Albums of the Year, 2024; 30–21.
30. Many Eyes — The Light Age
Mastering the Art
Right from the jump, there is a very distinct level of trust established between the artist and the listener: you are here for the right reasons. Vocalist Keith Buckley returns to the microphone stand in a new band and promises to unleash some of his trademark gnarl and rasp and razorwire vocals. However. There will also be moments of more distinct and clean singing vocals that compliment the vitriol that you’ve come to expect from him. Many Eyes fades between two different profiles throughout this album, one being a more traditional hardcore and metal approach that we’ve come to expect from the bands that Buckley has fronted, along with the Bellmore brothers who have been known to play with other more metal fronted acts. The other side of these songs all sit somewhere in the realm of more contemporary adult modern rock, with songs that feel a little bit closer to bands like Fuel and Stone Sour giving the band a little bit more freedom to write songs that feel more friendly to a broader audience. The singer’s journey over the past couple of years has been marked with a very intentional spiritual lean, a growth and a cleansing that appears not only in much of the way his personal output reads on socials, but also in the way that he delivers his vocals and lyrics on this effort. I’ll be honest, making it through the first few tracks on this album felt a little bit like meeting up with a friend I haven’t seen in years: some of the old references still jive, some of the old jokes still land, but there’s also more ground between the two parties that have a lot of pathways to pave, a lot of learning and reacquainting to do. And because of that, it took several listens to find a familiarity and a joy in this record, but once we synced up again, the message was crystal clear.
Check Out: Mystic Cord
29. Royel Otis — PRATTS & PAIN
Acid Washed
For a very long time, I was a huge Portugal. the Man fan. Their artsy indie-rock style came at just the perfect time as “scene” music was losing all of its opportunities to do new and passionate things around the repetitive format. Their music acted as a doorway to music from MGMT, Phoenix and other kinds of bands that turned minimalist expression into major dance parties. Something about the ease of access and optimism did a great job of attracting friends and laughs and smiles and all around good times. Royel Otis’ casual cool songwriting across this entire record has had it stick with me for the entire year, since its release in February. It’s got parts that remind me of all kinds of feel good bands, like the ones mentioned earlier, but also some Tame Impala, some Bloc Party… nothing but the kind of thing I’d want to drag with me through some kind of Brooklyn dance revival. Just like a synthetic hallucinogen, this record has the disposable quality of staying in this moment and extracting the maximum amount of joy from what’s directly in front of you because it feels so good and when these effects eventually wear out and leak down a nearby drain, the glow might not cast as strong a light. But while we’re on the ride, this sounds like, this feels like everything.
Check Out: Fried Rice
28. Wisp — Pandora
The Dreary Escape
Admittedly, these six songs can be a bit repetitive. But I think they are six of the best fuzzy, distorted, spacey songs that you might find from a brand new artist all year. One of the greatest feelings I can have is checking out an artists I know nothing about and finding that their sound is something directly in my wheelhouse, something that I knew I was looking for for a long time, but that had not quite materialized yet. Vocally, these songs are haunting. It’s as if there’s a layer or a boundary between what could make this music heavier, more crunchy and aggressive but the separation between is too thick. There’s so much promise here, a great droning and whirring that harnesses the mystique of a feminine charge. At such a young age, Natalie Lu has perfectly grasped the vision of what this revival sound is all about, the small organic machine humming, the sparkling dream noise, the longing, the analog of wires and empty space. The beginning of ‘Mimi’ sounds like it’s falling in on itself, pixelating and deconstructing into some new resolution. As good as this record is, what makes it even better is the potential of what’s to come.
