to “My brains bust like Molly Shannon / Just shoot me out a cannon.” First audible words on the record: “Bubblegum vodka!” I’m pretty sure one line is a Lucille Bluth quote. As with all laff riots they’re shielding real pain, like the one about dead kids in the street, packed right in the center of all this stoner-babble cushioning. That is, they’re doing whippits to forget. Given the auto-destruct Royal Trux aesthetic, there are way worse drugs they could be on. Like “drinking Taco Bell mild.”
74. L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation, B.E.S.T. of 2013-2024
These enjoyably high-concept freaks update retro-cyberpunk Wax Trax! with love down to the goofy acronym and willingness to indulge the occasional pure pop nugget (“Cybernetic Super Lover” is their “Juke Joint Jezebel”). Like their predecessors, you can’t look away from the pulpy artwork or unhook their dumbest riffs from your brain, the b.e.s.t. of which are compiled on this car-melting package. I’m not qualified to tell you if it’s the best pure industrial collection since KMFDM’s Retro, just that it’s the first to take my money. And that “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” gains special significance in this particular dystopia, but so does “Electric Meat Slicer.”
73. Roc Marciano, Marciology
The test case in the dilemma of “have I been listening to this album all year because it’s great rap music or because I’m desperate for comfort food in a strange, alienating new time for the genre as I round 40?” Hoped to suss that out before reviewing but nine months have passed without a clue and year-end (and world-end) deadlines approach. Just to be safe, I’d buy it for the Wu lover in your life while it’s still $47 on Discogs. For sure it exhibits shapelier melodic facility in the tickled ivories and mournful bass of “Goyard God” alone than anything Skaiwater or Xaviersobased sang through a plug-in. They should also be so warped as the title track’s horror-trailer detuning or god forbid even attempt the funk of “BeBe’s Kids” or “True Love.” One of the most emotional (and catchy) pieces of music here is entitled “Tapeworm.” So that’s my “it’s the children who are wrong” skepticism. As for the weirdo who invented sleep-rap, he could ease up on the “talk about the bullet holes in your daughter room” but he’s still got a perverse, evocative mouth on him: “There's no room on the scrotum, you gotta keep it mobile / That's a quotable.” That’s a quotable.
72. Mannequin Pussy, I Got Heaven
I was late to this band of regional heroes in part because 2019’s Patience was so slickly produced I could barely understand why the hardcore and power ballads were on the same record. Having acquired the taste, even 2021’s Perfect EP sounds better now and they meet me halfway as they should — rawer production plus more hardcore and more ballads helps everything pop like a blister. The elements that once felt like they didn’t belong now feel like the crafty surprises they hope, such as the synthy guitar bubbling up beneath the chorus on the title track whose punk-rapping earns the Olivia comparisons, though the highlight inspired by Buffy is just pandering (to moi).
71. Nala Sinephro, Endlessness
Once you’re done mocking the title like it deserves, you might catch yourself thinking this is quite eventful for “ambient jazz.” You might enjoy the bounty of modular synth arpeggios that speed up and slow down according to the tumble of the interwoven live musicians, including Black MIDI sticksman powerhouse Morgan Simpson. You might even admit the rudimentary playset of tonal attractions here appeals to the riff-minded caveman just like Music for 18 Musicians rocked them in 1978. As with that Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders novelty, though, they can really junk the strings.
70. Yard Act, Where’s My Utopia?
Catch them on the picket line next to Rosie Tucker holding a Utopia Now! sign, especially now. Danceable! And full of doubt. Water flowing underground.
69. Loidis, One Day
This less canonized guise of Huerco S. mastermind Brian Leeds plays it straighter and more quantized, just like AFX’s allegiance to tradder drum patterns and acid burps. Where Huerco subtly disrupts, Loidis pings around politely with no particular place to go but plenty of suggested grooves to bring. Frail, danceable, surefooted and sure of itself, even a little funky, if that meaningless term is to be invoked from beyond the grave. But Leeds makes inevitability almost as enjoyable as going off the grid.
