with a list that can make you change! AOTY again and again!
the annual newsletter Albums of the Year list, 2024 edition.
So, let’s get this out of the way. It was a landmark terrible year. Historically terrible year, personally terrible year, terrible year that inarguably stretched the fabric of our entire society more taut than it has the bandwidth for… just, like, across the board totally terrible! However, you know what part of my year absolutely didn’t suck? The magic mediums of art and film and music pulling me through it all, of course! Now come on now!
If you don’t know the rules here: I usually pick ten personal favorites, and then fifty-ish other favorites I want to highlight. I did more professional writing this December than I have in past Decembers, so I just want to say up front that I compiled this list before I completely burned myself out! These recommendations were made of sound mind and body! The blurbs on the other hand… don’t expect War and Peace, friends. I’m just sharing what comes to mind when I revisit whatever release I’m writing about. Please go read literally anything else I’ve done if you want total coherence. Deepest regrets, etc.
Also, just for reference, everything is alphabetical. Each entry will have the release date, record label (if applicable) and genre labels I took from a music aggregator site that I hate — so don’t yell at me if you think they’re wrong, I’m just looking for uniformity for people reading this who do not obsessively seek out and review new music like some of us do.
I have also compiled a playlist with one song from each of the records listed here (besides the second one in the top ten, for reasons that will be evident if you read what I linked in the blurb), along with some stand-alone songs I loved that I couldn’t shout out in this format, please enjoy it if you want:
So! Let’s get this show on the road, friends.
Elise’s Asterisked (is that how you’d spell it?) Top Ten:
*Astrid Sonne - Great Doubt
(January 26 on Escho - Art Pop)
I am deeply sick of the word “comfort” — the notion of a “comfort watch,” a “comfort album.” I mean, yes, there are movies or shows or albums that I love to revisit and that make me feel held, but it also feels like a dismissive term, as if I’m comparing it to the Netflix slop written so that you can still follow the series while exclusively looking at your phone the entire time. The thing I find fascinating about Great Doubt is that I am simultaneously soothed and made to feel uneasy by these songs. Seeing Astrid Sonne live earlier this year only magnified the push-and-pull relationship I have with it — watching her stretch the songs out, stand up and sit down to press buttons and play instead of sing right in the middle of a bridge and making you wait. So much of the effervescent feeling she divines here relies on tension — between the classical and the electronic, the stupidly simple and the heartbreakingly complex, the stretching of time and our brain’s desperate scramble for resolution — and I just really can’t come up with any other artist or album to directly compare it to.
It feels like the major avalanche of acclaimed releases for the year usually starts in March, and this year was no different, but that means that Great Doubt stood out even more in my mind as a record that touched me on a deep level early, seeing as it was the only one for a while. As such, I’ve been singing its praises loud and proud since. Getting a “you’re the first person who told me about this album and/or artist I like” is the highest praise I can receive from anyone, and I was thrilled to receive asides about that in regard to this album. If you’ve never taken the plunge with it, I highly recommend doing it in this weird gap between Christmas and New Year’s. Requires tension and stillness to work, and so on.
*Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
(March 29 on Realistik - Psychedelic Pop/Noise Pop)
Wrote a review for Paste that I felt wasn’t received very warmly when it was first published — I stand by it though! Because I brought up reference points that I felt actually invoked what Patrick was going for the with the project, rather than just saying “Remember the 2010s, when certain guys were doing stuff like this?” Who cares???? Enough!!!!! We get it, you used to have a staff writer job when I was still in middle school!!!! I want to talk about aging, spiraling grand dame divas instead!!!
ANYWAY, I felt lightly vindicated when Justin Sayles from The Ringer also made the Numero Group comparison and Rob Harvilla, who I adore, said it was a great comp to make here. I’m not sure anyone involved read my review, but I do believe I was the first person to say the same in published writing! So I stand by the work, I’m over my initial postpartum feelings about how I clumsily tried to express my connection to this overwhelming collection of music. My points are good enough for Rob, so they should be good enough for you.
