It’s pretty surreal to think this is my 5th end of year list on this blog. To all the people who have taken the time to check my lists and (extremely infrequent) opinion pieces out, I deeply appreciate you. Halfway through the decade, there’s been an abundance of amazing music, always more than I am able to highlight. Year after year, I’ve discovered incredible new artists, but this year my theme seems to be mostly artists I know and love making some of the best music they’ve made in years, or ever. Whether it’s new directions, expanded visions, or refined sounds, these albums stuck with me through this crazy year of music (and everything else).
10. Endlessness – Nala Sinephro
The expressive ambient jazz of Nala Sinephro is immediately recognizable. For fans of 2021’s Space 1.8, her latest effort’s grand, cosmic sound will feel perfectly familiar. However, Nala has grown as a composer, and Endlessness reaches farther and wider, with bigger sounds, more complex layers, and a more focused vision. The album is threaded together by an arpeggiated synth sequence that runs through every track. Sometimes it sits quietly in the back of a soft and beautiful meditation, and sometimes it takes on a playful vibrance that brings varied life to the record. Across its runtime, Nala and her band take on many shapes, like each track is a refraction of light from a new angle. Some compositions truly have an endless feeling to them, and you may wish they really were.
9. My Light, My Destroyer – Cassandra Jenkins
At the center of My Light, My Destroyer, the track “Betelgeuse” plays a recorded conversation with Cassandra’s mom while the two are stargazing. When Cassandra asks if her mom saw an alleged skyscraper-sized asteroid that passed between the moon and the earth, she quietly replies with a twinkle of wonder, “somebody did.” Like much of her work, this moment underscores the importance of experiencing the world around us, be it in events celestial or mundane, or through our personal connections to each other. Those connections can feel incredibly powerful, making someone feel like the meteorite, beautiful, hopeful, but with the power to destroy. Cassandra explores this contradicting nature of love throughout the album, both in beautifully arranged pieces like “Delphinium Blue” and “Omakase”, or punchy, distorted rock cuts like “Petco”. But for me, it might be on the serene instrumental ambiance that follows her conversation in “Betelgeuse” that I feel this message deepest.
8. Wall of Eyes – The Smile
The band formed by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood, and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, has taken flight. What some thought may be a single album project has proven to be just as worthy of attention as Radiohead’s storied career. Sure, The Smile’s sound is most similar to Radiohead’s (Thom Yorke just has that effect), but on Wall of Eyes, they create a spacious and multifaceted experience that finds its own unique space in the members’ discography. Whether it’s songs like “Teleharmonic” floating along in a vast soundscape of pulsing reverb, the sharp bite of “Read the Room” or the theatrical drama of “Friend of a Friend”, The Smile prove over and over that no matter the tone they take on, they are concerned first and foremost with making the most of their new dynamic, writing some killer tracks along the way.
7. Night Palace – Mount Eerie
I have a special love for the music of Phil Elverum. It is always raw and relentlessly honest, frequently sounding like unfiltered thoughts recorded directly from mind to tape. His honesty has persistently been directed inward, reflecting on his life and work, and questioning his greater place in the world. On the sprawling Night Palace, these reflections cover more ground than ever before. The illusion of land ownership, the generational poison of colonization, the impermanence of music and art, the love for his daughter; these are just a few of the topics broached across the record’s 80-minute runtime, each explored with beautifully poetic lyrics. His words are supported by his most explosive and energetic music since his Microphones opus The Glow Pt. 2. Distortion like a Tesla coil rips through the opening track and comes back again and again for some of the album’s most cathartic peaks. Wild drums, blaring synths, and experimental embellishments of recorded wind and waves litter the record, somehow sounding both loosely cobbled together and meticulously crafted. Night Palace is classic Phil, and it shines all the brighter for it.
6. Tigers Blood – Waxahatchee
Waxahatchee is not done with the americana sound adopted on 2020’s Saint Cloud, a major switch-up for Katie Crutchfield’s band from the indie rock that previously defined them. In fact, on Tigers Blood, Katie is proving that this country rock chapter of her career is a perfect fit, continuing to deliver some of her best music ever. Front to back, acoustic guitars, banjos, sweet melodies that stick in your head, and charming harmonies that ease the mind fill these tracks. MJ Lenderman of Wednesday contributes twangy electric guitar throughout, elevating the musicianship of every song. He also lends his voice, most notably on the phenomenal, endearing single “Right Back to It”, which has a strong claim to being Waxahatchee’s greatest song to date. Much like its predecessor, Tigers Blood invites you to the sound of a peaceful existence, of sitting on the porch on a warm summer night, left to reflect on love, loss, and personal growth.
5. Here in the Pitch – Jessica Pratt
Listening to Here in the Pitch, it’s easy to feel somewhat torn between describing it as sweet and slightly haunting. Jessica Pratt’s voice can be tough to pin down in that way, where even the brightest songs on the album can feel faded and wistful. It would be easy to believe this was an old vinyl record found in a dusty basement, forgotten by time and rediscovered. It’s this same sense of timelessness that makes Here in the Pitch feel like an album you’ve merely forgotten yourself, classic from the very first listen. Despite its very short runtime, this album delivers a full package, exploring different facets of Jessica’s 60’s-inspired sound. Be it the the bouncy rhythm of “Life Is”, the Bossa nova-tinged “By Hook or by Crook”, or the dark piano ballad “Empires Never Know”, Jessica manages to switch things up while also building her core sound throughout the record. She’s effortlessly entrancing, like a lone performer at a dimly lit lounge, commanding the stage without ever making eye contact.
