The 50 Best Albums of 2024
We go again. My 50 favourite albums of this confusing and foreboding year.
Given most of my life in the latter half of 2024 was devoted to pulling together the behemoth list that was The 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century (so far), this one will look a lil different to my regular Albums of the Year pieces. I’ve still listed my top 50, but I am refusing to write about any except for the Top 10. So…here’s that.
Enjoy as always!!!
10. TRANSA (Compilation) — Red Hot Org & Various Artists
I couldn’t let this beautiful collection of songs slip people by without at least trying to turn more people in its direction.
TRANSA is a warm hug of solidarity. It’s a once-in-a-generation collaboration and collective statement in support of a community that is incessantly and increasingly under fire.
Western political establishments and billionaire-backed media organisations have built a meticulous and nefarious campaign against the trans existence and, unfortunately, convinced a lot of regular people of their hateful lies and disinformation. It has led to transgender and gender-nonconforming people facing more discrimination and danger to life than they have for decades.
At this point, the community needs all the activism it can get to fight against a heavy tide of intimidation and discriminatory policies, which is why moments like TRANSA are so essential. Nonprofit LGBTQ+ organisation Red Hot masterminded the project, overseeing dozens of prominent artists, many from the LGBTQ+ community but, importantly, many cis and straight artists too, all working together to create songs of gender empowerment. It’s a mammoth undertaking just in concept, but it just so happens that the ambient-heavy folk / electronica sound that much of the compilation rests in is just simply wonderful to listen to as well.
TRANSA is a long project, but it warrants exploring. There’s never been anything quite like it. You can read more about the incredible contributions Red Hot have made to LGBTQ+ art, culture and health over the last few decades here.
9. The New Sound — Geordie Greep
Ex-Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep emerged mere seconds after the group’s announcement of an ‘indefinite hiatus’ (RIP btw, loved that fuckin band) with a fully-fledged and utterly insane jazz rock record, aptly titled The New Sound.
There are so many wacky and downright unhinged things to unpick from this thing. It’s a fucking mad juxtaposition of some of the most enthusiastically and expertly performed Latin proggy jazzy jams against the bewildering ramblings of an incel who should be put on a watchlist. To be clear, Greep is playing a character on this thing, but the amount of on-the-nose material he seems to just freely tap into, vomit onto a lyric sheet and then recite and perform with such conviction means you need to keep your belief suspended or you might start to worry about this man a little bit.
The sheer speed and technicality that he and his session musicians play with is just mind-boggling. The Mario Kart-type music compliments Greep’s ramblings to a T, despite the stark stylistic contrast between the two elements. It’s just absolutely mad from start to finish, and needs to be heard to be believed.
8. SMILE! :D — Porter Robinson
He’s only gone and done it again.
This man creates the most undeniably sugary sweet and uplifting music I’ve ever heard. Whatever formula he’s discovered by mixing his EDM / electro background with his newfound passion for emo/indie pop has led to a double helping of sky-high, yearning musical delight. And even though the e-boy angle of SMILE! :D was certainly a decision Porter made for this, the sonic direction fits perfectly.
It feels like Porter was very happy to dial up and down the influence of either of these sounds throughout the record. In fact, the first half mainly consists of 8-bit synthpop bangers (likely to kick the record off with fireworks) and the latter half leans much heavier into the indie pop end (to close us out with poignancy). Where we see the most even mixture is likely with my favourite single from the album, Russian Roulette — a multi-phased introspective odyssey that may be Porter’s most ambitious song to date.
Both sounds, no matter how heavily they play a part in each track throughout, are fucking fire. And I’ve been bloody addicted to this thing since it was released in July.
7. Bright Future — Adrianne Lenker
I can say with full confidence that Adrianne Lenker is the greatest active songwriter in Western music, and potentially the greatest living songwriter under the age of 81. And I say 81 specifically because Joni Mitchell is still living at 81 years old.
These are big words, but with so much compelling evidence within her solo work and as the leader of Big Thief, I can’t think of anyone who hits each and every single mark of a singer-songwriter more convincingly than Lenker. Bright Future is the latest example of such a thing — her first solo record since the stunning Songs in 2020.
Not only is Lenker a fantastic guitarist, with what seems like an endless amount of unique and complex ideas and melodies at her disposal, but she is able to describe feelings more accurately and palpably than any other musician I‘ve ever heard. And it leads to some of the most evocative and relatable experiences I’ve ever had listening to music. Her words cut deep into the soul and latch onto your own memories and experiences so tightly that you can’t help but associate them with her lyrics each time you recollect them in the future.
Sadness As A Gift, Free Treasure, No Machine, and Cell Phone Says seamlessly encapsulate this from her latest album, Bright Future. Her unwavering talent knows no bounds.
6. Here In The Pitch — Jessica Pratt
The most liminal release of the year (if that can be accepted as a description lol).
Jessica Pratt has always struck a peculiar note. With her unique vocal timbre and back catalogue of minimal, sparse folk music, she has made a name for herself as a bit of an enigma amongst her more straightforward peers. The liminality has always been hinted at — her vague lyrics and melodies that don’t quite always resolve have meant that there’s always been this feeling that there should be more to what you’re listening to than there is. But as we know very well, that frustration as a listener is a specific type of listening experience itself.