And yes, I did splurge on the vinyl of this album and it will be arriving like a third of the way through this coming year and I’m ecstatic about it.
*Charli XCX - BRAT
(June 7 on Atlantic - Electropop/EDM)
It’s as good as everyone says it is. I have nothing original to add to the hullabaloo. As a True Romance truther, it’s been thrilling to see the world catch up to and be wowed by Charli. That’s all.
*fantasy of a broken heart - Feats of Engineering
(September 27 on Dots Per Inch - Neo-Psychedelia/Indie Pop)
This is my biased New York band pick for the top ten, I am allowed one (1) of these selections. I have been stewing a lot on the concept of whimsy this year — why is the music world so absent of it at the moment? Is there a feminine connotation to it that makes the people with guitars shy away (even women)? If you’re craving video game, animated-fantasy-world silly voices with beautifully written songs, you should give this one a spin. It’s grown on me immensely since my first listen, and it will very much not be for everyone, but my hope here is that it will relentlessly glom itself onto you as well until you have no choice but to give in.
Unfortunately, I missed their album release show at Baby’s (which I heard was incredible), but I went to see them at TV Eye earlier this month and left my place later than I should have, so I was forced to book it down Wyckoff Avenue so I could catch at least the last two-thirds of the set. And wow, the lineup with the full band was easily one of the best live experiences I had this year, even if I didn’t catch the whole thing. They closed out with “AFV” and it made me even more breathless than the running from the subway did.
*Fontaines D.C. - Romance
(August 23 on XL - Alternative Rock)
Listen, a lot of people whose taste I trust seem suspicious of my intentions here — or rather, of Fontaines in general. Everyone loves “Favourite”! Not doubting that! Is it the fact that the record has pretty obvious reference points (Fun fact that didn’t make my profile: Grian told me that “Here’s The Thing” is pretty much their attempt to write a Hole song, and I’m assuming he meant a Celebrity Skin-era Hole song)? Is it that alt-rock, whatever that means now, is earnest and corny and dead? Is it that those in the know yearn for shoegaze and nothing else? I don’t know.
To defend my love of it, I’ll say that it spreads two-fold. First of all, I had this album for four months before it came out, and so I lived most of the year with it as my little secret (though obviously other press and label people also had access, but you know what I mean). It was music that was still secret and that travelled with me when I went through my big living situation change in the middle of the year, as I had already done the interviews but hadn’t written the piece yet at that time. So, there’s sentimentality in it, and I’ll admit my bias there.
Second of all, I respect that it’s distinctly not what the bands we lump them in with are doing. They could’ve made the same album ten times, like those bands are doing, but they’re not. The material’s catchy, some of it comes out of left field, they’re a great live band, they’re politically outspoken… I fail to see the problem! Does everything they try here pay off equally or in spades? You could say no! But on a personal level, this just resonates so much more than all the indie bands I’m “supposed” to like. I still haven’t got sick of my favorite tracks here, and I don’t plan on it any time soon.
Also, to be extra candid: it’s generally loser behavior to say “oh, I really liked that person I interviewed, we would be friends in real life,” because you’re not there to be their friend. You’re on the clock, they’re obligated to give you their time, it’s the least organic scenario in the world and also a business exchange. Yet, I will say that I had all good experiences with my in-person interviews this year — a few of whom we’ll dig into into later on this list — and that I think, in terms of just getting a coffee and shooting the shit with someone, I’d want to meet Grian Chatten again. He had been in New York for a few days already when we spoke, so I had plenty of intro material there — he went to a Yankees game and walked around the city listening to Nina Simone, two subjects I know almost too much about from personal experience — and we hit it off from there. Maybe one of my favorite interviews I’ve done, just on a human interaction level.
But I liked the album before any of that happened, so all of the above points still stand! You can read more of my thoughts about the album and select parts of our conversations here, and you know where to find me if you want to talk about “In the Modern World” being one of the best songs to come out of this disgusting year, which is is. Slán agat.
*Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch
(May 3 on City Slang/Mexican Summer - Singer-Songwriter/Contemporary Folk)
Yeah so, full disclosure, this was another favorite of my in-person interviews I got to do this year — it also maybe produced my favorite thing I wrote this year, point blank! But again, I’d like to divorce myself from the experience alone and present a few of my thoughts I articulated when I had more of my wits about me:
In the gradual evolution from her stark, critically-beloved self-titled debut to the more intricate songwriting turns of 2015’s On Your Own Love Again and its follow-up Quiet Signs, there’s been a collective urge to classify Pratt as a traditionalist folk artist. Maybe this derives from the deceptive simplicity of those early recordings or the way they evoke both a very specific musical past and no particular time at all—as if she’s unearthed missing American Songbook classics which feel like they’ve never not existed. As I tell Pratt during our meeting, I recently described her work to a friend as “musical transmissions from a ghost”: there’s pathos and comfort to what she does, but she’s more like the voice in your head that fills in the blanks the silence leaves.
Maybe more so than anything she’s released before, Here In The Pitch feels as if it dispels the straightforward folkie myth for good, employing a broader sonic palette that never swallows up Pratt’s distinct voice or knack for melody. In the context of exhibiting that natural artistic progression, no song but album opener “Life Is” could have served as the record’s lead single and mission statement—creating her own version of Wrecking Crew-played symphony, complete with glockenspiel, mellotron tracks emulating horns and strings and, as Pratt is proud to note, “a whole drum kit”.
Further inspiration arrived in the form of horror writer Stephen King’s oeuvre, which Pratt dove into during peak lockdown, starting with The Shining. At this point, she refers back to what I’d told my friend about the perspective in her songwriting—the ghosts that emerge when she puts pen to paper to sing through her. “Ghosts’ power is in the fact that they're unseen, but observing you,” she says. “In those Stephen King books, there's usually a psychic element where someone has access to knowledge in a way the average character does not. There's just a knowingness. They know information and that opens a lot of doors and also gives the character a lot of control. There's something vaguely threatening about that as well. It kind of connects to some of the ideas people have about what aliens could be like, where they’re always portrayed as all-knowing.”
The most thrilling element of the guises Pratt takes on over the course of Here In The Pitch’s runtime is that same sense of all-knowingness, as well the way listeners are left in suspense as long as answers are withheld. Yet, there’s a sense that this scattered perspective and the sound accompanying it evolve across the tracks, letting us watch Pratt gradually attempt to grab hold of the storybook world she’s building as her characters interact in the frequently gorgeous soundscape she and her collaborators set out for us.
Whether it’s the psychically attuned world of Stephen King novels or the occult-indebted imagery of experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger she’s pulling from, Pratt’s artistry has proven so singular that backstory isn’t required in order to plumb the depths of the work she creates. Maybe some of us just go looking for the dark side in whatever we hear. Thankfully, Here in the Pitch weaves a rich and complex tapestry that will serve whatever shade of light you project onto it.
*Liv.e - Past Futur.E
(March 29, self-released - Minimal Synth/Synth Punk/Darkwave)
It’s devastating when an album so directly up my alley is withheld from me by the universe or whatever other force wants to fuck around, but I don’t think I knew about the release of Past Futur.E until two months after it came out, at the very earliest. Of course, those of you who have hung around since last year remember that Liv.e’s previous record, Girl In The Half Pearl, made my broader AOTY list for 2023. Given that that album was grounded in a sort of alt-pop, lightly psychedelic R&B, if you’d told me her next album would be a Suicide-inspired, deeply haunted, punk-adjacent experiment where she’s singing in an English accent the whole time, I wouldn't have believed you. And yet! It’s so, so, so deeply strange and cool and I implore you to at least give it a try. It’s thrilling to me that it even exists, to be honest.
*Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk
(August 23 on Mom + Pop - Synthpop)
This one also stirred up a whirlwind of discourse (god, I hate that word. It’s like a slur to me at this point, because it’s just everyone arguing about nothing all the time), so I don’t have much to add except that it’s kind of my platonic idea of an all-timer pop album. The intro of “Image” starts and I feel an electric shock shoot straight up my spine, no matter how many times I’ve listened to it. The “The Red Telephone” by Love nod on “Killing Time” makes me want to groan out loud when it starts. “Vampire in the Corner”? “Cry For Me”? “DEATH AND ROMANCE”????? This must be how you all feel with your alt-country albums that fail to click with me every time. I want to inject it directly into my veins, it’s like a daily fix I need. If I had to designate one “official” or “objective” album of the year, it’s probably this for me.
*Milan W. - Leave Another Day
(October 1 on STROOM - Dream Pop/Ambient Pop)
Pretty sure I got this off a recommendation from a Twitter mutual before it got a few Pitchfork nods, but I was hooked from the first five seconds of “I Wait.” It is textured and dreamy and overwhelming in a way I’ve yet to boil down into a few easy buzzwords or associative descriptors (even though I just tried to with “textured and dreamy and overwhelming”). I know very little about the Flemish experimental scene, but I know how I felt when “The Healing” came on shuffle on the subway the other day and I felt like everything around me slowed to a viscous drag, where all movement feels blurry and gradual. I highly recommend going into it knowing nothing but that.
*Tex Patrello - Minotaur
(May 2 on VNC - Art Pop)
I’m not going to post my reviews/blurbs which I’ve done at Paste for these releases in full, but my blurb for this one does pretty much sum up my feelings about it, so here we go:
“In an indie landscape where so much new music can feel like a facsimile of a facsimile of a genre or scene long buried and gone, it’s rare to find something as startlingly inventive and strange as Minotaur, the debut full-length album by Dallas-based musician Tex Patrello. It’s a vulgar shotgun wedding between the sacred and profane set to swirls of surreal psychedelia—weaving bagpipes, glitchy layers of vocals and baby-voiced cheerleading chants into images of Americana, teen romance and pimps cruising outside fast-casual chain restaurants. From the limping stomp of “Long Lost Pimp” to the mechanical whirl of the outro on “Anything Goes” to the cinematic, orchestral swells of closer “De Kalb,” Patrello recounts each seedy vignette in an airy confection of a voice, conducting the chaos with so much conviction that you can’t help but be swept into her off-kilter orbit. After a while, the druggy delirium feels more like lovesickness, intoxicating in even its most sinister turns. It’s a challenging, swoon-worthy listen you’ll find yourself reaching for again and again—if only to marvel at how she got away with it in the first place.”
Tex, please tour or put out a physical version of the record someday! Would love to chat as well. Bang my line.
Our Lovely Fifth Alternates (yes, this is an alyssa edwards reference): the 50-something runners-up
Anastasia Coope - Darning Woman
(May 31 on Jagjaguwar - Freak Folk)
Reviewed for Paste. Saw the record release show and won the original art that’s on the inside of the physical record in a raffle I didn’t know I’d entered, but then dropped the ball on getting it from her because of my Moving Debacle (TRADEMARK SIGN) this year, so that’s on me. Anastasia, reach out if you’re reading this! It’s been months so I feel weird about texting you but I’ll still take the painting if you have it!
Angélica Garcia - Gemelo
(June 7 on Partisan - Latin Pop/Alt-Pop)
As recounted in a newsletter edition from last summer, Angélica Garcia performed one of my favorite sets I’ve seen maybe ever at a Partisan showcase and I was very excited for her first full-length release on the label following that show. Gemelo is, quite simply, a great pop album — great for walking, occasionally great for dancing, great for meditating on the sacred search for “the hook” in a song (I’ll get into my beef with the way we discuss “hooks” shortly). If you have to see her live: run, don’t walk, etc.
Anysia Kim - Truest
(March 21 on 10k - Alternative R&B/Drum and Bass)
I listened to “In Doubt?” approximately (I did the math) a billion times this year. I missed out on seeing her perform several times since the record came out and I’m bummed about it. This is a tight, deeply felt, 22-minute record that perfectly encapsulates Anysia Kim’s personality and skill and sheer vision as an artist. Can’t ask for more than that.
