Much like Santa Claus, we've made a list and checked it (at least) twice, but unlike the corpulent white-bearded tyrant, we have made no puritanical value judgements about which artists are naughty or nice – our only criteria for an Album of the Year was whether a record was exceptionally good. Given what a fantastic year it's been for new music, whittling it down to just 20 LPs was not easy, but below (in no particular order) are the records that, more than any others, we returned to again and again. Enjoy!
Naima Bock - Below a Massive Dark Land
The Ex-Goat Girl bass player’s excellent second LP is a more stripped-back affair than her debut Giant Palm, but is by no means sparse. With brass, wind and string arrangements augmenting Bock’s acoustic guitar and plangent voice – a kind of cross between Sandy Denny and Cate Le Bon – Below a Massive Dark Land has been described aptly as a “very English kind of saudade”; once the warm sonic hug of the compositions have drawn the listener in, Bok’s poetic and often starkly confessional lyrics gradually reveal themselves in all their beauty. Part of a school of British folk-influenced artists currently making truly exceptional work (Rozi Plain and This is the Kit among them), Below a Massive Dark Land is Bok’s finest work to date. (Released: 27/09/24)
Kim Deal - Nobody Loves You More
The debut solo album from Kim Deal has been decades in the making, and it’s bloody awesome. Recorded in part by Deal’s close friend Steve Albini before his passing, a collegial atmosphere pervades Nobody Loves You More, with guests including twin sister and Breeders alum Kelley Deal, Teenage Fanclub’s Raymond McGinley, and Savages’ Fay Milton, and accordingly, the record is one of the most diverse that the Pixies and Breeders legend has ever made.
While there are many stone-cold indie-rock gems to please the college rock contingent, including the fantastic album closer ‘A Good Time Pushed’, which is on a par with the very best Breeders songs, and the lovely lead single ‘Coast’, which has an airy Tex-Mex-meets-Silver Jews feel, tracks such as the driving, motorik 'Crystal Breath’, with its blown-out drums and heavy analogue-synth bass, shows that Deal can even make eminently danceable experimental indie on a par with Le Tigre and Gang Gang Dance. (Released: 22/11/24)
Nala Sinephro - Endlessness
Imagine A Love Supreme-era John Coltrane and Art Ensemble of Chicago’s drummer Don Moye playing on a Boards of Canada or a Plaid record, with the occasional addition of strings by David Axelrod – wouldn’t that be great? Of course, but while it's easy to pick out individual elements, they don’t do justice to the majestic whole that is Nala Sinephro’s sophomore album, Endlessness (Warp Records),
Backed by a brilliant group of players, including James Mollison on saxophone (Ezra Collective), and Morgan Simpson on drums (black midi), Sinephro (who plays pedal harp, modular synthesiser, keyboards and piano) continues to reconfigure the electronic and the organic in astonishing new ways, and with Endlessness, the Caribbean-Belgian, London-based artist has created a work of vibrant futurity and deep spirituality. (Released: 06/09/24)
Jeff Parker & ETA IVtet - The Way Out of Easy
On their first collection of new music since 2022's critically celebrated Mondays at Enfield Tennis Academy, Jeff Parker and his ETA IVtet ensemble – featuring long-time members Anna Butterss (Jason Isbell, SML) on upright bass, Josh Johnson (Meshell Ndegeocello, SML) on saxophone, and Jay Bellerose (Punch Brothers) on drums – offer yet more exceptional, multi-textured improvised leftfield jazz, via the reliably brilliant International Anthem Recordings. (Released: 22/11/24)
Flock - Flock II
In the last two decades or so there has been an explosion of British jazz talent who have helped to thoroughly revitalise the genre. The much-missed Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet (featuring Shabaka Hutchings and The Smile’s Tom Skinner), Cassie Kinoshi’s SEED Ensemble, The Comet Is Coming, and Flock are the pick of a remarkable group, the latter’s terrific sophomore record, Flock II, being indicative of the supra-jazz open-mindedness that defines the scene.