68. Sumac, The Healer
Doom simply isn’t my thing, so these Isis/Botch/Baptists holdovers must be doing something else, right? Wikipedia says “post-metal” but they feel too musically organized on their arresting fifth album to be post-anything. Composed or at least planned out, the dynamics crunch like bone and shift like the brakes are cut. Nick Yacyshyn is one of those eight-armed beasts you hear about in math-metal, and if you can stomach 12-to-25-minute jams, he’s given just the right amount of space to attack without making you wait for the others to blast in. If you’re not sure, try “New Rites,” from its thundering intro beat you could rap over to some solo star-spangled banner shit at the end.
67. Fox Green, Light Over Darkness
What’s most remarkable about Little Rock’s finest (and truest to their best album’s title) is how they engage with some of the heaviest turmoil in American history without getting their hands dirty. That is, two music-loving medical professionals thump an alternate-timeline bible of good deeds and good humor — a meritocracy that doesn’t exclude fixing up one’s own mother with blues progenitor Sleepy John Estes or positing a world where Robert Zimmerman didn’t become Bob Dylan or Jesus didn’t become a bloody emblem of imperialism and worse. And while most of the big showstoppers smartly narrate this take-the-good-leave-the-bad gospel from behind bigger voices that sound crucially less white and male, it’s still Wade Derden I hear in my head every time my buddy Cam Patterson’s sneakiest hook (“what’s behind the drywall baby?”) comes back around to make me dig for answers yet again. Once again facing the very possible reality of a “Palace Full of Malice,” it’s not flowers of light and darkness that guide them so much as guitars amplifying stories worth telling and soul they never seem to run out of even when it’s all they’re selling.
66. Poppy, Negative Spaces
Riding her second Grammy nom and long past doing a bit or trolling anyone beyond the “name three songs” crowd, Moriah Rose Pereira remains a first-rate queen of loud rock, especially the industrial nü-metal she simultaneously classes and sends up. Whether by tact or by ADHD, Poppy’s big-tent djent is all-inclusive: her Garbage on “Have You Had Enough?” and Europop on “Push Go” is as ice-hot as her Iowa-era Slipknot on “They’re All Around Us” or Vein.fm on “The Center’s Falling Out.” Title tune even revives an old faithful: the whoa-oh hook. Even better than the real thing, really.
65. Tommy Richman, Coyote
I should stop laughing at the balls on this industry plant, because the backlash has already subsumed the hype and his considerable talent is both tuneful and texturally intelligent compared to Steve Lacy’s more authentic and earned Stevie cosplay. So give it up for his drum breaks on “Elephant in the Room,” (that’s one way to announce you won’t be including your hit), his dick-wrench high-end on “Thought You Were the One,” and his rather retro sense of what’s badass. No, not 1983 — 2013, when Jai Paul and the Weeknd still favored obfuscating their own silly falsettos behind wondrous studio shadow-funk before Drake and Future firmly submerged the decade’s pop beneath melodically stingy, arrhythmic frozen waters. We’ve evolved or sunk to a historical juncture where faking the funk is good for you.
64. DIIV, Frog in Boiling Water
One of my year’s most surprising comfort albums bore such a cruel title I had to look it up, and sure enough it symbolizes the “the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal” in the “overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism.” So I tested its mettle after the most disappointing Tuesday in the history of American anxiety, and underneath the opener’s shifting floor of temptingly odd chords I got “the rotating villains profit off suffering,” “the banality [there’s that word again] of evil poisons the garden,” “Remember they told us the tide lifts our boats up,” and two consecutive non-metaphors: “I can’t look away / In anger I want to disappear.” The sweep of the music on the most politicized shoegaze album I’ve ever heard is similarly disruptive: lyrical, ugly, pretty of course but never for too long. It weaponizes banality to warn of nightmares too normal to anticipate, and too soft-spoken to send a packed theater fleeing for the fire exit.