Arooj Aftab - Night Reign
(May 31 on Verve - Chamber Folk/Chamber Jazz)
This isn’t to say this is the most avant-garde music you’ll ever come across or anything, but I always like how much time I feel I have to spend with Arooj’s work. It dips its fingers into so many areas that you’re breathless trying to track it all, but it also feels effortless in a way that astounds me without fail. Really love the track “Whiskey.”
Being Dead - EELS
(September 27 on Bayonet - Indie Surf)
I didn’t ask to lead the life of a tastemaker, but yes, Being Dead made last year’s list when many others looked it over. This album feels like a continuation of the work they were doing there, but definitely got more attention this time around. I find myself charmed by their shit if only because they’ve carved out a lane so distinctly their own. As someone who had an intense moment with old surf music over my insane summer, this hit the spot big time.
Blood - Loving You Backwards
(August 2 on Ramp Local! - Noise Pop)
“TV for a Reason” is one of the best songs that came out this year, bar none. I actually saw Blood open for their list neighbors here, Being Dead, and the guitarist wore a trench coat completely buttoned up the entire set, and only opened it once the set was over. When Neil Young cracked his knuckles, pulled out his pen, and scribed the lyrics “Rock and roll is here to stay,” that’s the kind of silly shit he was talking about. Thank god for it.
Blunt Chunks - The Butterfly Myth
(April 19 on Telephone Explosion - Folk Rock)
Again, I have been on the Blunt Chunks train for at least two years — “BWFW” was awarded an honorable mention on my year-end playlist in 2022. My good friends at Telephone Explosion in Canada rarely steer me wrong. Here, I would like to highlight the atmosphere and build of “Limbo,” which injects the most unsettling strain into what is otherwise a pretty straightforward folky breakup song.
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
(February 9 on Loma Vista - Darkwave/Post-Industrial)
At the time of compiling this list, I’m also writing an essay about how Nico’s work post-Chelsea Girl is central to my own feeling of identity and belonging in this world. She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She isn’t quite The Marble Index, but it does tap into a similar sense of hopelessness, of the depth of the darkness that comes with that. As long as artists make music like that, I will always be there for it.
cumgirl8 - The 8th Cumming
(October 8 on 4AD - Synth Punk/Post-Punk)
You all boo and hiss… and I hear and understand you, as a woman of the people… and I’m not asking you to say cg8 are reinventing the wheel, because they’re not. HOWEVER, the bops are bops. The live show goes hard. I swore I would never become a “let people have fun and not have to think critically about everything” person, but I will be for them. For now.
Cuneiform Tabs - Cuneiform Tabs
(February 6 on W.25th - Experimental Rock/Neo-Psychedelia)
I think I was actually put on to this album by Jessica Pratt — not through our conversation, but from her four-episode NTS radio stint she did (she also played music specifically written for Kenneth Anger films, because she’s my kind of girl). It feels very 60s band who had one huge hit and then slowly try to move into an esoteric, psychedelic phase in a year-too-late gasp for cultural relevance, but imagine it’s shredded through a meat grinder and recorded on the oldest, dustiest tape you can find in your dad’s closet under his old leather jacket. The members of Cuneiform Tabs are my kind of girl as well, evidently.
The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
(November 1 on Polydor - Gothic Rock/Alternative Rock)
Reviewed for Paste. You all already know. They’re (probably, most days) my favorite band of all time. This is so entirely excellent. You can watch them perform the whole thing and then some here. I wish I could have it played on a constant loop in the background of my life all the time. We’re so, so, so, so lucky.
Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal
(August 30 on Top Dawg - Southern Hip Hop)
Best Tiny Desk of the year — an element that always sways this list. Super eclectic and intermittently very heartfelt. It’s so exciting to see her get her due this year and to have so many people getting behind her, and that’s all I really have to say about that.
Ekko Astral - Pink Balloons
(April 17 on Topshelf - Queercore/Post-Hardcore)
It’s punk music with actual stakes and an actual sense of humor, balanced in gorgeous, furious harmony. If you didn’t see Ekko Astral at least three times this year, I have nothing to say to you except that you’re slipping.
