Ah, 2024. The year that wouldn’t quit. Although don’t they all seem that way, anymore? My perennial disclaimer still applies. I’m not asserting that these are the undisputed best albums of the year. Art doesn’t take too kindly to being ranked, graded, and quantized. But these were my favorites, the ones that I played the most in 2024, and that gave me a spiritual boost (and/or functioned as a sonic espresso) when I needed it.
The Top 10:
Vampire Weekend | Only God Was Above Us (Columbia)
Only God Was Above Us revisits Gotham, and the band’s core sound, while wisely not retreating into it. The album’s title is a reference to a New York Daily News headline from 1988—the paper itself is featured on the album’s cover, which is itself set within a disused, graffiti-soaked subway car from the same NYC era. OGWAU’s new trick is distortion, something Vampire Weekend had consciously shied away from throughout their career to this point. It’s a fitting sonic representation of the same late 20th century visual vibe. This focus also ties into one of the album’s themes, that of fondly remembering a “simple” past that was far more complicated than your memories make it seem. Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/vampire-weekend-only-god-was-above-us-columbia/
Cassandra Jenkins | My Light, My Destroyer (Dead Oceans)
On My Light, My Destroyer, Cassandra Jenkins continues her striking evolution as a songwriter. You can’t call these 13 songs indie rock, chamber pop, folk, electronic, or ambient—even as they contain elements of all of those genres. Jenkins works field recordings and spoken words interludes into her songs in a way that makes listening to My Light, My Destroyer akin to a waking dream that you can have as many times as you’d like. “Devotion” opens the album in a gorgeous country-folk mode; the stomping “Aurora, IL,” rollicking “Clams Casino,” and deeply contemplative quiet-loud “Petco” are Jenkins at her most straight-ahead indie rock to date; “Only One” and the gorgeous, gossamer “Omakase” sound like songs from 1980s adult contemporary radio reimagined as being broadcast from a space station in the year 2036. “Delphinium Blue” is a sophisticated evolution of the spoken word poetry set to free jazz that she did so well on her sophomore breakout record, 2021’s An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. All of these songs are philosophical and deep-thinking. Jenkins has a gift for keeping such musing from becoming insular. Instead, her contemplation opens doors, often seeming like a rocket ready to transport the listener to the astral landscapes that dominate the album’s artwork. Many artists try to substitute a jack of all trades mentality for being a master of any. My Light, My Destroyer shows that Jenkins has the skill, and the vision, to blend various sounds into an ever-expanding whole that you wouldn’t mistake for anyone else.
Lo Moon | I Wish You Way More Than Luck (Thirty Tigers / Strngr Recordings)
Lo Moon made their debut on a major label in 2018, sounding like a slightly druggy mid-period Talk Talk. They got dropped, joined the indie ranks, and put out a second LP in 2022, which streamlined their sound and sent it off in new, more wide-ranging directions. Their third album, I Wish You Way More Than Luck, continues the voyage. It’s immediate and atmospheric—a little proggy, a little pop. The album’s best moments are an exhilarating tightrope walk between both sides of the band. Clarion synths and distorted bass light up the driving “Waiting a Lifetime;” the shimmering shuffle of “Water” is supremely catchy, but dense with drummer Sterling Laws’ and bassist Crisanta Baker’s agitated rhythms. “When the Kids Are Gone” hearkens back to the band’s moody early singles, but adds a trilling trumpet. Album centerpiece “Evidence” is also its climax—a multi-movement track that conveys a mystery and an epiphany. It’s a prime example of the band’s knack for blending light and shade. Frontman Matt Lowell’s lyrics are filled with imagery and recurring themes relating to his upbringing—a Connecticut boarding school; running water that can carry to a destination or divide you from it; the “Borrowed Hills” of the opening track. He paints these scenes with his emotive voice. There’s a strong feeling of lost innocence, and rediscovery running through I Wish You Way More Than Luck. That sense of discovery is also shared with the album’s audience. There wasn’t another album this year that gave me more paths to explore.
