053/ My favourite albums of 2024
This year by mistake I had the same favourite LP as everyone else. Though I guess not everyone of my generation.
To be fair though, Charli put out Brat twice, three months apart, totally different and both times it was basically the greatest thing ever. It’s the record the word ‘slay’ was rebooted for. Aside from marketing genius, her sheer persistence turns out to be hard to deny. That said, it’s amusing how many specialist music blogs, indie record shops, alternative magazines, placed Brat second in their end of year charts, acknowledging its greatness but then shoving some pet genre artist, or a new discovery (and/or in some cases a buy-in) up into first place. What’s the plural of ‘doofus’? Doofuses? Doofies? Doofi?
Of course fucking Brat won music in 2024. Trigger device for a fantastic, anarchic monocultural moment. In a year when Queen Bey, Dua, Taylor, Billie, all put out new work, nothing touched Charli’s flight up to the a-list. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, the book’s out next year.
Honestly, I tried to resist it myself, too. For three months Brat sat in second place on my chart, behind Adrianne Lenker. Then they were tied. And in the end, I bowed to the inevitable and admitted it was my outright favourite, twice over. As a (mostly retired) songwriter, it almost feels like sacrilege to place a club pop act above Lenker’s monumental achievement in organic song craft. But in a funny way, lyric-wise at least, they’re rather similar records (don’t hang up) as both reach hard for a rare degree of truthfulness, sharply juxtaposing turmoil with exuberance. Both contain real timelessness in the writing (within their worlds) while at the same time being effortlessly of the now. But I digress.
In the end, this year I rated more than 80 albums a 7/10 or better (the requirement is minimum three listens before forming an opinion). Here’s my Top 30…
01/ Charli XCX — Brat (Quietus review)
02/ Adrianne Lenker — Bright Future
03/ Bára Gísladóttir / Iceland Symphony Orchestra — Orchestral Works
04/ Waxahatchee — Tigers Blood
05/ Keeley Forsyth — The Hollow (Quietus review)
06/ MJ Lenderman — Manning Fireworks
07/ Nala Sinephro — Endlessness
08/ Beyoncé — Cowboy Carter (Double Chorus review)
09/ Cindy Lee — Diamond Jubilee
10/ Rachel Chinouriri — What A Devastating Turn Of Events
11/ Arooj Aftab — Night Reign
12/ AK/DK — Strange Loops
13/ Stephen EvEns — Here Come The Lights
14/ Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard And Soft (Quietus review)
15/ Four Tet — Three
16/ Wendy Eisenberg — Viewfinder
17/ Doechii — Aligator Bites Never Heal
18/ Michael Kiwanuka — Small Changes
19/ Josienne Clarke — Parenthesis, I
20/ Deerlady / Mali Obomsawin & Magdalena Abrego — Greatest Hits
21/ Bonny Light Horseman — Keep Me On Your Mind / See You Free
22/ Maggie Rogers — Don’t Forget Me
23/ Annie Dressner — I Thought It Would Be Easier
24/ English Teacher — This Could Be Texas
25/ Griff — Vertigo
26/ Tapir! — The Pilgrim, Their God and The King of My Decrepit Mountain
27/ Immersion with Thor Harris & Cubzoa — Nanocluster Vol 2 double 10”
28/ Kaia Kater — Strange Medicine
29/ Julie Christmas — Ridiculous And Full Of Blood
30/ Aoife O’Donovan — All My Friends
Notes
Incidentally, the world’s best selling album of 2024 (by far) was my number thirty-one:
31/ Taylor Swift — The Tortured Poets Department
Also —
Thomas White’s Queer Freedom Drone Ensemble — ‘Bearing Witness’ was listed in my Top 20 albums for most of the year, but it’s a single drone track, so doesn’t really qualify. Tom’s new project White Magic For Lovers looks likely to make next year’s chart, so watch out for it, a glorious debut.
A nod to Adrianne Lenker’s homemade six track mini-album I Won’t Let Go Of Your Hand, which she released exclusively to Bandcamp right in the middle of her promo campaign for Bright Future and has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Palestinian relief aid. It doesn’t strictly qualify, more of an EP, but I couldn’t delete it from my list. Songs are as good as some on Bright Future.
Aside from Charli, three of my top ten are little known outside their scenes, while seven are mainstream picks who’ve featured in many other Album Of The Year charts. This sort of balance remains the same, right down the list.
Cindy Lee is an American underground afficionado’s breakthrough act this year, by which I mean they’re still playing small clubs but now they’re sold out. That scrunchy, Lynchian gem of a record was pleasingly hard to locate, with Lee avoiding Spotify and other streamers, which (take note) has probably aided their mystique, more than stifling growth.
Here in the UK, Rachel Chinouriri is more widely regarded but I still reckon was badly overlooked this year, deserving of a Mercury nod, much more radio and TV attention, and for her big stage Glastonbury set to have been scheduled an hour later, so she could’ve got on telly. She’s done Later but that’s barely a breath of promo help these days. No wonder this kind of UK artist often gets frustrated and heads to California to nurture their career. Hopefully a breakthrough will snowball through Spring 2025, when she opens on Sabrina Carpenter’s arena shows.
A big nod for the brilliant noisy Icelandic neoclassical composer and double-bassist Bára Gísladóttir for a second consecutive appearance in my Top 10. The closest other artists got to that consistency was Arooj Aftab and Aoife O’Donovan, who both made last year’s Top 30 as well.
Thank you for reading, it means a lot.
icymi I’ve made a zine of my best words from 2024, called Just A Truffle Race to the End. It’s 56 pages, A5 size and I printed 100 copies, which are going fast. Get it here (£4) via Border Crossing online shop. Thank you.