Fievel Is Glauque - Rong Weicknes
(October 25 on Fat Possum - Progressive Pop/Jazz Pop)
Fine - Rocky Top Ballads
(June 7 on Escho - Dream Pop/Slacker Rock)
There’s something ephemeral to Rocky Top Ballads that I’ve found difficult to describe to other people. It feels like floating in spectral purgatory above the clouds — less like rock music and more like an elevated state that still feels accessible from a musical standpoint.
Friko - Where We've Been, Where We Go From Here
(February 16 on ATO - Indie Rock)
One of those bands where the live show completely sold me (shoutout to my beloved friend and frequent editor Matt for convincing me to go). I have now become like the number one Friko salesperson where if I see they’re opening for someone a friend is seeing, I have to give them an earful about my own showgoing experience. I’m like a Jehovah’s Witness for them, and they’re welcome.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - "No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead"
(October 4 on Constellation - Post-Rock)
I’ve never been a GY!BE truther, but a) yes to the title, of course, and b) “BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD” is one of the most gorgeous things you will hear from this year. It pains me just to think about it even when I’m not listening to it.
Herhums - To Save Us All
(March 17 on The Vault - Psychedelic Folk)
100% recommend sitting in a dark room (or as the sun is just rising! or setting!) and focusing your attention on this fully for 27 minutes. If you’re a fan of Vashti Bunyan or Nick Drake, I deeply believe you will get something from this.
Hildegard - Jour 1596
(October 18 on Chivi Chivi - Alternative R&B/Art Pop/Neo-Soul)
I respected the most recent Helena Deland album more than I enjoyed/revisited it, so this was the best kind of surprise: a project of hers (with Ouri) that both confuses and delights me. Really beautiful instrumentation and production here.
J.R.C.G. - Grim Iconic...(Sadistic Mantra)
(August 2 on Sub Pop - Experimental Rock)
Did not get enough love at any real publications I read and I’m here to rectify that now. Effortlessly cool and original even if it’s playing with familiar sounds.
Julia Holter - Something in the Room She Moves
(March 22 on Domino - Art Pop)
Reviewed for Paste. I saw her at Webster Hall and the show was beautiful. I don’t think “Meyou” is the most compelling track in a recorded album format, but on stage, with three other vocalists? Transcended all physical perception of time and space.
Ka - The Thief Next to Jesus
(August 19 on Iron Works - Drumless/East Coast Hip Hop)
We honor all fallen New Yorkers here and Ka is no different. He gave us a beautiful goodbye that I loved even before we knew it was goodbye.
Kate Bollinger - Songs From a Thousand Frames of Mind
(September 27 on Ghostly - Singer-Songwriter)
“Sweet Devil” turns a screw in me that we’re still investigating. Will report back once we’ve gotten to the bottom of it.
Kee Avil - Spine
(May 3 on Constellation - Experimental/Art Pop/Glitch Pop)
It’s actually shocking that I, a person made deeply uncomfortable by ASMR content of any kind, am completely enraptured by this. I just don’t hear anything else that sounds like what Kee Avil has crafted here, which is rarer and rarer to say! May she blow my brains out a million more times!
Kim Deal - Nobody Loves You More
(November 22 on 4AD - Indie Rock)
So much weirder than it needs to be, so I’m on board. My dad always tells a story about when he and my mom bought Kim Deal a beer at a Chavez show in the East Village, and he doesn’t remember what they talked about, but my dad is deeply unimpressed by most of my interactions with musicians, so the fact that he is always itching to tell this story is a testament to The Power Of Kimberly Deal. Go listen to the album, dance to “Crystal Breath” specifically and then revisit Title TK, because it’s better than everyone has told you it is.
Kim Gordon - The Collective
(March 8 on Matador - Industrial Hip Hop/Experimental Rock/Noise Rock)
Ditto to the last entry’s first line, seeing as these two have collaborated in the past. I’ve seen her live twice this year, I stand in my convictions and she got me in the divorce, no question.
