By: Josh Kitchen / December 10, 2024
brat Summer! Cowboy Carter Spring! Magdalena Bay Fall! Father John Kendrick Winter! 2024 in my estimation gave us some of the finest new music in years, and much of the albums that are on this list rank among the best of their respective artists catalogues. It was an incredible year for pop music with charli xcx finally, and deservedly becoming a household name, Beyonce, Willie Nelson, and Lainey Wilson giving us some country classics, Nilüfer Yanya, Waxahatchee, and Magdalena Bay gracing us with forward thinking and inventive pop and indie vibes, and old stalwarts like Nick Cave and PJ Harvey dropping some of their best albums of their careers. To me, 2024 was marked by incredibly honest, passionate, and confessional songwriting by female led bands and musicians like Grace Cummings, Lainey Wilson, Mannequin Pussy, and Amyl & The Sniffers. There are so many great albums I loved this year that aren't included on this list by St. Vincent, Billie Eilish, Beyonce, DIIV, and Kalu Uchis. We were truly spoiled by great tunes this year. Here's the 20:
20. A Dream Is All We Know - The Lemon Twigs
Classic rock whiz kid brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario have been putting out insanely great 60's and 70's inspired records since 2015, but in A Dream Is All We Know, The Twigs dropped their finest yet. This time the brothers D'Addario lean heavily into Brian Wilson inspired harmonies on tracks like "In The Eyes of the Girl" (co-produced by Sean Lennon) and alt-country jams like "If You And I Are Not Wise" which could have easily been amongst the best tracks on your favorite Byrds record.
19. My Method Actor - Nilüfer Yanya
I first saw Nilüfer Yanya open for Sharon Van Etten at the Ace in LA five years ago when she was touring behind her debut LP and was completely floored. Since then Yanya has dropped her second and now third album this year with My Method Actor. Sade vibes by way of some crunchy riffs run abound on this record, and some of the best pop songs of the year live here in tracks like "Like I Say (I Runaway)", and the title cut.
18. Underdressed at the symphony - Faye Webster
Underdressed At The Symphony opens with the cleverly micro and then suddenly macro jam, "But Not Kiss," where Faye Webster gives us another one of her signature sugary pop nugget tracks. An at once truly satisfying chorus and guitar drop of a number, it begins one of Webster's best records yet, with the sweet and funny "Lego Ring" featuring Lil Yachty, and "He Loves Me Yeah!" which reminds of Huey Lewis' best pulsating riff jams.
17. Whirlwind - Lainey Wilson
Lainey Wilson has begun to fill that modern country void left by those massive pop country musicians with big presences like Rebe McCintyre, Shania Twain, and Trisha Yearwood. And like those greats, Wilson is both great at an infections hook without sacrifisng what makes country music so great. Whirlwind is Wilson's best record to date, and features big songs like the ferocious title cut (and perhaps it's no accident she also penned the weathery single "Out Oklahoma" from this year's Twisters), the superb ballad "4x4xU," and truly whirlwind rocking tracks like "Hang Tight Honey."
16. Tigers Blood - Waxahatchee
One of the best live moments of the year for me was seeing Kathryn Crutchfield of Waxahatchee play the lead single from Tigers Blood, "Right Back To It" at the Hollywood Palladium. Watching her play that song you could tell how proud she was by it the record as a whole. Crutchfield has been putting out records which you could safely consider her "best" records every time, but this time it feels like it could be really really true. Until the next one.
15. I Inside the Old Year Dying - PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey graced us with new music in the year of our lord 2024! I Inside The Old Year Dying is PJ Harvey's first album in seven years, and it was worth the wait. This is a collection of songs that live in the earth. Ghosts live on this record. Filled with tracks that sound like they exist on the veil, animal and nature noises, and some of Harvey's most vbeuatoful singing, this record is fantastic. And it was even better live at the Greek.
14. Imaginal Disk - Magdalena Bay
Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin are up to something really special on Imaginal Disk. It's filled with insane hooks and grooves on tracks like "Image" and "Death & Romance." Magdalena Bay is one of the most exciting bands out there right now, and this record is infectious. The first time I heard it I went back and relistened two or three times. They pop up on another great record on this list as well, and when you hear this record the connection starts to make so much sense.
