Best Albums of 2024
Megafauna - And So I Watch You From Afar
And So I Watch You From Afar preach crushing joy. Major chords played through orange amps stacked to the ceiling, delicious, dexterous riffs as likely to break into a mosh as a smile. Megafauna, a tribute to the lads’ home of Northern Ireland, is the guitar album of the year with no peer. Rory Friers and Niall Kennedy split their guitar duets between ping-ponging headphone channels, creating hooks that flex between catchy and crushing. Sentimental epic “Mother Belfast” simmers and unfurls into the stratosphere, and opening pseudo title track “Northwest Megafauna” joins sugary “WOOOOOOO” gang vocals with an ever elevating guitar line. The centerpiece is the bucolic and bittersweet “Years Ago.” When we interviewed him, Rory revealed it was a strange tribute to the early days of the pandemic, the road warriors in ASIWYFA suddenly feeling like their teenaged selves; stranded, yearning to tour and see friends abroad. And that yearning is heartbreakingly palpable, the wish for escape, to hear the wonders of the world while trapped at home is laced into the lullaby-worthy main hook. All before Friers and Kennedy erupt into anthemic duet, embodying nostalgia in its original meaning; “the pain of homecoming.” - Nate Stevens (Listen to our interview)
Miracle Body - Scott Orr
A good conversation has reciprocation. A natural ebb and flow of voices and thoughts. Albums aren’t often a conversation and they’re pretty one way if they are. But Scott Orr’s Miracle Body is an open doorway, a friendly smile, and a waiting cup of tea. The Canadian multi-instrumentalist uses a plethora of tuned percussion, smooth brass, and his fluttering falsetto to make a comely, friendly record of swirling pop. When he coos “thank god! For you and everyone,” his gratitude rings through every note. - Nate Stevens (Listen to our interview.)
Night Palace - Mount Eerie
Night Palace, a title once in poet Joanne Kyger’s sole ownership is now inextricably linked to the fathomless lore of Mount Eerie, The Microphones, Phil Elverum - and above all, his late wife, Geneviève. A font of inspiration pinned above her desk, the original Night Palace suspended retrogressively in white space, spilled into stark reality with her post-human metamorphosis in 2016. Phil’s self-admittedly artless response A Crow Looked At Me was a heart-eviscerating account of his peregrination through loss, laid bare his temporospatial grief left in the wake. Now, Elverum and Agathe, their daughter, must stay at the oneiric Night Palace, making the most of their ephemeral tenure, until they reunite in eternal procession through the fields of time.
In The Glow Pt. 2, Phil set out to disturb the colossal inertia of loss by sheer force of will, bleeding out on blindingly vivid tapestries with vernal, even naive, ambitions. 23 years later, with painfully deeper understanding, he embarks this Atlassian journey once more - and surpasses all previous efforts in the process.
This body of 26 sound poems is among the most sprawling, grounded, raw, resonant, perceptive, enveloping, heartfelt, and overwhelmingly human depictions of our ineffable place in this vast existence. My ears refuse to resurface from its lush, intoxicating pools of absurd beauty. It is a whole sonic universe composed of juggernauts of humor, wisdom, anger, vulnerability, passion, humility, contentedness, wonderment. And through it all shines that iridescent glow Phil distills and magnifies with such seeming ease. It’s daunting to capture this unfettered magic in words. Perhaps it's futile.
Yet I can't help but try, to share in the abundant passion of an artist dancing perpetually between wordless song and songless word - the coruscating, earthshaking fuzz of “(soft air)” and the stoic, disillusioned heart-to-heart of “Demolition” - with a hapless spontaneity in defiance of a burdened, burning world. I'm slack-jawed in amazement and appreciation of the slightest textural hidden gems: the faint inclusion of a multi-tracked “Big Empty” sample in the fadeout of “I Heard Whales (I Think),” the harshest howl of “Swallowed Alive” and the softest coo of “My Canopy.”