Lunar Vacation - Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire
(September 13 on Keeled Scales - Dream Pop/Indie Pop)
Everything’s in the harmonies, kids.
Mabe Fratti - Sentir que no sabes
(June 28 on Unheard of Hope - Art Pop/Avant-Folk)
Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven
(March 1 on Epitaph - Indie Rock/Punk)
So, I might have some more “professional” writing coming out about this record soon, but please understand that I believe “Loud Bark” is the definitive song of the year in a sense. Pacing and running order are strange here, but as I spent more time with it, I saw that as more of a feature than a flaw. It’s worth a revisit, especially as we’ve seen the world mold and change around it for the worse.
Marika Hackman - Big Sigh
(January 12 on Chrysalis - Singer-Songwriter/Indie Rock)
First four song run? Insane. Last four song run? Also very good.
Milkweed - Folklore 1979
(February 28 on Broadside Hacks Recordings - Avant-Folk/Sound Collage)
Weirdo, patched-together, traditional-sounding folk songs over keyboard preset hip hop beats. It’s 11 minutes long (they call it an album, not an EP, so it counts) and it goes hard as hell. The British love making stuff like this and that is why I will always feel a kinship with them (no one tell my full-blooded Irish grandparents).
mui zyu - Nothing or Something to Die For
(May 24 on Father/Daughter - Indietronica)
Wins the B*dr**m P*p olympics for this year. I’m deciding we can only pick one (1) actually good release that falls in that bucket per year going forward, so pack it up and see you all next time.
Nala Sinephro - Endlessness
(September 6 on Warp - Jazz Fusion/Progressive Electronic/Space Ambient)
The best subway music ever, and I mean that as the highest compliment I can possibly pay.
Naked Roomate - Pass the Loofah
(October 25 on Trouble in Mind - Dance Punk)
“I Can’t Be Found,” I love you so. Another one of those albums that feels like it follows the guidelines of the outsider punk it pulls from in a way that still allows it to come off as distinctive and not just as cosplay.
Nia Archives - Silence Is Loud
(April 12 on Island - Liquid Drum and Bass/Jungle)
Nighttime - Lone Star
(July 5, self-released - Psychedelic Folk)
Every year, I need to have at least one add with a little bit of twang. Last year’s Keeper is the Heart didn’t stick with me as much as I would’ve liked it to, but this feels even more haunted and gauzy in a way which delights me.
Pharmakon - Maggot Mass
(October 4 on Sacred Bones - Death Industrial)
This is what the inside of my head sounded like for most of the year! Just really love hearing myself represented! Everyone enjoy! <3
Rachel Chinouriri - What a Devastating Turn of Events
(May 3 on Parlophone - Indie Rock/Pop Rock)
Listen, you all know me! You know I largely have no interest in the Taylor disciples doing diaristic pop! But Rachel has wormed her way into my good graces. And again, I hate to beat a dead horse, but I do always enjoy such a distinctly British artist trying their hand at American Rock Sounds (TRADEMARK SIGN). I am glad that my main demographic (cool teenage girls who will only become cooler with each passing year of their lives) have this.
Reymour - NoLand
(September 18 on Knekelhuis - Ambient Pop/Minimal Wave)
Another super sick Bandcamp recommendation, if I’m remembering correctly. The other day, post-Christmas, I went to go see the classic Jacques Demy opus The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with all the old people at Film Forum and then did a little walk around in the Soho rain, pushing through tourists and listening to this and it was perfect sound to accompany the activity. Their bio calls them a “Psycho-romantic Adventure,” which is honestly enough to sell me.
RiTchie - Triple Digits (112)
(April 5, self-released - Experimental Hip Hop)
I think they should play “WYTD?!?!” at funerals, weddings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, divorce parties, quinceañeras… something to consider.