13. Only God Was Above Us - Vampire Weekend
Did Vampire Weekend release their best album this year too??? It's possible! On Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend are proving that the hype was real when their self titled LP dropped in 2008, taking what made their first record superb and putting out an album that could only have been made by a band that good whose been putting out records for the past fifteen years, slowly building on each previous entry and getting better with age. "Prep-School Gangsters" is my favorite track and seeing them do it at the Hollywood Bowl this year was really special.
12. Viva Hinds - Hinds
Carlotta Cosials and Ana García Perrote of Spanish band Hinds have had a very intense couple of years with half the band leaving in between this and their last record, heartbreaks, a pandemic, and more changes that the most battle tested bands might not survive. What comes of it though is a truly fine record that has some of the shiniest moments of the year on tracks like "Boom Boom Back" which features Beck, and the great opener in "Hi, How Are You." They play The Clash's "Spanish Bombs" live on their current run and I have to believe that's extremely intentional release of a track to do. VIVA HINDS!
11. No Name - Jack White
I know on several of these records I've been calling these the best records of their careers, but this time it's really true! Ok. maybe not the best of his career, but No Name is easily Jack White's best solo record. This collection of songs contains tracks you would swear you might have heard on White Blood Cells or Get Behind Me Satan. "That's How I'm Feeling" and "What's The Rumpus" are classic Stripes sounding tunes, and there's more where that came from.
10. Romance - Fontaines D.C.
Irish punk rock bliss on the latest Fontaines record. The lead single "Starburster" is so wildly inventive and addictive, it's no wonder everyone from Elton John to Arctic Monkeys are hailing Fontaines D.C. as their favorite new band. I got to see the band take over the Hollywood Palladium this year and hearing these tracks live felt like what it might have been like to witness Oasis in the 90's.
9. GNX - Kendrick Lamar
GNX caps off one hell of a year for Kendrick Lamar. And to this listener, he's gifted us maybe his best document of music since To Pimp a Butterfly. Drake beef aside, (RIP), GNX is abobe all an LA record. I would imagine that "dodger blue" will be played for years. The production on this record is really tight too, with tracks being touched by Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, and Jack Antanoff. The tracks with SZA - "luther," and "gloria" are serious highlights.
8. All I Ever Want Is Everything -
Blu DeTiger
Blu DeTiger has been making insanely funky, fresh, chillaxed, and bass forward pop music for nearly a decade, and after countless singles that should be smash hits, she released her debut full length studio album this year in All I Ever Want Is Everything." The great thing about DeTiger is her being hell-bent on making the bass the coolest instrument in a rock band and it's about time. The album has a ton of tracks with insane hooks all being led by DeTiger's now signature bass. With help from co-writer and little known up and comer Chappell Roan on "Hey You," and "Disappearing" featuring Magdalena Bay, DeTiger made a simply great record that will have you joining the Blu army and impatiently waiting for more. Shoutout to fellow DeTiger, Blu's brother Rex who plays drums on the album - always keeping it together.
7. Mahashmashana - Father John Misty
Father John Misty simply does not make bad albums. Even his previous effort, the often maligned Chloë and the Next 20th Century, will find a defender in me, loving tracks like "Buddy's Rendezvous" and "Goodbye Mr. Blue," but in Mahashmashana, Josh Tillman makes what reasonable people could argue is his best record yet. From the opening cut, title track "Mahashmashana," FJM immediately takes you to 1970 in Friar's Park, feeling like you're watching George Harrison record his seminal All Things Must Pass. Perhaps that is not an accident, with the title track referring to the Sanskrit word for a "great cremation ground. So what's FJM burying? Certainly not what we love about him - songs like "Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose" and "Being You" are among his best, and help make the listener feel like they're not alone in the world.
6. Ink & Oil - Storefront Church
Lukas Frank's outstanding new record, Ink & Oil is an album that feels like it's been buried in the earth for a hundred years, and due to man's greed and desire for power, it's been unearthed, here to make us live with what we've wrought. Backed by an entire orchestra of thundering strings and mountainous timbre, Ink & Oil confronts what we've done to the physical world we live in and makes us consider what that makes ourselves. Tracks like "Coal," "Tapping on the Glass," and "The High Room" are nothing short of extraordinary and will sit with the listener for a long time. Frank's gorgeous voice is a pleasure to listen to and you could compare the record to Brian Wilson, Stravinsky, and the mind of Robert J. Oppenheimer and be right on each account. Simply stunning.
