Albums of 2024

So... 2024. The year when things didn't really get any better. I mean in society at large, of course, not personally, I'm fine, how are you? Papering over a sense of hyperobject fatigue at the threat of a world war and climate apocalypse all coming at once? Me too! At least we have Bluesky now, eh, horses for courses. But like every year, artists released music and we listened to it. Spotify has of course given us its machine-learnéd supposition of our favourites, but having lived with a computer programmer who works with music databases, I'm no longer convinced that such a bodged-together tier list really holds water. We make our own priorities about the music that matters to us, every day; in moments, things cut through, not just songs but albums, not just .m4as but gigs, listening parties, heck, even journalism. So I like to make my own list of top albums that reflects that sort of stuff for me, and I encourage you to do so too - just like you might list the favourite books you've read in a year, instead of expecting GoodReads to know which books meant something to you from the sheer number of pages of each.     

    A brief note about the composition of this list. For the second year in a row, I've checked out the Rough Trade albums of the year to get the measure of things. Last time round, they gave me a boatload of good ideas - this time, I'm pretty unconvinced. There's a lot of stuff on there that could be filed under unadulterated hype (Last Dinner Party), pop apologism (Charli XCX), or genuine pig-headedness (who thinks Idles are still good?). Nonetheless, I thumbed it through to make a more educated decision above and beyond the mutually-reinforcing street-gutter indie and groupthink Radio 6 picks that would otherwise characterise the list. Seven albums from the year first, in no particular order. Honourable mentions down the bottom.

1. THE "INDIE DARLING" ONE: Real Deal by Honeyglaze

    Honeyglaze are playing at the Village Underground, and I've already decided what I think of them before they come on. The location, the context, it all speaks volumes about the scene (the scene isn't real). The Windmill isn't the fulcrum it once was, and there's the distinct sense that things have swung east again - but in a more disparate sort of way, the Shacklewell, the Old Blue, Paper Dress, umpteen venues where you don't say the last word of the name. And yet, Honeyglaze are a South London post punk band. They always have been. In fact, their vocalist was once a part of Tugboat Captain - which is about as Lewisham as they come. But no one talks about that. They talk about the fans... Nick Grimshaw likes Honeyglaze, Wet Leg like Honeyglaze. And yet, they're really good.

    Everything on this album just works. It's not exactly a concept piece, but it's all slotting in with a general sense of climate-crisis-generation malaise. Look at Safety Pins, a song spent wrapping your head around how exactly the passing of time could work out okay. You're lead into thinking it'll be a slow dance of a track - then it spends the last twenty seconds in overdrive. This is followed with Don't, a similar song of two halves, the objective anthem for anyone who's been gaslit (especially by a bloke). After a few we get TV, expressing a deep-set human insecurity and seeking increasingly impermanent workarounds. Fundamentally, though, the album thrives on its singles: Ghost, Cold Caller, and Pretty Girls - a great mixed-grill of uncertainty in one's self and complicity in the horrors of modern life. This one in particular, though, lives and dies on its riff. It's hard to believe in moments that Honeyglaze is a threepiece when their sound is so complete.

    I told my mate that Honeyglaze is a bit like if Black Country New Road had stuck the landing they made with their Arcade Fire-esque 2022 number after Isaac left. However, I have said that about ten different bands, and it's always been a bit off. I struggle to accept that the time of BCNR, the time of that whole scene being so hegemonic, is over. But Honeyglaze helps, because they tell us where the softer half of it can sit in times to come. 

2. THE BEYOND-THE-WATFORD-GAP ONE: Where's my Utopia? by Yard Act

   

    Did you listen to The Trench Coat Museum? That song is absolutely wretched. In a good way. I heard that the repeating motif that sounds a bit like a particularly tested guitar hammer-on is actually a Yard Act vocal pitch-shifted to a point of no return. The song is having a lot of fun, but it's also charged with this righteous indignation (my favourite flavour of indignation), effectively creating eight minutes of savagery. This song came out in 2023, where I think some people (just some) had passed on Yard Act, assuming that after 2022's The Overload they weren't going to capture the zeitgeist again. I mean, the first record was already passé when it came out, not to be hard on them - the alter-ego Graham created across 11 tracks as a new money unscrupulous landlord with no taste wasn't exactly fresh: it had already been explored in similar terms by Idles and their ilk a few years back, before they acquired the status that allowed me to beast them above. 