MGMT | Loss of Life (MGMT / Mom + Pop)
MGMT will forever be best known for the trio of big hits from their debut album, but in the 17 years since, they’ve quietly gone about their business making music that straddles the line between indie pop and the avant garde. Loss of Life, their fifth album, is superficially slick, but full of psych-folk subversions. Soft rock tropes get filtered through an aural kaleidoscope. Loss of Life is further enlivened by guest spots by Daniel Lopatin (who also co-produced a big chunk of the album), Nels Cline, Christine and the Queens, Sean Lennon, and Britta Phillips. It was also mixed by the band’s longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann, who’s certainly no stranger to that place where the psychotropic and the frayed meets the pristine. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden have always been too weird for the mainstream but too mainstream for the weirdos. It’s a huge part of their appeal to the subset of the world who’s stuck with them all these years, and it’s what makes Loss of Life so different, and so appealing.
Future Islands | People Who Aren’t There Anymore (4AD)
Future Islands albums are almost always worth listening to. However, People Who Aren’t There Anymore is their most consistent set of songs since their breakthrough LP Singles, a full decade ago. Samuel T. Herring has always been a compelling frontman, but this is arguably his finest vocal performance. He still growls, yelps, and croons, but his vocals have never been more nuanced; his control and phrasing has never been better than they are on this album. People’s songs are taut and dynamic, often suggesting movement or travel. The result is frequently like being stuck inside of a really well-designed pinball table made of synthesizers.
Sunday (1994) | Sunday (1994) [Deluxe edition] (Arista)
US/UK trio Sunday (1994) are as mysterious, and endearing, as their name. Angeleno singer Paige Turner, guitarist Lee Newell (who hails from Slough, setting for the British version of The Office, say no more), and the enigmatic drummer known only as “X” specialize in a dreamy, seamy blend of 1980s British indie jangle, goth-adjacent alternative rock, and 1960s pop. Songwriting duo Turner and Newell, who are also a long-term couple, somehow manage to evoke both Southern Californian sun, sleaze, and gridlock and staring out at a slate gray English winter day from a bedsit covered in Smiths and Cure posters. Sunday (1994)’s self-titled debut EP is the work of a band who have clearly put in the time and effort of deciding how they wanted to introduce themselves to the world. They nailed their ethos, but they also have the songs to back it up. Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/sunday-1994-sunday-1994-deluxe-edition-arista/
The Cure | Songs of a Lost World (Polydor / Lost)
Robert Smith has worked at a deliberate pace in the 21st century. The Cure’s previous studio album, 2008’s 4:13 Dream, was long enough ago to feel as if it belongs to another era of popular music entirely. Smith reportedly began writing what would become Songs of a Lost World around 15 years ago, and started road testing the songs in 2022 and 2023. The album is an evolved, but direct, descendent of the Cure’s blackest, and often most beloved records—especially goth touchstones Disintegration and Pornography. It should come as no surprise that the descriptors that come to mind when talking about Songs are terms like “glacial,” “doom-laden,” and “heavy.” Staggering basslines and synths like layers of winter clouds are sliced through with buzzsaw guitars, courtesy of the ever-inventive Reeves Gabrels (a member of the band since 2012, but making his first on-album appearance here). Songs is dominated by weighty topics like death (“I Can Never Say Goodbye,” inspired by his brother’s passing away), societal strife and our species’ stubborn attachment to aggression (“Warsong”), the dissolution of love (“And Nothing Is Forever”), and eternal loneliness (“Alone”). The atmosphere is heightened by the extended instrumental passages that open (and sometimes close) songs. Leaving the listener waiting, sometimes for minutes at a time, to first hear Smith’s plaintive voice is one of the album’s better tricks. Perhaps Songs of a Lost World’s greatest accomplishment is making something so dramatically slow-motion feel so alive, and so hopeful. Smith’s writing is deeply honest. It’s no easy feat making something so weighty come off not as nihilistic, but by acknowledging our collective human pain, cathartic and downright beautiful.
