Take My Money, Wreck My Sundays: The 30 Best Albums of 2024 So Far (#10-1)

From Waxahatchee to Woochiewobbler

Sergeant Wooch: Woochiewobbler

10. Pylon Reenactment Society, Magnet Factory

More freeform and less mantra-like than the original outfit’s classic material, especially the guitars that let the bass anchor possible permutations of a song’s breadth without resorting to anything resembling improv or, heavens, jamming. Like a screw, it tightens the deeper you go. One effective shortie reprises a couple ringing chords from the singer’s 1979 introduction to the world, which was also one of the introductions of the dance beat to punk-derived music. Turns out that one dates back to 1979, too, just never got around to recording it. The longie that follows is even catchier and sounds like a B-52 contributes, a trait it would share with the last Miranda Lambert album. Less onomatopoeic than the original outfit even though the grunting comes more naturally at 68.

9. Woochiewobbler, Is My Future Bright? [EP]

What, you’re surprised a woman renders psych-cloud-sing-rap in vivider colors melodically (try that recorder-like synth on “Madder”) and lyrically (try last year’s “Fork Me Endlessly”) than many, many male-identified counterparts from Bladee to Gunna? Or that the artist who’s got such a way with words is also pushing an OnlyFans? In this economy? How Pitchfork sussed out a breakup narrative among these 12 minutes in heaven (unless the recurring phone-dial tag counts) I’ll figure out when the high comes down.

8. Pouty, Forgot About Me

Rachel Gagliardi sharply contests CMAT’s “No More Virgos” with the simple-enough “Virgos Need More Love” when her long-awaited solo debut hits its stride, purveying Kay Hanley pop-grunge from yet another angle, best witnessed on “Denial Is a Heavy Drug” (dig that sped-up “Teen Spirit” drum entrance) and highly recommended even if you don’t prefer Charly Bliss’ Guppy to Young Enough. I dig both and enjoy this McNugget of pink slime just the same. When the medium-rare grunge of her former duo Slutever gives the second half of a 26-minute “album” the jolt it needs, you’ll be compelled to replay the first — that’s how it works, right? Gagliardi’s other sometime-collaborator Japanese Breakfast could also benefit from her fuzzbox, though she wouldn’t be winning the Uproxx Critics Poll if she did. The jazzy “Underwear” and twangy “Bridge Burner” would fit on a big-voiced CMAT album themselves. And “TV on TV” is definitive proof that she should start duo number three with Alicia Bognanno. Bouty? Pully?

7. 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.

6. Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood

I’ve long felt Katie Crutchfield is so consistent, her melodies so circular and easy to take for granted — yet in an indie-critical continuum that treats songs as beside the point she’s never made a single record anyone could call underrated, not even her 2022 one-off with Plains where Jess Williamson provided fresh twang — that it’s become difficult to tell the difference between reliable and pleasurable. That there’s a ceiling for what she does, not having revved tempos before or since 2017’s cranked Out in the Storm or experimented beyond the three-four-minute guitar format since 2015’s (fine, underrated) Ivy Tripp. So I thought 2020’s automatically beloved Saint Cloud was settling into something I could appreciate if not adore, and on first listen, Tigers Blood appeared to confirm this. Nope. The slide-and-banjo overtures her tunecraft has marinated in for half a decade are finally given her brightest power-pop to flavor, having woodshedded out any merely good ones. Jake Lenderman is a crucial duet partner on the smashing “Right Back to It” and owner of the guitar hook on “Crowbar,” though as with Wednesday his solo material never rises to these vistas. So you could just as easily credit Taylor Swift for the no-bullshit scansions that make “Crimes of the Heart,” “3 Sisters,” and “The Wolves.” This is the best record Crutchfield’s ever made, beholden as ever to simple foundations that tall stacks of harmonies can rest on until you’re shouting along with “I get bored” like you just discovered Deftones and it’s 1995. And it’s named after a cult frozen-treat flavor that triangulates strawberry, watermelon, and coconut.

5. High on Fire, Cometh the Storm

Matt Pike is a golden god to some for grinding us to Sleep (who are more static than High on Fire, if you can imagine) and an amateur David Ickeolyte to others, so permit me to not Google his conspiracy doggerel and just dub him the unthinking man’s Motörhead on 2018’s excellent, Grammy-recgonized Electric Messiah. Six years later, this may top it; when a metal band’s longest album is their best, it’s cause for black celebration. For all the detours into bağlama instrumentals and Arabic-scale psychedelia, it’s still the thickness of the bruise-rubbing guitar and all its queasy blues that keeps me cometh back. And even the levelheaded among us can feel appropriately doomy opening statements like “no one will listen here / Too late now so we dread it.” Even if that includes Pike.

4. Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter

You already know it isn’t country, so may I suggest rock? It’s not impossible that the third and final installment of Ms. Knowles-Carter’s Renaissance trilogy will crank up the Marshalls for huge-voiced Pat Benatar cosplay like her co-conspirator Dolly P’s, but I don’t see it. These 78 minutes (inexplicably minus eight on the CD, including Linda Martell’s 28 seconds) are likely the long and short of Bey’s fling with the guitar, and she gets bored enough before it’s over to subject Patsy to a Jersey club remix, et cetera. The sitar intro, suite presentation, miispelled tiitles, multipartite songfulness, familiarity with Jann Wenner’s (well, former) Rolodex, not to mention the often drumless arrangements that scream MTV Unplugged all spell R-O-C-K. She’s thinkin’ ‘bout good vibrations more than any drinkin’, and the writing almost entirely in semiotics that made Lemonade somewhat amelodic is buoyed here by her prettiest music ever, which usually means the singing. It took me over a month to hear it without an attitude — that she wastes the opportunity to showcase 90-year-old Willie Nelson’s still hearty pipes just like when she brings out Diana Ross to play second fiddle in the Renaissance film. It’s harder than ever to take her narcissism; as reported, she wastes a rare opportunity to convey vulnerability by turning “Jolene” into a beatdown threat. (Her husband’s lone contribution to this history-making trilogy thus far is clapping on it.) But it’s already rooting out the brainwashed as we face down an infinitely more dangerous narcissism in our elections yet again. So if you can stomach this always, always being about her, this is a singer’s record as galvanizing as anything she’s ever done. It’s too long, but not like the almost unwatchably paced Renaissance. You’ll make it to the end, mostly because that’s where the peaks are, on which you’ll notice Miley Cyrus and Shaboozey steal just enough of the spotlight. That’s the thing with billionaires: she gets by with a little help from her friends.

3. Pissed Jeans, Half Divorced

I’ve always admired other people admiring this band, who’ve been trying to make a difference since long before hardcore was back in style. So all that kept me from appreciating their acclaimed odes to ice cream or apologies for the male gaze was that they couldn’t sing, play, or write songs. (Actually, that last one’s Rid of Me-goes-Jesus Lizard churn sounds pretty good today.) Titles like “Ashamed of My Cum” didn’t help either, but 2017’s Lydia Lunch-produced Why Love Now really was a turning point towards meaningful (if crude) male feminism (that still took at least 30% of its rage out on kinksters while still mocking them for being scared to express their desires). “The Bar Is Low” was a well-titled best-case scenario previously unimaginable with a riff, a point, and a video that was actually funny. So seven years later, they turn out their most listenable album figuring out some other stuff, like keeping more than half the songs on a noise-punk album under two minutes. Most decisively, they finally let themselves indulge in rock’n’roll pleasure, on the George Thorogood stomp “Helicopter Parent,” actual punk song “Cling to a Poisoned Dream” or setting off a Greg Ginn power-solo on “Monsters.” Good Black Flag is the m.o. here, with the motorik “Junktime” coming yay close to quoting “Slip It In” and Matt Korvette playing the young Henry Rollins on “Everywhere Is Bad,” complete with “TV Party”-style backup shouts. They finally discover a sexual culture worth mocking on “Anti-Sapio.” “Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt” is self-explanatory. And it’s not too late to change their name to Pissed Dads.

2. The Paranoid Style, The Interrogator

With Peter Holsapple taking over on lead guitar (of which “I Love the Sound of Structured Class” takes full advantage by nicking Eliminator’s gated pulse), these exceptional Stiff Records scholars continue pursuing labors of louche unknown to the TikTok timeline: “Lust for Life” drums, “Rudie Can’t Fail” horns and for that matter “Careless Whisper” sax, a lyrical acumen for dropping Scrabble scramblers like “temerity” in the same breath as Thin Lizzy’s biggest hit. But there are fewer overt musical or political references on their most muscular production job so it’s easier to mindlessly immerse until Elizabeth Nelson’s jokes start opening up on a power ballad featuring two words never heard in a song before, “kerfuffles” and “vouchsafe.” The ivories tickled from Elvis Costello’s “Man Out of Time” I have. That’s the idea: something borrowed, something Almost Blue.

1. Sheer Mag, Playing Favorites

Not only is it as ornately guitar’d as Speedy Ortiz’s densely woven Rabbit Rabbit, but the breathtaking architecture of Philly’s finest borders on downright classy. I’ve scarcely heard such an accomplished fretwork album since…Bassekou Kouyate’s Jama Ko? “When You Get Back” is worthy of 1983 Marshall Crenshaw backed by the 1983 Blackhearts, and the other power-popabilly one bounces like the locally appropriate Hall & Oates. For sure they’re still honoring Thin Lizzy (and the Dolls) on “Eat It and Beat It” before welding a country intro to Aja-funk boogie (“Moonstruck”) and purveying plenty of post-Pretenders jangle, even on the funky, nearly six-minute centerpiece “Mechanical Garden” that finally begins after an overture of Slade, orchestral fanfare, and record-warping itself into the right key. That one even features a section of Agadez-sourced shredding that closely resembles the guest it turns out to be. Always a force onstage or behind a layer of fuzz on their records, Tina Halladay is more than a host for the bounty of fleet, often harmonized guitar leads, and they’ll more than hold court over these lovely compositions in the club. Even the backup lads sparkle. Their most pleasurable record, and the classic rock triumph many of their ‘70s heroes didn’t have in them, or even the chops for.