On Here In The Pitch, we see the biggest evolution so far in Pratt’s musical approach. The sound is fuller and the band is bigger than it’s ever been, and her folky tendencies are plugged into an equally mysterious, Brill Building-esque setup with such a heavy tinge of ambiguous nostalgia that it feels more displaced and dreamlike than anything Pratt has produced before. She turns her distinctive voice towards a creepy 1950s-style croon, funnelling it through so much metallic reverb that it echoes around in your head like a hazy fever dream, contributing even further to the hallucinogenic nature of the recording.
The whole effect is something quite extraordinary. It thrusts you into a half-space between performance and effect that you can’t quite make sense of until it’s over, at which point you can only unreliably recall the vague fleeting flurries of barely tangible sounds that make up the track listing. But that’s what makes it so addictive too. It’s just incredible work.
5. Imaginal Disk – Magdalena Bay
Tame Impala probably had to stop the presses when this came out because whatever MagBay have achieved here is probably exactly what Kevin Parker wanted to do, but three times better (sorry KP luv u lots xxx).
This is just an absolutely stunning collection of some of the best psychedelic pop bangers of the decade so far. Since well before MagBay’s debut album in 2021, Mercurial World (which was also magnificent), they’ve obviously spent the last few years cooking up the most fire material of their life. It’s less synthy than their previous work and more detailed & psychedelic, which has allowed them to develop and string out the songs even further, to the point where many of the tracks are full-on epics that do nothing but mesmerise you into hypnosis.
It’s like a top-tier Carly Rae Jepsen album with rockier instrumentation and vocal fry. The production is the most crisp I’ve heard on a pop album in years, Mica Tenenbaum’s dramatic delivery and excellent melody work root their way into your head for days afterwards, and the punchy, dizzying song structures are so affecting that you’ll want to just play, replay and replay Imaginal Disk again and again. Impeccable work from these two geniuses.
4. “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” — Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Everyone knows what’s happening. Despite what politicians and the media establishment are peddling, despite the lies and deceit pushed by the Israeli state, despite the racist and Islamophobic groups doing all they can to justify the displacement and mass murder of the Palestinian people, it is undeniable that the Israeli state has been enacting a genocide in Gaza for well over a year.
For GY!BE’s latest album, they have decided to put this ongoing atrocity at its front and centre. As a group that has always stood against oppression and state control, the band have made a conscious effort to label all aspects of this latest album, which reflects the horrors taking place in Gaza, with the explicit facts that surrounded the situation at the time of recording (hence the title). It means journalistic publications covering the album’s release must display and explain the title and musical direction of the record, ensuring there’s no dilution of the message they want to convey. Of course, since 13th February 2024, this death toll has continued to rise and the heinous actions taken by the Israeli state have carried on without consequence.
As for the music at hand, Godspeed have appropriately toned down the epic, cinematic side of their compositions to focus on something more poignant and moving. The songs are relatively shorter than on other Godspeed albums, and they’re more melodic, emphasising the progression of each movement and reaching their resolutions a little sooner & more cleanly than many historic Godspeed tracks often do.
Doing this keeps the focal point directly on the subject matter and means it doesn’t diverge too far from the core of each song’s concept, all of which attempt to connect with the Palestinian experience within an apocalyptic warzone. The compositions are often gut-wrenching and foreboding, but occasionally they find reasons to convey hope and resistance, like with the closing track (and lead single) GREY RUBBLE — GREEN SHOOTS.
I can never expect to comprehend the sheer devastation Palestinians are currently experiencing in Gaza, the West Bank and all over the world, but I’m aware that artistic statements like this from as many Western groups as possible can only help to fight against the twisted narratives that our countries continue to support. So please give this album your time, and do what you can to help support the causes that are supporting Gaza, plus all those who are affected by the Israeli state’s maniacal actions.
3. SCRAPYARD (Mixtape) — Quadeca
This man’s trajectory is something to behold. Just five years ago you’d throw him in the same group as Dax and KSI, and now he’s one of the best experimental indie / emo hip-hop hodge-podge artists in music. SCRAPYARD, despite just being a mixtape of the unconnected ideas Quadeca had while producing and performing his previous album, 2022’s I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You, is a simply astonishing accomplishment from a DIY musician.
Whatever Quadeca says about the origin of the project, the record has such fantastic sequencing. It’s like in trying to pull together a puzzle of which tracks would suit next to which, he discovered a sort of Fibonacci combination of musical and narrative pacing that has made the overall listening experience just as satisfying as it would be for the most meticulously planned concept albums. He puts 110% effort and passion into his performances, matching the mood of each song perfectly and adding various vocal stims in place of adlibs to keep up the energy throughout. My fave example of this is U DON’T KNOW ME LIKE THAT, a melodic emo pop/rap voyage with an immensely consistent syllable-beat alignment that hits me every single damn time.