63. Djrum, Meaning’s Edge [EP]
I am nothing if not a sucker and that doesn’t usually mean for flute but ‘tis the season. Congas, prepared piano squeaks, bass subs and plain old twitch-glitch get this BNM’d Venetian Snares RIYL where it’s going, but the flautist takes it out without once slowing down. He’s also the producer.
62. Wussy, Cincinnati Ohio
Among other things, Wussy’s beloved fifth Beatle/Frank Delgado/pedal steeldriver John Erhardt isn’t around for the shoegaze revival they helped drone into existence whether the Discord discourse knows it or not. So this 40-minute elegy for their fallen friend and errant noisemaker marks their first effort that’s more on the Slowdive side of the divide than MBV, and neither of those legends has ever confronted fans with lyrics as cinderblock-concrete as “get the gun out of your mouth” or “I don’t know what to do with this old drive / It’s got your initials Sharpied on the side / I nearly called to ask you for a ride.” The former is Chuck Cleaver’s brutalism, the latter Lisa Walker’s fractured memory. The gentle float of the music and sucker-punch of the words aren’t the comfiest fit even without the pillows of reverb explored on their eighth LP and first since the world ended. But for titles like “Please Kill Me” and “The Ghosts Keep Me Alive” — and especially Chuck and Lisa’s shared “Disaster About You,” which becomes “disaster without you” — that discomfort is the liminal space in which they sing the peacelessness of the bereft.
61. Kim Deal, Nobody Loves You More
Kim has been a consummate professional for nearly four decades simulating offhandedness within sweet-and-sour tunelets in a lane she built for herself and countless others. I declare she synthesized the essence of alternative as we know it, isolated from punk bitterness or confrontational sarcasm, which explains why she’s so culturally revered without having a particular ton to say. Yes, this is her most arranged and eclectic ever; yes it’s also home to Steve Albini’s final engineerings and she also dabbled in country for “Drivin’ on 9” back when. Having witnessed her beguile a Madison Square Garden full of Olivia Rodrigo fans and their parents with “Gigantic” back in April, I can concur her sneaky oeuvre comes through loud and clear to any masses that will have her: Rodrigo’s, Cobain’s. This touching solo debut does have something to say, and it’s love-simply-love for her late parents and producer friend. Even with the horns on “Coast” and danceable distortions of “Crystal Breath” and string/brass arrangements these still have a welcoming more-of-the-same feel. Loving her the usual amount suits her better than loving her more.
60. Kendrick Lamar, GNX
Think of it like R.E.M.’s Monster; perpetual egghead figures the arenas he’s rocking will want to hear some arena-sized songs. Now having processed this victory lap’s vicious moment, its exciting Top Five takeover, its mild critical drubbing, I’m readier to appreciate it for what it is. Unless reliving Trump’s America permeates his insulation from the healthcare-industrial complex in some way, I’d be surprised if we get an angrier album from this era’s GOAT. The punchy, stabby, even squirty beats are as confrontational as his growl and still artful enough to emphasize the uniqueness of a coming-back-hard album like no other; marvel at all that negative space in “Man at the Garden.” He’s so forever well-rounded that he can’t help but tuck in moments of tenderness like “Dodger Blue” and “Luther.” He still raps in more voices than Eminem doing celebrity impressions. He mentions Kamasi Washington in a Hot 100-topping hit. It will never be among his absolute best and it may yet portend the sort of post-Super Bowl falloff expected of shorties forced to tough-talk to survive. But quick and painless he still loves his pen.