Featuring Bex Burch, fresh from her wonderful debut solo album on International Anthem, a bastion of the equally fertile US avant-jazz scene; Tamar Osborn of Collocutor; Danalogue of the aforementioned The Comet Is Coming, and Soccer96; and Al MacSween of Kefaya – plus the London-based drummer Sarathy Korwar – Flock II once again pushes the boundaries of composition and craft, synthesising elements of ambient, minimalism and electronica for a record on a par with Chicago’s Exploding Star Orchestra for sheer psych/outer-limits goodness. (Released: 25/10/24)
Hayden Thorpe - Ness
Inspired by the writer and naturalist Robert Macfarlane’s Ness, an ode to Suffolk’s Orford Ness – the former MoD weapons development site active during both World Wars and the Cold War, which was acquired by the National Trust in 1993 and left to re-wild – the ex-Wild Beasts frontman’s fantastic new record, like Orford Ness, is a place of paradox, mystery and constant evolution. (Released: 27/09/24)
Broadcast - Distant Call: Collected Demos 2000-2006
A collection of early demos by the wonderful Birmingham electro-psych-folk duo of Trish Keenan and James Cargill, which would subsequently appear in finished form on the albums Haha Sound, Tender Buttons and The Future Crayon, the tremendous Distant Call also includes two songs discovered by Cargill after Keenan’s tragic passing in 2011. (Released: 28/09/24)
The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
The Cure’s first album in 16 years is an unflinching and devastating examination of heartbreak and the pain of existence on a par with the band’s heaviest works. The group's mercurial frontman Robert Smith has said that it is “the doomiest thing” that the band has ever done, while keyboardist Roger O’Donnell has called it “the most intense, saddest, most dramatic and most emotional record we’ve ever made”. But of course, such seriousness does not preclude sonic thrills, and the record, which features some of the best tracks the group has ever made, is one of often heart-stopping beauty. (Released: 01/11/24)
Tindersticks - Soft Tissue
As well as foregrounding the Stuart Staples-led quintet's love of recherché 60s soul, Tindersticks’ 14th album also showcases the quietly, continually brilliant Nottingham group's exploratory spirit. Mixing intimate songwriting with experimental soundscapes, and perhaps best described as Scott Walker’s Climate of the Hunter if it had been arranged by Angelo Badalamenti, Soft Tissue oozes panache and wry wisdom. Here's to the next 14. (Released: 13/09/24)
Various Artists - Atlantic Mavericks: A Decade of Experimental Music in Portugal (82-93)
The 1980s in Portugal were a time of profound transformation, marked by the aftermath of a peaceful revolution and a burgeoning desire for artistic expression, and the eclectic range of acts displayed on Atlantic Mavericks reflects the burgeoning freedom experienced by musicians as they emerged from political turbulence.
Featuring a wide range of artists, including Linha Geral, Balladium, Ban, Santa Maria, and Fé de Sábio, some personal favourites include Carlos Maria Trindade’s ‘Em Campo Aberto’, a new wave-ish electro jammer that sounds like Gary Newman crossed with Devo; and SPQR’s ‘Flow’, an arresting avant-garde collage drone piece that brings to mind both Throbbing Gristle and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. A brilliant primer for this relatively unknown period in Portuguese music, Atlantic Mavericks is a must for fans who like deeply, beguilingly strange pop. (Released: 05/07/24)
MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
With a wit and wisdom (not to mention a laidback, whiskey-stained voice) that belies his 25 years, North Carolina’s MJ Lenderman combines Will Oldham-like alt-folk-country with the kind of slanted (and enchanted) indie-rock perfected by Pavement. It’s a winning combination, augmented by Lenderman’s sometimes hilarious lyrics (tales of jerking off into showers; the existential loneliness of a smartwatch, that kind of thing …), and on the life-affirming Manning Fireworksit’s never sounded better. (Released: 06/09/24)
BEAK> - >>>>
Is the fourth album by BEAK> also their last? If, given that the band’s leader Geoff Barrow has announced his departure, it really is, the trio has given us one hell of a swan song, for >>>> is simply some of the best interstellar motorik psych you’ll ever hear this side of The Silver Apples and Can. (Released: 01/06/2024)
OSEES - Sorcs 80
What do you do if you’re one of the most feted cult guitar bands of your generation, but, after 20-odd albums, feel like shaking it up a bit? If you’re the OSEES (AKA OCS, Thee Oh Sees, etc, etc), you ditch the guitars, of course. And so, aside from a bass, essential for that pulsating motorik rhythm that John Dwyer and co. love so much, Sorcs 80 is all about synths, drums and, occasionally, horns. This unusual combination cannot help but make the record one of the most singular-sounding OSEES albums in their oeuvre, enhanced by the fact that Dwyer also dramatically changes up his singing style on the LP, seemingly in accordance with the style of each track. And so on the brilliant, horn-laden ‘Earthling’, which could be a Dexy’s track from Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, the frontman sounds a lot like Kevin Rowland – and it really works (plus it has a lovely synth outro to rival that of Pixies’ ‘Alec Eiffel’); while on 'Cassius, Brutas & Judas', which sounds like queer-electro junk-punkers Nervous Gender covering Crass (ie, amazing), Dwyer goes full Steve Ignorant to brilliant effect. (Released: 09/08/2024)
Howie Lee - At the Drolma Wesel-Ling-Monastery
Beijing-based artist/producer Howie Lee’s follow-up to Birdy Island (2021) is one of the most ambitious in his discography. Recorded at Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery in the mountains of north-eastern Tibet, the LP was informed by Lee being given access to the sound archive of the monastery’s founder and master, Tuga Rinpoche. Combining Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist singing with bass/footwork science, glitched-out hyper-rhythms and sampled Chinese-Tibetan instrumentation, At the Drolma … is a simply mesmerising work of experimental club-futurism. Big ups to the Mais Um Discos label for continuing to bring incredible music to our ears on the regular! (Released: 28/06/2024)
Being Dead - Eels
The woman and man behind Being Dead are named Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy, respectively (I’m not sure which is which), and I’d like to think that, when they’re not making brilliantly off-kilter lo-fi garage-punk, they moonlight as a noir detective duo, solving crimes by night in their native Austin, Texas.