5. Wild God - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
"We've all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy," Nick Cave sings on his latest album, Wild God. After four albums largely centered on the grief Cave experienced from losing not one, but two songs, Wild God feels like the aftermath of that pain, and listening to the record, you can't help but shed tears of joy - tears of pleasure and beauty, the record feeling like a treatise on a new lease on life. Cave is back here backed with the Bad Seeds, his previous record, Carnage, being a joint effort with fellow Bad Seed and creative partner Warren Ellis. This one feels like the band is back together and is indeed joyous. "Conversion" and "Song of the Lake" are two serious highlights. And I'm not alone in the praise - Bob Dylan himself quoted the above lyrics for Joy after seeing a Bad Seeds show in Paris. "We've all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy. I was thinking to myself - yeah, that feels about right." Dylan proclaimed.
4. I Got Heaven - Mannequin Pussy
This was almost my record of the year. It's so fucking good. Mannequin Pussy really have made their best record. I Got Heaven is full of female rage, power, autonomy, and grace as the Philadelphia band, led by lead singer Marisa "Missy" Dabice steamrolls through ten tracks in a manic thirty minutes. "Loud Bark," "OK! OK? OK? OK!", and the title track are serious powerhouses with biting lyrics it's hard to shake. "And what if we stopped spinning?/And what if we're just flat?/And what if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?," Dabice sings over power chord slude riffs and drums. On I Got Heaven, Mannequin Pussy prove why they're one of the best bands working right now.
3. brat - charli xcx
See here:
2. Cartoon Darkness - Amyl & The Sniffers
"You're a dumb cunt, you're an asshole/Every time you talk, you mumble, grumbles/Need to wipe your mouth after you speak/'Cause it's an asshole, bum hole, dumb cunt," Amyl & The Sniffers frontwoman Amy Taylor sings over the opening track of Cartoon Darkness, "Jerkin'." Insane lyrics like these appear all over the entire 33 minute album, and I can safely say it's the greatest punk rock record I've heard in a decade. Amyl & The Sniffers have been putting on epic live shows for the past few years, led by Taylor and are proudly showing the world what great music is coming out of Australia, (along with this writer's number one album pick of the year.) Cartoon Darkness has wisdom, humor, anger, and just about every other human emotion because it's about being a human being in a really fucked up world dominated by men. "Dreams" and "U Should Not Be Doing That" are other highlights.
1. Ramona by Grace Cummings
Grace Cummings, hailing from Melbourne has graced us (no pun intended) with an album that feels both out of time and of the future, and it is the best album of the year. Ramona, recorded in Jonathan Wilson's Topanga Canyon studio, is 45 minutes of straight up sun soaked and moon glow tales of love, loss, the old west. Cummings an artist in the truest sense of the word, before singing, she was a stage actor, and on Ramona, Cummings displays that same affinity for wearing masks. On the record, she takes on a sort of alter ego named after the Bob Dylan track, "To Ramona." Cummings told Ones to Watch earlier this year, "I think that it’s probably like a name for a lot of things about myself that I find to be difficult. It’s easier to express yourself with a mask on." With her gorgeous voice, sounding deep, lived in and full of all those emotions mentioned above, Cummings takes the listener on a journey through Laurel Canyon and the American West. On "Common Man," Cummings takes inspiration from Jimmy Webb, singing about her desire to leave this mundane world and live like a cowboy. "I am a cowboy and I ride and I ride/My idea of heaven is a pistol by my side," Cummings sings. On one of the most haunting tracks on the album, "A Precious Thing, Cummings sings, "Love is just a thing/That I'm trying to live without/And oh, what a precious thing/But it's nothing I care about." Cummings bellows these lyrics, in a truly unbelievable vocal performance, repeated over and over even more impassioned. Cummings did a small US tour earlier this year, stopping in Los Angeles at the intimate Gold Diggers bar. For those 150 people who were lucky enough to be there, (I was!), it was a stunning display of raw talent and artistry. I implore you, if you have not already - listen to Ramona.
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