    So the best parts of The Overload weren't the tracks where this pastiche hit hardest. They were the ones where Yard Act got to have the most fun, and got to be honest, beyond that Graham mask. I think it's 100% Endurance which achieved that the best; it's an absolutely pitiful piece of music. In a good way. Ultimately, Yard Act would probably hate being called "earnest", but it is what they do best. So onto this record, and when We Make Hits starts telling the story of the compromise between subletting a room and being an anticapitalist while pop stars get paid absolute pennies, it naturally zooms to the top of my list. That's not to say that the merits of this album are all in the lyrics, though: it's a beautiful selection of samples and proper instruments that back up the bassy vocals James Smith brings to every track. A Vineyard for the North is a particularly keen example of this, especially the first verse. It's actually quite odd to note that a band that sounds so upbeat is writing music that's really depressing. In a good way. Even the shift towards pop pretense and disco beats on this record doesn't really change the underlying spirit of Yard Act, those ears-to-the-ground that, actually, it transpires, were right all along. 

3. THE RADIO 6 MUSIC ONE: Botanical Garden by Anna Erhard    

    Anna Erhard is a legend, her songs telling ostensibly honest stories that verge on absurd. The nature of her solo act, though, has to be understood in terms of what came before it: a Swiss three-piece called Serafyn that was basically only as good as Erhard's vocals. The challenge was that Serafyn insisted on being serious. Within a couple years of going it alone, Anna Erhard was on her second solo record, which contained extremely problematic men and complaints about tanlines. Her latest release, a genre-bender built from idle jamming and passive aggressive ditties, aspires to be even more whimsical than what came before. A spectacular diss of the Blue Man Group, a trip to the spa with her mum, and a nasty brush with reincarnation are just a sample of the sorts of not-very-serious stuff on this album. What's more, it's obscenely well mixed, thoughtfully arranged, and delivered with an imperial pint of panache. I insist you listen to the title track, a spectacular diss of a man who feels obliged to leave a bad review for a garden he visited on holiday, and tell me you don't want to listen to all the rest afterwards. It might sound contradictory, but it's the downbeat closing track, Teeth on the King, that really does it for me. Between punching synths, Erhard muses on existential dread and flaky friends, illustrating that the dourness at the centre of Serafyn never left her. She just learned when best to use it. 

    This review might seem shorter than those that follow, but that's because Marc Riley, Steve Lamacq and indeed Gideon "The Big G" Coe* have already done Erhard to death. She's a star now. Bush Hall, next year. Be there.

* No one has ever called him this

4. THE "HAD A HIT SINGLE IN 2017 AND RAWDOGGED BACK IN" ONE: Same Mistake Twice by The Howl & The Hum

    From the title alone, I wouldn't have expected this to be on the list. Found in the back end of an idle search a few weeks back, I thought to myself, okay then, how's this York band most recently known for complaining in the Graun that they weren't famous enough to get by doing? It's easy to be cynical, but music is no longer revenue-positive the way it was for many, and TH&TH is one of the victims. Lucky enough to get algorithm-catapulted with 2017's Godmanchester Chinese Bridge, the band struggled with the long dureé of releasing their first album, and it took four years - between their roughened resignation to a series of day jobs - for this sophomore effort to appear. But the thing is, precisely because it's the subject of such precarity, such challenge, such... disappointment, it's a great album for 2024. For god's sake, their label is called Miserable Disco. 

    The music, then. I remember attending a couple gigs over the summer and musing with a friend who's actually in a band about how to best deploy a saxophone. It needs room to breathe, it isn't supposed to be used like a bass guitar or keys; it's only worth keeping on if it has pride of place in the band. So when the sax solo kicks in on the opening title track, I'm convinced that TH&TH have been listening to my meagre conversation. But then there are other tracks, like the imposing No One Has to Know, where the band's saxophonist takes piano duties instead - to immense effect, really delivering a kind of back-room-bar-band sensibility. Not to be the broken record, but this is another album that's pushing indie somewhere, and not necessarily where the Windmill scene would have pushed it. God, I'm tired. 