Check Out: Enough For You
27. Incubus — Morning View XXIII
Flashbacks
I hadn’t been as intrepid an audio explorer when I first saw Incubus live at the Family Values Tour in 1998. But since they were a late add-on to the show, they had some kind of underground feel to them. I hadn’t heard note one of their record S.C.I.E.N.C.E., but later downloaded CLIPS of mp3s to get an idea of what they sounded like, and eventually chased them down enough to get into them at a perfect time, when they toured behind Make Yourself and I saw them perform the songs live before I knew the record. From there, both of those albums became deeply braided with my DNA as I learned the albums on CD(!) and had a live performance to reflect upon, seeing them live every time they came around and getting to experience that nascent feeling of having that Favorite Band that was larger than life, before I really had the idea that these were dudes, and that they were just a group of guys touring around music that they were writing in their spare time. It felt otherworldly. Similar to the timeline of my experiences with the band, Morning View’s release came at a time when I was finding new bands, new music, and these songs were a massive departure from the sound and the structure and the personality of what I had grown to know Incubus were about. But instead of leaving them behind (uhhh, kind of like I did when A Crow Left of the Murder dropped), I found ways to get acquainted with this new dynamic, this new stripped down style that embraced a more organic and grounded approach to the music than the previous science fiction, space rock that they were doing prior. 23 years later, as the band released this re-recording, re-performing of that same record, there is such a vibrant joy that I associate with these songs. There’s a rawness that the band expresses through this album, a way that they dash some forgiveness in the production and don’t seek perfection, but instead allow some of their live performance to slip in. There are off-key and scratchy vocals from Brandon Boyd, sloppy fills from Jose Pasillas… but all of the cool noises and samples and scratching is still in tact. In a lot of ways, it feels like an intimate live show. And of course, there are some adlibbed and off-script jam stuff that happens in the meantimes of some of the bridges of the songs. It’s also very cool to hear the backing vocals of new bassist Nicole Row adding a new softness to some of the songs. There is ripe nostalgia here, and as I listened to this record for the first time, it brought me back to such a brilliant experience, a wonderful time in my life where music from this band was my favorite place to be, and where I had the early seeds of what it meant to love something more than myself. This is certainly ranked as high as it is because of deep personal connection with it, and I have zero guilt about it.
Check Out: Circles
26. Gulfer — Third Wind
Swan Song
Fucking RIP. I will miss Gulfer when they’re gone. These Montreal dudes have a career that seems like it was shorter than it should have been based on their brilliant output and their consistency in releasing three of my favorite full lengths over the last 6 years. Several months after the release of this record, they announced that they would no longer be making music and this being their final release gives it something of a sense of melancholy around it. Honestly, there is a fairly distinct difference between the more angular and frantic “emo revival” sound that they used to construct their songs around, but the way the guitars slide and shimmy, remaining true to the geometric imbalances that they used to construct, the heart and soul of this band’s sound is still authentic to the spirit of what got me into them. While these songs seem bigger and more produced, there’s still a very distinct DIY sound to the record. Cymbals still shatter at the edge of their crash, guitars still have that fizzle as the pick rattles off of the metal. The vocals maintain that signature drone/yowl approach that they’ve always had, and I think that kind of defining character is truly how this band will live on in my mind. This is a record that has a personality, one that sounds like I was able to chill with the band as they created it. There’s something intimate and approachable about it, an attribute that makes this being the final release that much harder to swallow. ‘Talk All Night’ is such a positive sounding end for the record. Shouts out to one of the coolest bands to do it. The follow-up EP to this one, LIGHTS OUT, felt a little bit like a note in a bottle washing up on shore, a final peace sign thrown to the horizon.
Check Out: Motive
25. Thrown — EXCESSIVE GUILT
Razor Velocity
You will know if you like or dislike this album within the first 35 seconds of its first track. Are you a fan of irony-free nu metal? Cool. Did either of Emmure’s first two records entertain you? Okay, rad. Do you like heavy music with turntables, samples and Korn-esque guitar effects? You’re in. This is one of the most interesting aggressive albums released all year for me, one that really brought me back to the late 90s when heavy bands had a much harder road to bushwack through to find success and new sets of ears to entertain. There are even throwback sounds (as found on ‘bitter friend’) that are truly the same breed of rap-rock that used to litter rock radio back during that period of time before the pop-punk scene made it completely irrelevant. There is something so authentic about the way this sound wears its influences on its sleeve that it doesn’t sound like its tributing any particular form of music or trying to pay homage to a genre, but instead was purely influenced by a litany of bands that play this style unapologetically. Huge pants, eye brow rings, black t-shirts, spiky hair… this entire album sounds just like that. Plus… eleven tracks and just over twenty minutes? Ideal.