The The | Ensoulment (Cinéola / earMUSIC)
Ensoulment, The The’s first non-soundtrack album in almost a quarter century, is astounding in its mere existence. But Matt Johnson doesn’t want points for simply showing up. Ensoulment’s vibrancy is informed by the success of the group’s 2018 comeback tour, as captured on sublime live album The Comeback Special: Live at the Royal Albert Hall. It was not only a triumphant return to the spotlight, it was an opportunity to show off a new iteration of The The, which has always been less of a band, and more of an evolving idea fleshed out by a rotating cast of supporting players. While it wouldn’t be a The The album without being partially, and purposefully, abrasive, this new evolution of the group tempers those edges with an increased devotion to melody and a moodier sonic palette. Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/the-the-ensoulment-cineola-earmusic/
Francis of Delirium | Lighthouse (Dalliance Recordings)
Lighthouse, the debut album by Francis of Delirium, a.k.a. Luxembourgish singer-songwriter Jana Bahrich, is as notable for its enchanting currents of dream pop, bedroom indie, bludgeoning heavy rock, and lite goth as it is for the way Bahrich mixes poised insight with the sort of dramatic statements you can really only make in your early 20s. (Just one example, from superb album opener “Ballet Dancers”: “Hurricane of disaster, spin me baby, faster faster. In ten years we’ll say it was the greatest love that never made it. And when it ends, I will never love again.”) Lighthouse is a remarkable journal of the arc of a star-crossed first love of one’s life, and one hell of a way for Bahrich to introduce herself to the world.
Father John Misty | Mahashmashana (Sub Pop)
We need Father John Misty (a.k.a. Josh Tillman) and his ironic, yet humanistic, point of view now more than ever. At least I do. So it’s a good thing his latest Mahashmashana continues the return to form he started with 2022’s Chlöe and the Next 20th Century. Mahashmashana dials back its predecessor’s compelling flirtation with trad pop and pre-rock popular song and returns to Misty’s expansive 1970s singer/songwriter mode, embellishing it with sonic touches reminiscent of George Harrison’s early Phil Spector-produced solo albums. But it also has some of his most concise material in years (funky rocker “She Cleans Up”), some of his most sonically adventurous (the alternately jagged and hushed “Screamland”) and some of his best “epic” tracks in a while on the title track and the glorious “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All.” Through much of his career, Tillman has felt like the heir to Kurt Vonnegut’s mix of gallows humor and sincerity. On Mahashmashana, he renews his claim to being the patron saint of the painfully self-aware.
Honorable mentions:
Pet Shop Boys | Nonetheless (x2 / Parlophone)
After flexing their muscles and projecting vital urgency in the mid-2010s with the club-forward pair of Stuart Price-produced albums Electric and Super, Pet Shop Boys seemed to run out of steam on 2020’s Hotspot. It suggested that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe were in need of one of their periodic reboots—something they have excelled at over a now 40-year career. Once vanguards of synth pop, the band have long been elder statesmen, albeit ones who can still find the right lane to swim in to move the needle. Nonetheless strikes a curious initial pose—it prizes melody and hooks, but it doesn’t resist going hard when it comes to club rhythms. With the help of producer James Ford, the group built these songs on a foundation of relatively-sparse analog synths and lush orchestral arrangements, which makes the album sound pristine, but also as if it’s being played live. There’s an attractive weariness to superficially anthemic album opener “Loneliness,” while the bouncy “Feel” is one of their most immediate pop nuggets in years. Penultimate track “Bullet for Narcissus” is a hidden gem—a banger with a typically wry Tennant lyric about a Secret Service agent assigned to guard a Trump-like politician. The narrator clearly can’t stand the man, but he’s bound by oath to protect him. Elsewhere, “The Shlager Hit Parade” co-opts that sentimental, and bafflingly enduring, German pop form to delve into the idea of pop music as a convenient way to ignore uncomfortable realities. It also features some nifty guitar work. Two of the album’s most affecting moments are laced with nostalgia, both joyous and wistful. “New London Boy” finds Tennant looking back on his journey of self-discovery, and the community he found as a queer man in 1970s London. “A New Bohemia” is the downbeat reverse side of the coin, wondering what became of that scene, and how and where to find it again—if it even can be. Nonetheless is not only an infectious and moving late career highlight, but one of Pet Shop Boys best albums, full stop.
Marika Hackman | Big Sigh (Chrysalis)
I confess I hadn’t heard of Marika Hackman until this year. Big Sigh is her fifth album; its title is a reference to breaking out of a serious case of writer’s block. The name could also allude to the sense of release felt after getting something off your chest, which Hackman does quite well here. Big Sigh is brittle, but beautiful, like winter trees after an ice storm. But it can often shift into a sweeping, subtly propulsive mode, like getting your heart pumping on a walk on a bitterly cold day. This record is an incisive, intimate, and sometimes productively uncomfortable slice of singer-songwriter indie that I happily spent the entire year exploring.