He navigates through so many different sounds on this thing — something you now would come to expect from a multi-talented DAW disciple who loves all kinds of music. We get hazy glitchy indie experiences on tracks like DUSTCUTTER and UNDER MY SKIN, plain lovely singer-songwriter folk on EASIER and GUIDE DOG, pop rap bangers like A LA CARTE and WAY TOO MANY FRIENDS, grimey hip hop statements like EVEN IF I TRIED and GUESS WHO?, and even the best album closer of the year (imo) with TEXAS BLUE, which Quad wrote in collab with the one and only Kevin Abstract.
The result is one of the most fun (and most emotionally gratifying) projects of 2024. So much so that Quad was actually my Spotify Wrapped top artist 😮 (…but we’ll wait to see what the full 12-month timeframe of last.fm has to say about that). I just keep getting bowled over by what this guy can do, and his next actual album, Vanisher, is out super soon. Catch me at the proverbial midnight queue for that.
2. BRAT — Charli xcx
Well this was bound to happen wasn’t it.
To save us all time (mostly me), I don’t think I need to find more reasons than have already been referenced to explain the brilliance of this album, and the excellence of this seminal pop artist that I have adored for years. So I’ll leave you with my words about BRAT that I left in my Best 100 Albums of the 21st Century (so far) article. Where it placed 39th.
I’m so immensely happy that Charli is finally getting some mainstream plaudits for the music she always wanted to create. It took time for her to break out of the khia asylum she was locked up in after SUCKER, but in recent years she has emerged as one of the most powerful pop stars on the planet.
All this said, BRAT is somehow not my favourite of 2024. Blame the canonical rules I changed for the 21st Century article 😉
1. A Dream Is All We Know — The Lemon Twigs
As blockbuster as BRAT indisputably was, and as much as it’ll have a much more impactful and lasting impression on 21st Century culture than my my final №1 choice, this album has supplied me with more solace and elation than any other in 2024.
I didn’t know much about The Lemon Twigs before their previous album Everything Harmony, which was only released in 2023. That record featured some of the most accurately-appreciated ’60s sunshine pop and rock that I’d ever heard. In my Best 50 Albums of 2023, I said in relation to it:
“It’s mad to think that these brothers are Gen Z. To learn and then tackle a very specific, bygone sound so accurately, with so much consideration for the lyrical themes, guitar tones and song structures must have taken such a deep knowledge and appreciation of the history of this music scene, because it’s so, so easy to get it wrong and to instantly fall victim to pastiche or parody.”
…and by golly, on their new 2024 record A Dream Is All We Know, they’ve only gone and bloody done it again!!!
This album is full of the most heart-warming music I’ve heard this year. These boys have stumbled upon something magical and I have abjectly refused to let go of it for two years now.
A Dream… has stuck by me through some testing times this year, helping to provide much-needed injections of hope, confidence and happiness in moments where I really, really needed them. I’m immensely grateful for it.
And while I’m sure it’ll continue serving this purpose, it’s started serving a new, more positive one too. The songs are so goddamn HAPPY and FUN to SING!!! Belting these bangers out into the world is fucking cathartic, and my highest dopamine spikes of the year have been while listening to this wonderful little thing. It’s like a dog — it’s just so unwaveringly good and kind to you that you can rely on it for infinite joy. It’s a serotonin factory. A glee gun. A deluge of delight. And I fucking love it. So there.
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…aaaaand now for the rest:
11. Cool World — Chat Pile
12. Only God Was Above Us — Vampire Weekend
13. Patterns in Repeat — Laura Marling
14. Night Palace — Mount Eerie
15. Romance — Fontaines D.C.
16. Two Star & The Dream Police — Mk.gee
17. Lives Outgrown — Beth Gibbons
18. Absolute Elsewhere — Blood Incantation
19. GNX — Kendrick Lamar
20. Endlessness — Nala Sinephro
21. NO HANDS — Joey Valence & Brae
22. You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To — Knocked Loose
23. Big Ideas — Remi Wolf
24. Cutting the Throat of God — Ulcerate
25. I Lay Down My Life For You — JPEGMAFIA
26. Die Berge — Paysage d’Hiver
27. Seed of a Seed — Haley Henderickx
28. #RICHXXXHAITIAN — Mach-Hommy
29. Fearless Movement — Kamasi Washington
30. Maze Envy — Civerous
31. She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She — Chelsea Wolfe
32. It’s Sorted — Cheekface
33. Diamond Jubilee — Cindy Lee
34. Prelude to Ecstasy — The Last Dinner Party
35. Um — Martha Skye Murphy
36. Harbour Century — Eunuchs
37. Something in the Room She Moves — Julia Holter
38. Night Reign — Arooj Arab
39. The Great Bailout — Moor Mother
40. Mahashmashana — Father John Misty
41. My Method Actor — Nilüfer Yanya
42. Why Lawd? — NxWorries
43. Funeral for Justice — Mdou Moctar
44. Charm — Clairo
45. CHROMAKOPIA — Tyler, The Creator
46. Songs of a Lost World — The Cure
47. Tidal Memory Exo — Iglooghost
48. Humble As The Sun — Bob Vylan
49. The Collective — Kim Gordon
50. Spectral Evolution — Rafael Toral
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