Have you considered being hit by a car?

    But I haven't even spoken yet about why this album really gets pride of place - it's the stories it tells. Let's check out the most lyric-laden piece, No Calories in Cocaine. It's a simple romper, almost stomp-and-holler, what an awful name for a genre. That aside, this is a beautiful imaginary of the warped priorities of twenty-somethings; not taking care of yourself, justifying substance abuse, being terrifyingly in love with someone. And then the song abruptly ends, like a crash in album form, to be followed by the depressive Everybody Loves a Crime Scene, smashing true crime zealots into socio-poetry. That's without mentioning the tracks I've flagged down already: No One Has to Know plays the simple beat of an inclination towards interpersonal chaos, while Same Mistake Twice plays with the metaphor of extra lives in videogames to explore the blasé attitude of yung millennials et al. to taking serious life choices. The whole album's like this. Do people still say "on point"? This album's on point. Or perhaps it ate. Let's say it ate.

5. THE BROADLY AMBIENT ONE: Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On by Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman

   

     Andrew Wasylyk is a man I've been aware of since they played his downright inescapable synth + piano number The Confluence on Radio 6 about a billion years ago. Ever since I heard it, I wondered about whether that sort of thing would work live and where it would work if so. The Lexington wasn't really what I had in mind with respect to the latter, but it's what happened. And lo and behold, on stage in the mire of mid-September, Wasylyk is a softly spoken Scotsman who just wants everyone to have a lovely time while Perman helps him with some loops and changes the kaleidoscopes on the projector. This was a great gig, I was hyped up on antihystamines, I was carrying a book about Mad Men, I was quite drunk, I tried to buy a pin badge and failed, I was euphoric, I texted someone about the projector, and how this was quite different to a Taylor-Swift-at-Wembley sort of thing, and they didn't understand what I meant, even when I provided the absolutely iconic follow-up text 'brat summer? more like cack autumn'. Of course, it wasn't cack at all. But neither was my chat. 

    Anyway, I haven't actually managed to describe what the music sounds like yet. Suffice to say that Wasylyk was - according to his mid-gig chatter - looking to bring some sense of spiritualism to electronic music, to infuse a certain sense of community and a progressive notion of 'faith' into ambient tunes. And some of the tracks do exactly that, they are at once rousing, calming and mesmerising. Spec of Dust Becomes a Beam is one great example. But what I didn't expect to be my favourite song from the album is actually the final track, including a guest vocal from Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap fame. He arrives to careen the album in a different direction in its final moments; it stops being a paean to some imagined care and spirit, and starts being a call to action, with exactly the same rousing keys and loops now backing a resounding chant:

See all those shit stained statues

With all their ancient values

Those concrete ghosts that still decide

And all the glitz and glamour

We'd love to be the hammer

We'd smash it all, rebuild with pride.

6. THE "JANGLE POP'S NOT DEAD" ONE: Sunshine by JW Francis

       I don't take the plane very often (such is the life of a transport geographer) but Orbit, the opening salvo on JW Francis's fourth LP, is arguably the perfect "plane's about to take off" track. Do you have one of those? I really like to make the most of that brief euphoric moment of becoming weightless - plus, it's a sound distraction from the slimmest possibility that you could crash and burn in a pile of environmentally unsustainable wreckage. Look, Orbit, though - it's absolutely racing from the off. Francis more or less plays the same riff throughout, and lets the percussive affect of his vocals do the work in giving the song a sense of journey. He's practically spitting at the outset, but on the bridge he slows to a crawl, before the riff comes back in full force. I think what a track like this really illustrates is, while we might think of "Jangle Pop" as a rather unimaginative genre, there's so much space within any individual song to create interest and variation. JW Francis is always striving to do this, whether it's on purpose or not. His songs are fun in principle.