59. Les Amazones d'Afrique, Musow Danse
Uhh, fuck Boygenius lol? OK, so the two headliners in this supergroup big enough to get Pitchfork-reviewed, Angelique Kidjo and Mariam Doumbia (you’d know her name with “Amadou &” in front of it) are long-gone, and Mamani Keïta’s on just two cuts. That leaves an impressive roundup of less distinguished vocalists on the best, twistiest African beats (not to be confused with Afrobeats, an increasingly popular lane for stars blander than Drake, or King Sunny Adé’s ensemble) I’ve heard since Montparnasse Musique’s majestic 2022 production Archaeology. Except these electrofunk adepts hail from Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Congo-Brazzaville, and explicitly seize the floor in both senses on “Kuma Fo (What They Say)” and the title tune respectively for anyone who speaks the languages, which overseer-to-the-stars (U2, Taylor Swift) producer Jacknife Lee does not. His job is to give these hefty hooks, from Congotronics to 808s, space to take up. And more often than not, they hit on a synth sound or a chorus — say, “Amahoro (Don’t Get Angry)” — that does.
58. Still House Plants, If I Don't Make It, I Love U
Analogies to Black Country, New Road or “Jeff Buckley fronting Squid” don’t wash simply because I never would’ve made it this far. But maybe Black Country heads (Roadheads?) can feel me on the so-unlistenable-I-can’t-stop-listening-to-it tip. Jess Hickie-Kallenbach is never operatic — in fact, there’s nothing divisive about her voice, a crucial distinction when the music keeps melting before it solidifies. It’s oft-echoed by admirers that listening to Still House Plants is akin to hearing the songs form in real time, but you’re better off without the s-word ever on the table. The experience is closer to worktapes from band practice, of picking at the same queasy bend like a scab until Finlay Clark’s fingers are too blistered to execute it anymore, and then instead of going home to listen back, Hickie-Kallenbach just improvised over the unedited sprawl. The process isn’t personally what interests me; absorbing the ugliness, that’s the ticket. And feeling something like elation every time the modulation hits in “More Boy.”
57. Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope
They’re not quite the R.E.M. of cathartic shrieking having made it this far down the pike in a storied career that’s occasionally peaked when turning personal acrimony into brainy bloodlettings. But drummer or no drummer, they always come back to righteous fury and the properly jagged sounds that accompany it when exhaled. Even with a relatively new assortment of Whammy-adjacent squeal effects, Carrie Brownstein still picks (and picks at) her guitar like no other and Corin Tucker can still summon the Hellmouth with thorax alone. As been the case since 2019, this isn’t their most memorable batch — though tracks three through five are their catchiest in nearly a decade — but the tensile strength and emotional roar clock it nearer to New Adventures in Hi-Fi than anything after. In diametric opposition to the crestfallen lyrical content, the musical uplift makes hell out to not be so bad.
56. Skee Mask, Resort
Bryan Müller’s a mite austere for me but his fourth long-player is also warmer and a little more satisfying than things that are usually a mite austere for me. His uptempo minimalism gives not-terribly-new sounds plenty of room to reverberate in, with the desired effect of making a preset 808 or something you may have previously dismissed crackle with a little bit of sonority and life. Dribs and drops of tune suggest illusory melody in a form where negative space is top currency. For a purist he sounds shockingly well-rounded, flowing liquidly between sighs of trance synth and skittering breakbeats after a couple patient ambient intros. No wonder he’s a platonic ideal for nerds who tweak knobs. That said, he’s one of the least perverse mysteriosos I can think of; no sick jokes, no strangled notes. Inviting in a little chaos would go a long way towards some kind of purpose, and so would melodies. But maybe we need electro-classicist comfort music that never really finds a place to sit down.
55. Origami Angel, Feeling Not Found
I don’t know anything else about “easycore,” just that this particular duo of Ryland Heagy and Pat Doherty does right by not just metalcore stunts that occasionally leap through the stitching of pop-punk and emo, they do right by prog. The first step, obviously, is 14 songs in 40 minutes with nothing exceeding 4:15 and the next-longest being 3:37. So their pretensions have a character limit. The dynamics are pretty compressed as well; not only do they refuse the usual tempo pinball, there’s no noticeable slowing. If they pull any time-signature sleight of hand they’re rather discreet and judicious about it. At this point if you haven’t heard them, you might be asking how they’re prog at all. They just kind of daydream (usually heavier) new songs in the middle of other (less heavy) ones then wake up and catch themselves without ever crashing the car. Heagy will land on a tantalizingly wrong chord or they’ll hint at new paths without actually taking them; you know, like the jazz guys. Some of the best moments here do veer dangerously close to jazz. The rest are granted fully realized harmonies whether they’re vocals or lead guitar. As for emo, the musical fireworks are so frequent you may not catch the lyrics at all, even though everything in the audio space is neatly front and center in glimmering hi-res. Just when you think they remind you of something you’ve heard before, they shuffle the deck to quickly disabuse you of the notion. The rare album that rewards going against your gut, especially on successive plays.