Imbued with a melodic and harmonic sensibility on a par with various of my favourite groups and artists, such as The Breeders, Electrelane, Cate Le Bon, and classic Flying Nun bands such as The Chills and The Bats – the duo’s harmonies really are a joy to behold – the songs on Eels, such as ‘Van Goes’ and ‘Firefighters’, are some of the finest guitar tracks of this year. (Released: 27/09/24)
Floating Points - Cascade
Following relatively hot on the heels of the incredible global success that was Promises, Sam Shepherd’s 2021 collaboration with the legendary US jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, the tremendous Cascade is a return to the electronica-house-techno formula of 2019’s Crush. About as far from the contemplative spiritual-psych-ambience of Promises as you can imagine, Cascade is a pure club record, purpose-built for the dance floor – which is not to say that Shepherd has eased off on the melodic complexity found on Promises, but rather that with standout tracks such as ‘Birth 4000’, which features a deliriously demented Giorgio Moroder-esque arpeggiated acid-inflected bass line, he has put his considerable compositional talent purely in the service of sweaty hedonism. (Released: 13/09/24)
Dirty Three - Love Changes Everything
The Australian trio of multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis (The Bad Seeds; Grinderman), guitarist Mick Turner (formerly of legendary hardcore outfit Sick Things) and virtuoso drummer Jim White return with their first album in over a decade – a collection of truly stunning and visceral instrumental art rock.
Special mention must go to the opening track, ‘Love Changes Everything I’, which starts with a disgustingly heavy riff even Tony Iommi might shy away from, over which Ellis’s ripping violin evokes the Call to Prayer, and beneath which the primal rhythm sounds like Beat Happening drummer Heather Lewis falling down a well while still attempting to play, before everything coalesces, briefly, into a dazzling and motorik Amon Düül II-like concoction. While in ‘Love Changes Everything II’, a plaintive, iterative piano riff rolls like an ebbing tide, stramashed with free-drums and guitar, while sporadic spectral voices and reverberant noise blasts conjure the unremitting heat of an Outback sun. (Released: 28/06/24)
The Jesus Lizard - Rack
If, as the adage goes, a week is a long time in politics, what is 26 years in noise rock? If you’re the legendary Austin, Texas, outfit Jesus Lizard it’s apparently no time at all, for their first new album since 1998’s Blue sounds as if it was also recorded in the late 2000s. Just to be clear, this is to be celebrated. They mercifully haven’t ‘eased’ into late middle-age: mercurial vocalist David Yow isn’t writing about how he likes golf or washing his car on a Sunday, and is still as furious and twistedly funny as ever, as evidenced by this sample lyric from the LP’s opener ‘Hide & Seek’, on which Duane Denison’s heavy-duty riffs are as brilliantly ear drum-pulverising as ever, and Yow screams like a wounded marine mammal: “Her claws carved a beautiful mess into my back / She hogtied me down with my neck on the track … Thank you very much dear lord god for the believing end.”
It’s important to emphasise that Rack is not merely a good LP for a band that haven’t recorded anything for two and a half decades – it needs no qualifiers, it’s simply phenomenal, the equal of 1991's Goat, a record without which bands like Pissed Jeans and Metz wouldn’t exist. The Jesus Lizard maybe four men in their 60s, but as Rack attests, they will never, ever get old. (Released: 13/09/24)
Caribou - Honey
In marked contrast to the exquisite downbeat electro-yacht-rock of 2020’s Suddenly, the terrific Honey is, much like Floating Points’s Cascade, pure, unadulterated club music. Perhaps Dan Snaith’s Bacchanalian approach is simply a way to give his and his audience’s minds some much-needed respite from the many catastrophic political fires currently raging in the world; if so he’s nailed the brief, for Honey is some of the most joyful, ‘lose your mind at a club at 3AM’ garage-house since the Aussie quartet Confidence Man’s 2022 opus Tilt – but with the added benefit of Snaith also being one of the most imaginative and technically dazzling electronic producers currently working. (Released: 04/10/24)
Tomin - Flores para Verene / Cantos para Caramina
This wonderful release by the Brooklyn-based Tomin, compiling recordings that the artist self-released across 2020 and 2021, features 24 etudes of compact, iterative beauty, ranging from 30-second sketches to full-fledged tracks, comprised solely of the flute, trumpet and alto clarinet (all played by Tomin). Beautiful and life-affirming, many of the compositions here are dedicated to jazz icons, such as ‘Come Sunday, Soprano (for Ellington and Dolphy)’, suggesting that the experimentally-minded Tomin realises that to make anything new of note – and let’s be clear, Flores para Verene / Cantos para Caramina thrills with its progressive approach to harmony – it’s not unwise to take what you need from the greats that went before you. (Released: 02/08/24)