Beth Gibbons | Lives Outgrown (Domino)
It’s remarkable that this record exists in the first place, as Beth Gibbons’ recording pace makes Peter Gabriel look prolific. Lives Outgrown, the first proper solo album from the former Portishead singer, doesn’t sound like Portishead—only the precipitous lead single “Floating on a Moment” comes close—but retains a sense of her former band’s gift for quietly dramatic, frequently ominous, moments. A reflection on aging and loss, the record’s acoustic folk backbone is enlivened by dynamic arrangements (courtesy of Gibbons and producer James Ford) that give the impression of a Tiny Desk concert recorded by 25 people somehow stuffed into one little room. Check out my full-length review at: https://theartsstl.com/beth-gibbons-lives-outgrown-domino/
Ducks Ltd. | Harm’s Way (Carpark)
Canadian duo Ducks Ltd. excel at writing concise, infectious jangle pop, with a slightly frenetic bent. Their sophomore album Harm’s Way clocks in at just under half an hour, but the band packs a lot of hooks, thrills, and runaway tempos into every second of every song. It’s not only their craft and attention to detail that sets singer/rhythm guitarist Tom McGreevy and lead guitarist Evan Lewis apart from a galaxy of jangly indie bands, but also the way they infuse a well-worn genre with a modern, and youthful perspective and ethos. Songs like “Train Full of Gasoline” sound like intricate Rube Goldberg machines in the way they wind up close to a breaking point—but never snap apart. On Harm’s Way, Ducks Ltd. put on a masterclass in illustrating that there are always ways to innovate within a genre—and how to have a hell of a good time doing it.
Beabadoobee | This Is How Tomorrow Moves (Dirty Hit)
Beabadoobee, a.k.a. Beatrice Laus, made a name for herself in the COVID era with the irresistible 1990s inspired alt rock of her debut Fake It Flowers, and the sunnier, 2000s pop-flavored follow-up Beatopia. This Is How Tomorrow Moves was produced by Rick Rubin, who I wouldn’t have thought to pair her with, but I’m here for it. Rubin’s approach to production can be divisive, but he often succeeds in helping artists get out of their own way. Which is exactly what Beabadoobee does here. On This Is How Tomorrow Moves, she sheds a lot of her teenage angst and sounds, for possibly the first time, truly like herself. Confident, hook-laden songs like “Beaches” and “Girl Song” appeal equally to middle aged Gen X-ers and Gen Z teens, and show that Laus has found a way to keep moving forward while keeping one eye on the past.
Babehoven | Water’s Here in You (Double Double Whammy)
Gentle, perceptive indie folk that feels like all of the good aspects of a Renaissance fair.
Phosphorescent | Revelator (Verve)
Matthew Houck has been making music as Phosphorescent for two decades, largely under the radar. Revelator explores “unspoken truths” via Houck’s soothing, yet engaging mix of country folk and lushly psychedelic flourishes, all expressed in his uniquely croaky croon. It’s a quietly profound album, and quite possibly the best thing Houck has ever done.
The Smile | Wall of Eyes / Cutouts (XL)
The Smile followed up their well-received debut A Light for Attracting Attention with Wall of Eyes, a record full of songs that were developed and road-tested on the first album’s tours. I first heard many of Wall of Eyes’ songs in concert before they were recorded—the album versions retain the live takes’ nervy energy, raucous interplay, and jazzy chaos.The Wall of Eyes sessions proved to be so fruitful that the Smile released a second album from it, Cutouts. Instead of being a companion to the main event, Cutouts is an equal part of the whole, much in the way Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac were. The star of the Smile’s show continues to be the musical bond between Thom Yorke, Johnny Greenwood, and drummer extraordinaire Tom Skinner. Skinner’s jazz-inspired beats often seem to be fueling and inspiring Yorke and Greenwood to turn loose. Whether it’s Wall of Eyes’ grandly shifting, multi-movement “Bending Hectic,” or Cutouts’ delightfully untethered, to-the-point “Zero Sum,” the 18 songs spread across the two albums manage the difficult trick of being both intricate and casual. If the door on Radiohead is closing, as it appears to be, the Smile offers an ever-expanding new room to nose around in.