54. Yaya Bey, Ten Fold
From the excellent “Crying Through My Teeth” on down, this neo-Soulquarian and second-generation Juice Crew progeny grabs hold of a spare groove and never lets go. Like the more ambitious Sudan Archives, she spits ‘em fast for old-guard R&B; only one tune exceeds 3:10. So she’s gotta say her piece fast, and she does: “Don't ask me to go out to dinner on the second of the month, like, what, where the fuck are your priorities?" And if you can believe there’s more where that came from on “Eric Adams in the Club” alone, there is. Over a sample of the X-Files theme.
53. Mk.gee, Two Star & The Dream Police
You have to admire the Discord generation’s sheer will to meme, which comes from growing up in the time of 3D printers and DALL-E I guess. The world is theirs to insert bottom text, so if you punch “Phil Collins but guitar god” into the prompt, out generates 33 minutes of negative-space sculpture more tune-conscious and economical than Adam Granduciel’s’ Mark Knopfler-but-M83 ever was, not to mention Bon Iver or even early Haim. All that’s missing is the indelible “Rockman,” which (I checked) makes a hell of an encore, hopefully amended by the time there’s a CD. And if you doubt the studio wizardry translates to as hot a live ticket as rumored, note that his “shake it up, baby” on “Rylee & I” plugs seamlessly into “Twist and Shout.”
52. Swamp Dogg, Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St
Maybe I’ll return to his (what else?) amazingly titled Auto-Tune records someday, but for now I’ll stick with asserting that maybe hip-hop isn’t the technology’s problem, everything is. The 81-year-old who defines cult legends cements this one from the git without ever clarifying if “Mess Under That Dress” is sticky-literal or loveless-metaphorical. Then the advice that the composer who’s “hung like a T-bone” would like to pass on is “if you want to live the high life / Become an ugly man’s wife.” If he’s never again as outrageous as those first two tracks, well, getting it up twice at his age is no joke. But Margo Price, Jenny Lewis, Bon Iver, and Gary U.S. Bonds have all got his back, even when Lewis leaves him.
51. A.G. Cook, Britpop
Maybe someday I really will get around to A.G.’s “seven-disc” debut 7G, considering it’s only 20 minutes longer than this feature-length opus that kicks off with ten minutes of cute DIY rave so toylike it reminds me of Francis Bebey. from the stacked-and-chopped harmonies of “You Know Me” to the irresistible “Heartache,” the next 40 minutes bubble with aural claymation that’s never less than pleasant and often euphoric. Most crucially, the man who predicted AI’s pop takeover isn’t being sardonic when one of his munchkins insists, “give me your heart.” The next third is the Alex G/Jane Remover bedroom pop of sadboy dreams — and I mean it with both the “pop” and the “sad,” especially when the Sophie tribute “Without” accesses me emotionally like A.G. champion Charli XCX is not yet able to do. Then it’s time for the Side Chaff of electropop, but by then you’re so bowled over you’re just riding out the vibes, the sonics, the tunes.
50. Tucker Zimmerman and Friends, Dance of Love
Even the most sonically commanding Big Thief albums don’t stray far from the disciplines of their marvelous songwriting, but chanted refrains like “Leave It on the Porch Outside” and lullabies like “Don’t Go Crazy (Go in Peace)” are straightforward even for them, even plain. Adrianne Lenker turns out to be just as warm and delightful playing the Sharon Robinson to the 83-year-old marquee obscurity’s Leonard Cohen, on harmony and sweetening. Only instead of “Everybody Knows,” it climaxes with the de facto November blues “Nobody Knows,” which I’m sure was once meditating on the afterlife. It’s more chilling now that the afterlife is looking pretty good.
