2024 albums of the year - the not-quite-but-still-good runners-up
Oh hey! A new post in my 'album of the year' series which I diligently update every year!1
Music this year has been an unexpected rediscovery. We moved house in November, and the flow of our new home means that the stereo is in the kitchen, a lovely snug area that invites lounging, invites listening. Music is no longer background noise but the centre of attention.
Have you actually listened to music lately? Put down your phone, your exercise routine, your million modern distractions?
It's really good! I recommend it heartly!
As well as spinning a lot of excavated forgotten discs unearthed during reshelving and reordering2, I've tried to listen to more new stuff beyond just Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter over and over3.
I'll post my favourite album from this year in a few days' time. For now, here's half a dozen others that are Very Very Good And Worth Your Time.
The underdogs:
Broken Chanter - Chorus of Doubt
2021's Catastrophe Hits was an unexpected delight. Chorus Of Doubt mines the same vein of Scottish pop-folk - unapologetically left-wing, furious, melodic, and catchy as all hell. If you're not angrily singing Don't You Think That Something Needs To Be Done after one listen, you need to listen again.
Bodega - Our Brand Could Be Your Life
Continuing their chronicling of the terminally online and the ubiquity of technological-over-human interaction, Bodega's style of sharp guitars and staccato drums remains remarkably consistent: this, their third album, sounds just as cynical and urgent as their first. Somehow given the subject matter they're not sneering or boring, they're just outright fun.
The tracks where Nikki leads on vocals, like GND Deity, sound so much like those early Arcade Fire tracks sung by Régine it's eerie.
The auld rockers:
Arab Strap - i'm totally fine with it 👍 don't give a fuck anymore 👍
The latter day reunion continues to produce their best work to date4. Still writing about lost loves in dirty pubs but with a wiser, warier edge, and still producing music that's unlike anything else.
My personal highlight is one of Aidan's spoken word tales, Dreg Queen, about two friends who enable each other to the detriment of everyone including themselves. Is that in the past, their younger selves, or is it now? Ambiguous, much like Arab Strap themselves.
Jack White - No Name
Let's not mince words - Jack White's solo output has been an exercise in diminishing returns. Blunderbuss was very good, Lazaretto a little less so. Boarding House Reach a barely listenable mess, and as a result no-one paid any attention to 2022's largely forgettable Fear Of The Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive. Low expectations aside, No Name is a triumph - thirteen blistering, catchy, euphoric tracks that feel like classic era White Stripes.
The best thing he's done in years and totally essential listening for years to come.
The new kids on the block:
The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy
I shamefully ignored The Last Dinner Party, put off by the hype and the overeager reviews. More fool me.
They are unashamedly fantastic - fundamentally feminine rock-and-roll with lyrics about blouses, wax candles, ballerinas and 'breathing like a girl'. And those little orchestral flourishes and moments throughout the album! That overture! That outro to On Your Side that sounds just like R.E.M.'s E-Bow The Letter! That Supergrass-like trick of playing around with time signatures mid-song just because it's fun to do so!
They're not a tees-and-jeans riot grrrl tribute, they're not a floating and flouncy Florence + The Machine or Kate Bush, they're their own thing. Incomparable and genuinely refreshing. More, please.
English Teacher - This Could Be Texas
Kae Tempest lowered my tolerance for spoken world estuary English feminine vocals. English Teacher raised it again. The wonder here is that the album starts really humbly with tales of broken social structures that maybe feels a little underdeveloped, then hits its stride on track seven's Not Everyone Gets To Go To Space5 and becomes relentless and catchy and angry and urgent.
The best chronicle of what it means to be the educated poor in Britain since Pulp's Different Class. I cannot wait to see what they do next.
Well, from 2010 until 2018 at least, and prior to that I diligently posted on an old-fashioned messageboard every year going back to around 2005 too. 2019 was a bit of a shitter of a year - had a breakdown, quit the job that was causing me the stress, too quickly moved to another job that was somehow even worse. I let my web presence go fallow for a bit after that what with, y'know, recovering from that year by bowling straight into lockdowns with a clinically vulnerable partner in tow. Given the circumstances, a few years not posting a silly annual list that no-one except me really pays attention to is no big thing.↩
Particular favourites have been the 'best of' mixtapes made by friends decades ago. My pal Mike collated a great one for John Vanderslice, and Hazel's Patti Smith one has had a lot of attention too. Treasure your physical media, treasure your friends.↩
It's THE banger of 2024 and I won't hear otherwise.↩
Even though it means fewer Malcolm Middleton solo albums. Come back, Malc.↩
As a teenager I was convinced that track seven on any given album would always be the best track, to the point that my fictional band was called Track Seven. Thanks for proving the point, English Teacher.↩