Robber Robber - Wild Guess
(July 26, self-released - Indie Rock/Post-Punk)
I wrote the bio for this album so I feel like I’m in breach of some made up contract that doesn’t exist by commenting on it in a subjective way… but, of course, it’s here on this prestigious list. So that says enough for the quality of the material, doesn't it? I wouldn’t steer you wrong. My fun fact is that I couldn’t decipher the title of the album when Nina first sent the cover with the album SoundCloud file whose title was just like “RRAlbum” or something, so I had to send an embarrassing message that was like “I’m so sorry that I’m illiterate, can you please tell me what this image says?” and she very kindly clued me in. We all have our struggles and mine is being able to read a two-word title that I am literally being paid to read.
RÓIS - MO LÉAN
(October 4, self-released - Art Pop/Electro-Industrial)
The Irish people and I?? The power of our psychic musical connection ALSO cannot be overstated. If you love like, Twigs at her weirdest or Hillary Woods or the sound of ancient incantations — boy, do I have the album for you here.
ShrapKnel & Controller 7 - Nobody Planning to Leave
(June 7 on Backwoodz - Abstract Hip Hop/East Coast Hip Hop)
So atmospheric and has me completely absorbed from beginning to end. I feel like I missed out on a bunch of new rap releases this year, but I’m still glad this got stuck in my web.
SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - You’ll Have to Lose Something
(August 23 on Saddle Creek - Neo-Psychedelia/Indie Rock)
A band which is usually squarely “not for me” finally pulls through. Every time it bears lightly into standard-indie-rock territory, it will completely swerve and do something insane that I adore.
The Submissives - Live at Value Sound Studios
(October 11 on Celluloid Lunch - Indie Pop)
Goes straight into the EGGAMC (Elise’s Girl Group-Adjacent Musical Canon).
Tama Gucci - Notes to Self
(August 16 on Sinderlyn - Alternative R&B/Alt-Pop/EDM)
Did jumping jacks to “No More ‘I Love You’s’” the other day for some reason and that alone made me feel this was worthy of inclusion.
Tristwch Y Fenywod - Tristwch Y Fenywod
(August 30 on Night School - Avant-Folk/Neofolk)
Welsh witchy shit. Quite seriously felt like one of those things just for me to discover because it’s so directly up my alley, which is a feeling we don’t get to feel enough, even despite the immediate access to more artists making more music than ever before!
Vince Staples - Dark Times
(May 24 on Def Jam - West Coast Hip Hop)
Easily my favorite project from him in the last few years — and a seminal victory lap for his recurring role on Abbott, let’s not forget.
Web Hex - Become Matter Become Mother
(December 6 on Chris - ????)
Web Hex have become my live music white whale: they live here in New York, but they rarely play live (there’s minimal info attached to those show announcements, even when they do perform?) and are infrequent posters on socials. Anyway, I found out about this record a week or so before it came out, and of course, I love it. If Stereolab crossed freak folk yelping sounds like your bag, give it a go.
Xiu Xiu - 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips
(September 27 on Polyvinyl - Experimental Rock)
This will forever be the year that I got to get on the phone with Jamie and Angela and listen to them ramble and make fun of each other and then be like “sorry for rambling and making fun of each other” as if it wasn’t a highlight of my music journalism career (if we can even call it a “career”). This is the most accessible Xiu Xiu release we’ve gotten in a minute, so I recommend it as an entry point if you’re afraid to fully take the dive in.
YATTA - PALM WINE
(October 15 on PTP - Art Pop/Experimental)
YATTA feels like a beautiful little secret that I pass around with like five other people who also write about music, and that’s an exclusionary and beautiful connection I cherish so much. Yet, I’m passing it on here as well, because I care.
youbet - Way to Be
(May 10 on Hardly Art - Indie Rock)
The songwriting is super solid. You guys love talking about “hooks” like they’re the end-all-be-all of great guitar music (something I’m aiming to be contradictory about in 2025, because none of those lauded songs are ever that catchy to me), but this has a magic I can’t quite define. “Carsick,” I love you dearly. One of my favorite openers of the year.
Anyway, we did it!!!!! Hope to see you all here more frequently next year! I have newsletter ideas, just need to put them into action and wrack my brain to make them interesting, I swear! Big kiss, be good, stalk Charli’s recently-leaked Letterboxd account, whatever.