Albums of the Year, 2024; 40–31.
40. Touche Amore — Spiral In a Straight Line
A Strained SOS
There’s a specific comfort I have around listening to this album. Touche Amore was such a crucial linchpin in a movement of bands and styles around 2010 when I think I may have been sort of losing steam in chasing new bands and instead disappearing into a night life where a lot more of the lines of music had the lines blurred. Bands like Touche, Pianos Become the Teeth and La Dispute brought a raw and glistening sense of urgency to a scene that needed to be turned up somehow. Jeremy Bolm’s vocals have this punk spirit around them, something that drips with youth and angst and revolt while his lyrics have some of the most microinspective reflection. The way that he’s shared some of his most personal moments, his shattering self-doubt over nearly two decades makes this record a little bit of a relief and a celebration of the band’s time together. While his white-hot frenzy has defined the band’s sound for their duration, the way that the music has been able to create tension using a more composed and indie-rock influenced style is what makes this band special. Instead of the way bands like Knocked Loose signal a meltdown with heavy chords and rib shattering double bass, this band assembles an ocean of reverb and sharp, clean drumming to create a dichotomy which fully complements the complex ocean of being a conscious and emotive human being. There’s an awareness afoot that feels like the band is talking directly to you on an intimate scale. I think this record might be a bit dialed back on the gravity, but the sound is still there, something that feels like opening an old notebook and adding new sentiments to a sentence left unfinished.
Check Out: Disasters
39. Love Letter — Everyone Wants Something Beautiful
Boundless Passion
When a friend sent ‘Misanthropic Holiday or Vacation’ my way, I was immediately hooked by the bare-hearted passion and urgency that the song boasted of. I knew nothing of the band’s connection to Defeater (or Verse), only that this kind of verve is addictive, attractive, undeniable. This is one of those records that is best served beside its lyrics so one can follow along with the themes and convictions of Quinn Murphy bellows. The first couple of times I listened to this record, though, I didn’t need to follow along or pay attention to the words that were being said to feel utterly moved. There is a persuasion in the vocals here that paint a severe portrait of emotion, of passion and need. Digging deeper and finding the political values, the humane beliefs, the cry for cleaner living was just a bonus. But there are times that art doesn’t need to paint its portrait beautifully in order to awaken a fire within you. And this is one of those records. Ugly at times, cracked and imperfect and frayed at times, but all in all it burns with an affect that screams for your attention. This is not an easy record to listen to, and it was clearly not a fun one to make. There is no way to listen to this record and experience apathy. Even if your engagement with it doesn’t mirror or parallel the rage, the anger, the desperation, the meaning that reflects from the music itself, this is a record that can act as a catalyst to come alive, to stir something within, to arise.
Check Out: Misanthropic Holiday or Vacation
38. Killer Mike — Michael & the Mighty Midnight Revival, Songs For Sinners and Saints
Lament
To have a follow up that’s this strong on the tails of last years MICHAEL is a major testament to the amount of content and strength that Killer Mike has in his arsenal. This is a record that simultaneously goes extraordinarily hard and begs the listener to turn this volume high, but which also reads as intrinsically introspective, telling stories that are worth hearing word for word. For as much time as he spends flossing and engaging in the Industry Expectation of bragging on his accomplishments, there’s a level of reflection and doubling back on a past that was filled with strife and betrayal and guilt. There are many human elements that fade into the fable. Family issues, families falling apart, young relationships, adult relationships, childhood memories… all of these things contribute both positively and negatively to the final product that we receive as the man Michael Render. Ever since I first heard Run the Jewels, Mike’s voice commands my attention, drags my mind into his ether, and whether it’s to bob my head along with the rhythm of the song on the surface or diving into the ink that he drew from his pen into the paper, this is a special performer of special performers, someone who represents the culture, his community and himself in a way that each and every creative person needs to aspire to. This is another jewel in his crown. And like I said to have heat that follows up his Grammy Award winning record so quickly? Stunning achievement.
Check Out: Nobody Knows
37. Lupe Fiasco — Samurai
The Household Name
There has always been some kind of current running through my idea of Lupe Fiasco. The way that he always seems to be left out of so many conversations when it comes to hip-hop, the way that he runs on his own clock, releases records on his own time. There’s something more powerful about the way he conducts himself than many of the other marquee artists whose name dominate the mind space surrounding the genre. He’s always had a sound that harkened back to what I (an old person) considered “rap” and “hip-hop”. There’s a musicality that Lupe brings to the table that he refuses to sacrifice in order to create music that the industry wants him to make. Something’s gotta be up. I don’t know, man. All of his tunes sound like they need to be broadcast far wider with far more ears absorbing it than do. The first two tracks on this record alone feel like they have what it takes to dominate the space and I’m just not sure what prevents it from happening. Is it the absence of virtual violence? The omission of abject sexual description? These songs move. They flow. Big hooks, honey smooth verbal movement. For Fiasco to still be making music like this on his ninth album is a phenomenon and I hope he keeps pushing into the double digits.