49. Bacchae, Next Time
Well, there won’t be one. These 32 minutes of fury scan more Olympia than their native D.C. and tick every box: sonics (title tune’s soured surf figure), singing (Katie McD wails “Try” like she wants Corin Tucker to text back), grunge (“Drop Dead Gorgeous” crosses Toadies and “Boris the Spider”), beats (“Just a Rat” hits the floor caked in grime), and every one’s a distinct tune. The theater-kid delivery comes directly off the “Double Dare Ya”-to-Sir Babygirl pipeline. And from “I’m scared of love” to “you’re rubbing me raw” to “I’m not your stepping stone,” the lyrics sound more inevitable than groundbreaking because decades of backlogged revolutions are finally jammed in the gears and they’re just tired of repeating themselves. So they broke up.
48. Various Artists, Twisters: The Album
From the hardest Jelly Roll (and Luke Combs??) you’ve ever heard to onetime yodeling meme Mason Ramsey, what more do you want in a blockbuster event soundtrack? OK, fine — for 29 songs in 93 minutes we ask “what less do you want?” and the answer is of course Benson Boone. But well over an hour of this unusually rocking travelogue of chart country steps up, both with proven titans like Megan Moroney and I-got-nexts like Lanie Gardner. Especially Bailey Zimmerman’s obscure System of a Down bite. And Tucker Wetmore’s parting shot. And Leon Bridges’ best Mk.gee impersonation. And the “Wall of Death” cover. The he/she ratio is less sorry than any hour and a half spent with Nashville radio but I think it didn’t top the Billboard 200 because Morgan Wallen’s invite got lost in the mail (complimentary).
47. This Is Lorelei, Box for Buddy, Box for Star
Nate Amos brings the Beefheart to Water From Your Eyes’ droll, jagged snatches ‘n loops, and subtracts it from Palberta’s Lily Konigsberg in their poppier duo My Idea. On his proper solo debut, he’s never been so accessible. “A Song That Sings About You” takes its power-pop cues from The Who Sell Out, and his rival in male helpers to excellent indie-rock women MJ Lenderman has rarely in his solo guise unloosed such compelling roots-rock as the opening “Angel’s Eye.” I’m not even sure any of the acts I’ve just named have ever put two songs back-to-back as purely pleasurable as the Kiwi Jr.-esque “I’m All Fucked Up” and the quantized piano-and-AutoTune “Dancing in the Club.” If he wasn’t still droll, the whole thing might be a little too easy. It’s not. So I must still insist that admirers check out Kiwi Jr.’s Cooler Returns while Amos figures out how to turn us into lovers.
46. Four Tet, Three
I hung on through the underrated Beautiful Rewind and the raga experiment Morning/Evening and the increasingly New Agey New Energy but by Sixteen Oceans, I couldn’t deny Kieran Hebden’s full-lengths were diminishing returns. So I thrilled to his exquisite KH novelty “Looking at Your Pager,” enjoyed what I read about his bottomless Spotify playlists, unpronounceable pseudonyms, and previously unthinkable MSG takeover, but politely forgot about this proper return from pandemic purgatory after hearing more of the same. Seeking new balm after November 5th, I was bowled over by that very trait. Reliable, comforting, rhythmically crisp, elements always ajar enough to earn the “folktronica” brand insofar as it signifies human error, few if any Hebden peers can match his warmth within simulated delicacy. Only the closing “Three Drums” slips over the New Agey line a tad and a half. The kind of guy who successfully sues his former major-indie label for more royalties and shares (but doesn’t release) the private Taylor Swift house edit he made for his daughter, he’s a role model for doing what feels right in all respects. Including repeating oneself.