4. EELS – Being Dead
The more time you spend paying attention to Being Dead, whether it’s looking at the silly faces of their album art, watching their comedy skits on social media, or indeed, listening to this album, the more you may realize that they are, in fact, clowns. Their silliness, spearheaded by founding members Falcon Bitch and Schmoofy [clarification: non-legal names], can be felt in every moment of EELS, but this feeling of unseriousness gives the album so much charm. When they compare someone they love to Godzilla, when a climactic bridge waxes poetic about cleaning up after a party (“we’re so messy!”), when someone’s ad-lib is cut short by stoned laughter, you can feel the band having what I can only describe as the best time ever. The thing is, under all of their buffoonery, Being Dead demonstrate one track after the next that they are possibly the most creative songwriters in indie rock. Mashing up 60’s and 70’s sounds with noise rock, shoegaze, twee pop, singer-songwriter, and so much more, their songs are complex, layered with harmonies, taking twists and turns that make every song its own adventure. By far, Being Dead was my favorite new discovery of the year, and by god, these clowns can rock.
3. Only God Was Above Us – Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend took a moment to find their footing after the departure of band member and producer Rostam in 2016. Their last album, Father of the Bride, while good, lacked the clear direction the band has always had. Only God Was Above Us not only has put them back on course, but also is a culmination of all of the best elements of their previous records. The wild energy of their self-titled debut manifests itself in crunchy, distorted guitar riffs and noisy production such as on the phenomenal “Capricorn”, or the insanely frantic piano riffs of “Connect”. Catchy melodies and hooks that defined Contra make every song of this album get stuck in your head, humming along to the tracks, sometimes well after they’ve finished. And the mature songwriting of Modern Vampires of the City can be heard in the many tracks that go through sections and phases like “The Surfer” or “Mary Boone”, as well as in the excellent lyrics from Ezra Koenig throughout, which are much more ambitious than may first meet the eye. Throughout Only God, Ezra examines generational divides, how society turns and evolves, often for the worst, leaving each next generation anxious, angry, or downtrodden. He leaves us with “Hope”, that even if it is through collapse, that we may leave what divides us behind, with hope that we can finally let it go.
2. BRAT – Charli XCX
It would be no exaggeration to say 2024 was the year of the BRAT. Charli XCX’s latest took on a life of its own, stoking viral meme culture that permeated even the highest US politics, garnering unprecedented media and critical attention for Charli, and making BRAT-green an inescapable reminder of her dominance in the year’s zeitgeist. Suffice it to say that BRAT rode a year-long wave of hype, and truthfully, it lives up to it. For fans that have been following Charli’s career, her moment under the sun has been a long time coming. Excellent albums like Charli and how i’m feeling now felt deserving of widespread pop fandom; maybe their more abrasive moments kept the masses away, or perhaps it just took some time for people to come around to the hyper-pop aesthetic. In reality, BRAT doesn’t make any corrections to Charli’s sound, but rather leans into it as hard as possible, turning every dial up to 10. BRAT is Charli’s opus, her most realized vision of pop music: explosive, hooky, blown out, and club-ready. Bangers like “Von Dutch” and “365” absolutely beg to be played at max volume, with dance beats and pulsing bass that threaten to tear a room apart. And while Charli leans into her love of the club, she also presents more vulnerability than on any previous record. Self-doubt, her tenuous relationship with the late producer SOPHIE, and the sometimes distrustful and hostile tension between her and other women are just a few of her admissions, and her candid attitude about these topics makes the album feel genuine and transparent. Brutal honesty? That’s BRAT. Unapologetic swagger? That’s BRAT. BRAT is for the mean girls. BRAT is for the romantics. I don’t know if I could exactly say what BRAT is, you just know it when you see it.
1. Sentir Que No Sabes – Mabe Fratti
Sentir Que No Sabes is a magical experience. There is a feeling of mysticism in every track, a spark that glimmers and leaves you feeling transported to another world. The album title, translated as “To Feel That You Don’t Know”, serves a dual purpose, both as a creative philosophy and thematic thread. Mabe Fratti is an experimental cellist from Guatemala, living and making music in Mexico City. It is there that she joined the experimental free jazz scene, learning to play her cello intuitively, divorced from rules and standards. She’s said that in making this album she wished to approach things from a naive perspective, a feeling of not knowing, something her free jazz background demands from her. Along the edges of these tracks, you can hear screeches and squeals from her cello, her bow drumming on her strings, and notes strummed, plucked, and altered by effects. Wild and unpredictable, Mabe’s playing is lively and at times enigmatic and challenging. But the strangest moments of Sentir Que No Sabes are complimented by moments of beauty, of epic emotion, and amazing songwriting. Incredible tracks like “Enfrente” or “Intento Fallido” are instant classics with driving melodies that can lodge into your brain. “Pantalla Azul” floats in the air, fantastical, an adventure of wonder. “Oídos” is a jazzy odyssey, with trumpet layers reminiscent of Radiohead’s “Life in a Glasshouse”. Sung entirely in Mabe’s sweet Spanish voice, Sentir Que No Sabes deals, as the name suggests, in the feeling of not knowing. Although lyrically cryptic, Mabe clearly explores doubt, whether it’s feeling unable to stay on the same page with a loved one, or a feeling of entropy, that things will fall into disorder, and that the more you try to hold onto control, the more they will spiral. Sure enough, the chaos she sings of can be felt on the record long before you try to decipher her words. Sentir Que No Sabes is an evocative journey, one that I found myself returning to, discovering new details and getting lost in its sounds. Sometimes I feel like I’m still searching for the album’s true meaning, but maybe that’s what feeling like you don’t know is all about.
Listening Now 