Check Out: on the verge
24. Frontierer — THE SKULL BURNED WEARING HELL LIKE A LIFE VEST AS THE NIGHT WEPT
Raw Technological Unraveling
Three years out from releasing my favorite record of 2021, Frontierer is back with four tracks in 12 minutes which will disconnect you. The sounds coming from within are altered and distorted and wound into unnatural coils and they absolutely shred. When they aren’t making noise that sounds like a sentient arcade machine contemplating its existence, they are playing driving, gnarly, heavy music which will bring to mind violence, unrest and primal hostility. This record released at the very edge of the cliff of 2024 (December 20th), so I haven’t had a ton of time to spend with it, which is one of those unfortunate ‘behind the scenes’ kinds of things that effects where records end up on a list, but don’t take its placement as pure objectivity. This is, without a doubt, one of the best releases of the entire year. It comes in at just over 12 minutes and each one of those seconds is something I wish I could liquify and inject into my bloodstream. There are a lot of small elements of this record that highlight the attention and focus that the band put into their music which elevate it beyond just being songs that a band put together, but act as an experience. The way heavy breathing is accentuated, the way that an out-of-body voice seems to be summoning you into some dark ritual, and possibly my favorite moment on a song all year, the quivering whisper of “oh my…” right before the mayhem begins in ‘Wearing Hell’. This entire release needs a VR simulation to completely immerse you. Somehow, despite it being only four songs, there is a very visual component to it that only exists currently in my imagination.
Check Out: Wearing Hell
23. Crumb — AMAMA
Simmering Trance
I can’t ever tell if this is actually an insult, but this is a very vibes record. I said this about their record from 2019 as well. I can put this record on and let it play on repeat for afternoons that yawn across infinite utopian heat. It’s long and fractal synths coil me into myself, it’s ricky-ticky drum loops pepper my ribs and skull with sonar pulses. Lila Rimani’s vocals act as a spirit guide through the tunnels and orbits of the musics endless and boundariless galactic psychedelia. At times close to Stereolab, at others Blonde Redhead, this band has created a space within the spiritual and spectral gauntlet of release where one can float on a nonmaterial canal into unbounded bliss. AMAMA is a textured and tangible example of how music can sync with something deeper than our perceived selves, can draw us out of our lamp like an imprisoned genie liberated and free for the first time in eons. Colors seem invented in my mind’s eye while listening to this, sounds seem anthropomorphic. I feel like if I could put my head against the beast of this record’s chest, I would be able to sync in time with the creature’s pulse.
Check Out: Genie
22. Delta Sleep — Blue Garden
Through the Sound Prism
Delta Sleep is often such a good time. Release after release has always felt like some kind of guitar dance party in the same vein as something like Minus the Bear. Deep and wildly technical guitar parts are what floats this vessel, while drummer Blake Mostyn not only keeps up but throws in some spice and rattle as well. While tough to keep pace with all that’s going on, it’s easy to observe so much of this stuff on the surface, but what makes this record so special is the subliminal noise and sound that really give this band a deeper sense of third (and fourth) dimensional texture, from dissonance, to fuzz, to the way that you can feel like you were right beside all of the engineering and production that went into work with the album. This album sounds like one of those studio photos where there are about a dozen cables running in twice as many directions as someone stands in the middle of the mayhem, but all you can see are their sneakers. I love the big sound that this record holds. In most of their previous work, I think of this band as portraying a light and fun side, but on this effort, there’s more density, more emotional tension and bigger soundscapes to tackle. There’s a wide berth that Delta Sleep explores here, from bossa-nova adjacent vibes, to dreamy lounge excursions, to their signature brand of geometric guitar dances.
Check Out: Slow Burn
21. Remi Wolf — Big Ideas
Unlimited Potential
This record gets the jump on me every time I throw it on. Its first four tracks are soulful and dancy and full of a wild energy. After that opening blast, it seems to dissolve into a Tame Impala/ MGMT-influenced spectrum of experimental funk and pop that goes beyond being catchy, but instead sounds like some kind of big festival sized celebration. The massive difference between immediate hits like ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Toro’ are on a completely different level from the indie-pop of ‘Cherries & Cream’ and the enormity of ‘Wave’. It’s tough to recommend a specific portion of this collection, but impossible to not want to let someone in on this brilliant little secret. This is an album that is a work to be proud of, showing a diversity of styles and emotions and expressions, all of which demonstrate a remarkable amount of humanity and youth.
Check Out: Soup