    Above and beyond this, the guy is infectiously happy. He's like the American Prairie variant of Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky. Knowing that, you can almost feel him smiling in some of these songs. It's not just the conscious choices in all of Francis's production that make the whole album feel like it's willingly sequestered in a big fuck-off fluffy cloud. But the thing is, when you take in a little more of the thing, you start to realise that these songs aren't happy per sé, but illustrative of a self-effacing understanding of human nature, a sympathy of others, clearest on songs like More Hurt for the Hurt Pile (yes, not exactly subtle) or Mississippi, an exploration of exactly how much emotional turmoil one could process in a canoe. It's an album that's a lot more than it needs to be, and that deserves credit.

7. THE BAIT ONE: All Hell by Los Campesinos!

    Yeah, not a lot of remorse from me here, as I bust out the new album from The UK's Only Emo Band, Los Campesinos. On first listen this album can ring a touch hollow; maybe it has an edge of overproduction to it, maybe Gareth's voice isn't quite as pipsqueak-y as when he was a literal teenager. But Los Campesinos have been going for more than 15 years now; their sound ought to be different, it couldn't possibly be the cardigan-donned xylophone indie it was on 2009's Hold On Now, Youngster. Instead, this time it's Jimmy Eat World meets Laura Marling. I sense that comparison will ring completely hollow (on the xylophone), but that's okay, because actually - is this a shock? - this record brings back some of the xylophones, strings and bells that were so crucial to the tongue-in-cheek twee of their first release, bucking the intervening five-album trend of emo guitar rock and lending it, oh yes, even more disgusting sentimental angst. So the quality of All Hell is really predicated on liking Los Campesinos already, but also, hmm, it really isn't. See track 2, Holy Smoke (2005): 

Don't get me wrong I love my friends' kids

Sure they'll grow to be good leftists

...

But they don't buy the beers I drink

And they don't drink the beers I buy

No children and no profession

Walking dead at 37.

    It's a deeply political album, this, even when it wants you to read it with layer upon layer of irony. Worth noting that the above song also contains the lyric 'Nowadays it's live laugh love, and listen to Death From Above'. Long Throes is similarly shot through with a palpable sense of disappointment, and dare I say it, hauntology. That's really the spirit of the album, its name, and the carrion cry, delivered as it breaks loose through the closing track, Adult Acne Stigmata: "it's all hell, we know too well, It's all hell." Never mind the note-perfect indie chord progressions and breakdowns; independently of this album being shot through with bangers, it's the best encapsulation, I'd wager, of what living through 2024 was like.

    So, that's seven albums from 2024 done with. In terms of honourable mentions - I thought English Teacher's debut was pretty decent, even if it sometimes made me think all post-punk is... kind of the same. A moment too for Foster the People's impeccable comeback, illustrating Mark F's endless capacity to write THE HOOK. Jane Weaver deserves a mention - she ought to be getting far more listens especially since she's been busting out aetherwave hits for yonks. Lastly, Bad Sounds' sophomore effort Escaping from a Violent Time was excellent, and was only latterly edged out by TH&TH's comparative timeliness - turns out that's what I prize. Or do I? See, there were a few albums I listened to rather a lot that didn't come from this year, and I'll give them a quick run-down now.

8. THE SCOUSE AFFECTATION ONE: Queensway Tunnel by Zuzu (2021)

    Right. Far be it for me to suggest a Liverpudlian act that doesn't start with "The W" and end with "Ombats", but that's what I've managed to do here. I also spent a fair crack trying to figure out why exactly no one listened to fellow scousers Stealing Sheep's newest LP, but it's Zuzu who's getting pride of place here. 

    This is realistically a pretty standard pop record, but it's got some real depth to it, mostly owing to the fact that the titular lass is claiming to be "unapologetically authentic". And that sense of authenticity really feels central to this record, one that simply couldn't have come out of London, Brighton or anywhere else that contemptible private school boys masquerading as the second coming of Slint might hail from (yes, this is a veiled dig at Squid, who, and I'm sure there's a joke in here somewhere, are mid). Zuzu is emblematic of the idea that an artist is not necessarily beholden to be exactly what is trendy in Hackney Wick. They can continue to be what is trendy in Pop World instead, and that is okay (Zuzu might hate Pop World, in fact I probably hate Pop World, this isn't a post in defence of Pop World). 