Check Out: Mumble Rap
36. Big|Brave — A Chaos of Flowers
Disembodied Vocalizations
I don’t think a Big|Brave record has come by without me listening to it and being blown away by it. From their debut, Au de La, right up until now, there has been an incredible bond between myself and their music, a beautiful handshake of sorts that exists between their quiet storm and my stunned acquiescence. They make music for enormity. Grandiose plains of turpitude and wicked black. But, like… I don’t want to say that their music is evil, or dark, or depraved. It just exists in a place of scalding black, in a reality where it seems like very little else is known. There is an instrumentality to the way that this band allows their guitars to sing out, to ring with some baleful rattle as if from beyond the pale, and this soulful and weary groan marries incredibly with the vocals that resonate as if summoned from within a phantom. I love how this record sounds like deep sea recordings of excavated wrecks, like the shimmering of nuclear radio transmissions in deep space, like the shivering of the core of the planet itself.
Check Out: canon : in canon
35. Hurray For the Riff Raff — The Past Is Still Alive
Wistful Plains
My metropolitan heart creeps ever closer to the pasture of the frontier. I’m often smitten by the dulcet tones of a slide guitar, a violin and the driving chords of the alt-country genre. Alynda Segarra croons and yearns over the yawning and lowing magic hour daydream of the storybook American Southwest throughout this record, one that is expertly written in the vein of classic and heartfelt songwriting. I love this record for its mood, for its lightness and for its expressions upon modest romance. This is a pretty album, astral in its plume.
Check Out: Vetiver
34. Sweet Pill — Starchild
Just a Taste
This EP holds just four songs but might as well have 8–12, seeing as every time I play it I have to listen to it two or three times. I adored Where the Heart Is from 2022, and new music from them has always felt like such a gift. There’s a complexity to the guitars that feels emotionally expert in a way that shows an expression beyond the band’s youth and the vocals match that sense of cathartic release. The tunes hit big swells and round wide corners. So many of these songs defy the instincts of where I believe songs are going to go and amid those XL beams of spiritual expanse, they take slower, more intricate avenues into the heart. The final two songs’ back to back dynamics are a gorgeous example of what makes the library of Sweet Pill so extraordinary. ‘Eternal’ represents the dreamcatcher-woven complexity of the more delicate facets of their output, while ‘Sympathy’ bursts into the more explosive and border-destroying energy that peppers the highlights of their music.
Check Out: Sympathy
33. Susto — Live From Codfish Hollow
Southern Rhetoric
One of the main reasons this record is on this list is because every time I’ve seen this band live, it feels like I’ve known them for years. In fact, this is not true. When I first moved to Charleston, this band’s sticker was all over the place and I think I may have checked out a song or two, and I wasn’t quite Southernized yet and it came across as a strange modern alt-country band and I checked out pretty quickly. But over the last couple of years, the only way I’ve checked these guys out is through seeing them live and in the flesh, and each time they have ruled. This album captures something really rad about how good they sound, how fun they are and how they’re able to turn full-bodied rock music into something that’s more southern, more distinctly Charlestonian. I’ve never listened to a proper Susto record, and I imagine one day I might, but just like the Blink-182 live record, this one has all the hits and the energy to match. I kid you not, this record doesn’t just sound like the boys on their best behavior, this record is actually what they sound like live. Another rad thing about this record are the band’s covers of Oasis and Lana Del Rey. The fact that my wife calls these guys “a summer band” is more accurate than she could know.
Check Out: Jah Werx
32. Balance and Composure — with you in spirit
Melodrone
Unfortunately for me, I always think of Balance and Composure through the lens of their debut record, Separation. It was such a massive success for me, something that drilled directly into the middle of me and stuck me to a wall of obsession. The band’s output varies a lot over the course of their career, but just like learning a language, as they refined and made more sophisticated and mature music, I continually understood their music as a conglomerate of all the other sounds and noises and banners of the basics I learned from them initially. This record seems to be following so many of the principles that made that 2011 record so incredible: there is the same kind of droning hum and rattle that felt like it was sonically freeing me from the cement that was other bands trying to make the same sound. They build these incredible songs from churning loops, core concepts that the songs build around, like a time lapse of lush vines building over a sturdy brick precipice. Just as ever, these songs feel like bells to meditate upon, endless and resonant bronze tones to synchronize like a Taoist Hum.
Check Out: any means
31. Boundaries — Death Is Little More
Tectonic Penance
I don’t have a great deal to say about this record other than if you’re into heavy music of the metalcore variety with predictable yet molten breakdowns, this is a record for you. Some of the singing parts on board separate me a bit from the punishment afoot but the way the heft of the guitars cascade through the fray, it more than makes up for it. I think this is a record that is so traditionally “_____-core” that it might be a little bit more engaging for an audience who is already seeking it out, but I happen to be in that audience and I happen to really indulge in this kind of thing. Freaking rules. An absolute ON switch for me.
Check Out: Darkness Shared
<< Honorable Mentions || 30–21 >>