Real Estate | Daniel (Domino)
Original lead guitarist Matt Mondanile departed Real Estate in 2016, and original drummer Jackson Pollis followed in 2020. Key departures like those often sink bands, or reduce them to a shell of their former selves. Thankfully, Real Estate version 2.0—now featuring Julian Lynch on lead guitar and Sammi Niss on drums—has proven to be adept at weathering change. The album reaffirms the band’s status as the platonic ideal of jangly indie rock, while adding new elements like pedal steel into the mix. Daniel exudes relaxed simplicity, and is Real Estate’s best work since early 2010s highlights Days and Atlas.
Roddy Woomble | Sometime During the Night We Fell Off the Map (Assai / Roddy Woomble)
Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble’s solo albums are often a way to explore ideas and sounds that don’t directly translate to his main band. After delving into windswept Scottish trad folk (albeit with a pop-rock bent) in the late Aughts and early 2010s, he took a turn into records that had a more experimental, electronic edge. Sometime During the Night We Fell Off the Map is simultaneously a summary of everything he’s done up to this point, and a jumping off point into a new phase of Woomble’s work. It takes now-familiar folk and electronic elements, but adds jazzy horns, and a newfound ambience. Sometime During the Night is a thoughtful, deeply enjoyable album from a highly underrated songwriter that feels like sitting in conversation in a favorite pub.
Michael Kiwanuka | Small Changes (Polydor)
British artist Michael Kiwanuka has found cult audiences and critical acclaim with his blend of soul, R&B, and experimental rock. Small Changes, his third album in a row to be produced by the team of Danger Mouse and Inflo, retreats from the sweeping strings, psychedelic gospel, and Pink Floyd-ian song structures of his breakthrough albums Love & Hate and the Mercury Prize-winning Kiwanuka. Instead, Small Changes pares down the arrangements into a heady, yet comforting blend of 1970s soul, orchestral singer-songwriter, and unadorned rock guitar. Lyrically, Kiwanuka focuses on the little things that form our character and help us endure the fears and challenges of our day-to-day experience; the album’s songs often sound like letters from the man he is, a new father of two, back to his younger, differently doubtful self. On Small Changes, Kiwanuka shows us how he gets by, and guides listeners through their own troubled times with contemplative grace and a generosity of spirit.
Faye Webster | Underdressed at the Symphony (Secretly Canadian)
Faye Webster’s adorkable blend of indie rock, R&B, jazz, and almost anything else she can get her hands on belies her consistency as a songwriter. Underdressed at the Symphony has the vibe of a friend who’s recently gone through a breakup, who texts you “I’m fine,” but whose Instagram posts don’t let you believe them. The slurry “Lego Ring” features rapper Lil Yachty, because it can, and because with Webster’s music, turns like this aren’t gimmicks, they’re part of her inclusive, whatever-works/anything-goes ethos. Songs like “Thinking About You” and “Wanna Quit All the Time” feature the unmistakable guitar playing of Wilco’s Nels Cline; “But Not Kiss” melds a lyric about indecision to a song that punctuates hushed passages with dramatic punches of piano. On Underdressed at the Symphony, Webster’s confessionals have never sounded so warm, despite being more tight-lipped than usual.
Not an album, but a single worth talking about:
Billy Joel – “Turn the Lights Back On” (Columbia)
I’ve been a big Billy Joel fan since I was nine years old in 1989. His Storm Front was my first album, and his 1994 show at the brand-new Kiel Center in St. Louis was my first concert. While I understand his desire to step away from making new records after 1993’s River of Dreams, I always held out hope he would find his way back into the studio, especially since he still tours regularly and sounds good live. “Turn the Lights Back On” (co-written by the single’s producer, Freddy Wexler) features the sort of expressive, romantic chords Joel has always been the master of, but with undercurrents of both remorse and tempered optimism. In my mind, the song is a spiritual extension of River of Dreams’ closing track, “Famous Last Words,” where Joel sang:
“These are the last words I have to say
That’s why it took so long to write
There will be other words some other day
That’s the story of my life”
I guess that time is now.
“Did I wait too long
To turn the lights back on?”
Better late than never, in my mind. | Mike Rengel