    The music itself is relatively straightforward (with some fun reverb on occasion, and an inclination to the power ballad on the final track (dedicated to the guy who is just far too serious - who could possibly relate?), but the main reason I'm giving this pride of place is because it feels purposefully sincere throughout. Take Bevy Head, a song that, I'm pretty convinced, opens with Zuzu's cat purring about. No, hang on, the next track does that too. This album comes off like it sits close to home, but it also follows through on that in its lyrical content. What a great antidote to the endless songs that obfuscate real situations in order to wax ad nauseam about killing yourself over a houseplant. Get in the bin, Squid (is mid).

9. THE CLEVER ONE: memoryland by CFCF (2021)

    An incredible blend of genres; you'll get to the end and feel like you've actually listened to several different albums in the time it takes to listen to one. One of the other fantastic things about this record is how it points at some kind of 'story by osmosis'; there's little tidbits of worldbuilding between the tracks, sort of half-heard messages, things in other languages, bits and bobs. Just don't pay too much attention to Sarah Bonito's guest vocal on this, which isn't anywhere near her best. Right, er, I've realised I don't have loads to say about this. It's dead clever though, so I feel like I've given myself a chance to take the credit and just swap to...

9.5. THE STUPID ONE: Positive Songs for Negative People by Frank Turner (2015)

    Oh, whoops, another even larger chunk of remorse appears to have fallen out of the bottom of this post. Is it just me, or was this album a bit slept on? Turner has about a million of them, but I'll always wager this one is the best (not that Tape Deck Heart isn't up there). Now. The guy's obsessed with some idea of "Wessex", and I won't deny that this affectation is permanently embarassing: Wessex hasn't existed in any tangible sense for hundreds of years, and the only folks who semantically suggest otherwise are so old money that they consider the thrupenny bit to be legal tender. Unfortunately that is exactly Turner's type, and so the songs he writes are infused with a totally detectable privilege, from his (presumably vast) "Hampshire family home" to his obsession with a Nick Hornby-like visage of Holloway (which, like Squid, is mid). 

    Anyway, enough complaining - there's a frank(ly) unescapable energy to this entire album; the lead-in to Out of Breath is absolutely immense, and you can practically hear Turner jumping about as he strums like an idiot. Even the songs that are slower - including the frankly anthemic oh-god-please-hang-out-with-me-I'm-so-Mumford-and-Sons The Angel Islington, tromp along infectiously from start to finish. The man can write what we might reluctantly call "Folk Punk Rock" until the emo-coded cows come home. And Silent Key, Silent Key is amazing. Arguably one of Turner's core strengths is his ability to turn histories or myths equally into wonderful lyrical ideas, and this one covers the untimely SPACE DEATH of astronaut Christa McAuliffe being picked up on radio by four-year-old Frank, in his presumably vast Hampshire family home. Here's to you, amateur operator. Good album.

10. THE LAST ONE: Burrows by Caro (2021)

  

    Caro are / were an exceptional talent, and it's an absolute crying shame they only got one album. I first hear this on the Big G's show when he was doing a cat theme or something, playing unambiguously the best track from the album, Cat's Pyjamas. Except it isn't really, and I know this sudden volte-face has never really been charming, I guess all I'm saying is, Cat's Pyjamas is more the easiest opener for this album. The first track, Closet Lunatic, is equally morose, but a bit harder to wrap your head around, and arguably a better listen once you're on board. In fact, that's true of the whole album, pushing as it is ideas of indie to their natural edges. The vocal has a charming West Yorkshire pitch to it, it's a bit ethereal, like the bloke is on the fringes of offing it. This album is totally open about being in abject misery. And that's incredibly charming, especially when a good chunk of these tunes are trooping along to type in a major key. It's as if the album exists in a purgatory: the lyrics don't want it to be listened to, the melodies beg that it does. To listen to something quite so dispiriting in a year that's ending likewise is refreshing, is anthemic, is in keeping. And I know that, and Spotify doesn't. So I'll listen, and so I write.