Few albums feel more like a bona fide culmination than Night Palace. It is Phil's quintessence; his quirks, his penchants, his hurts, his journey. It is a transcendently honest portrait of a once-in-a-lifetime talent. Phil may not intend to make a “masterpiece,” but this is a poetry I will surely pin in my own Night Palace bedroom. - Sam
Obsidian Wreath - Infant Island
Since my esteemed editor called dibs on this year’s other great hardcore epic, I’d urge you to take another look at Infant Island’s new full-length, which was unfairly overlooked when it dropped in January. Intensely dark, epic in scope, and operatic in structure and feeling, the first release in four years from the Virginia 5-piece spares no expense, emotional or otherwise, in the alchemical reactions that yield gut-wrenching (and heart-wrenching, for that matter) tracks like “Veil” and “Unrelenting.” The mellowest moment on the record is a duet of sorts with Harper Boyhtari of the other current sorcerers of heavy music, Greet Death, that is as moving as anything either band has done. Unforgettable. - Hunter
Parallels - Steve Roach/The Adelaidean
There’s something special about a two-hour drone album where you actually remember individual moments. I was lucky enough to be blessed with two of them in 2024: Sarah Davachi’s The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir and Steve Roach’s new behemoth with Australian sound artist The Adelaidean. The Davachi album might be the most impressive distillation thus far of her deep, liturgical “late music,” but I keep going back to Roach, and I’ve become convinced it’s one of the five or so best things he’s done—and keep in mind that Roach has been one of the most prolific and consistent ambient artists in the last 40 years. He puts out plenty of albums that sound like it, and that kind of choir-string-wall-of-sound has been the dominant sound in ambient for most of the genre’s existence, but I haven’t heard so many ambient albums that so expertly modulate between stretches of stasis and moments when you have to perk up your ears and listen—-let alone one that’s longer than most movies. I started putting it on as mindless fluff to fill the silent moments in my apartment before I started realizing how moved I was by it. Nobody is better than Roach at those huge synth swells that wash all other concerns out of existence, and he might just be ambient music’s all-time master of the longform album as well. - Daniel Bromfield
The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain - Tapir!
A sprawling concept album that also serves as a band’s debut should be approached with trepidation at best, car crash fascination at worst. Yet the merry band of London rabble rousers Tapir! pulled it off with the remarkably ambitious (and just remarkable) The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain. It’s a Canterbury Tales-esque jaunt through a post-apocalyptic world that wrangles mightily with existentialism, a breakup with God, and the healing silence of nature. Tapir! tap into an electronic laden folk sound that flawlessly mirrors XTC’s Skylarking–the same sort of awe-inspiring pop mysticism that took XTC nine albums to reach. The standard set is impossibly high, but with an album this fearless, the sky’s the limit. - Nate Stevens
Ponta da Lingua - Sofia Freire
“There is this legend that says the waters of the rivers of Pajeú are blessed because a poet buried his guitar near the river. So everyone who drinks from that water becomes a poet.” That was the quote I kept coming back to while interviewing Sofia Freire. After listening to Ponta da Lingua, the waters Sofia Freire grew up next to surely imbued her with a poetic pop excellence. Ponta da Lingua makes existentialism catchy, with its hookiest moments catching Freire in moments of reflection and uncertainty, the body consuming itself to be reborn in opener “Autofagia.” Or there’s the Virginia Woolfe tribute “Orlando” which splits her body in twain over a shuddering, malfunctioning beat and spiraling pianos. But Freire’s greatest trick is her unstoppable voice; terrifyingly charismatic and equally dexterous. Her thrilling, trilling runs that dance across undulating synths, and three-part harmonies that fuse into disorienting choruses are otherworldly. - Nate Stevens
The Promise of Rain - Scarcity
New York’s Scarcity avoids a sophomore slump entirely with their terrific second album, The Promise of Rain. Teaming up with now-legendary wacky-experimental San Fran-based label The Flenser and, perhaps more importantly, adding half of Pyrrhon and the drummer from Krallice to the mix, Scarcity feels more filled-out, more lived-in. The six cuts here are performed with an effortlessness that’s downright impressive, which yields a final product that approaches, dare I say it, accessibility. You know, for black metal. - Hunter
Revelator - Elucid
“Black Jesus hated bill collectors / I do the same.”
He never misses. - Hunter
Shop Regulars - Shop Regulars
Some people say that insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different result. Those people have never heard of entropy. Time erodes and changes everything. Nothing is truly repeatable. No reaction is truly reversible. Shop Regulars, the solo recording project of Matt Radosevich deals in loops; hypnotic, skronky, percussive, distorted guitar loops that slowly change over the course of the song. His monotone voice feels cast off, but slowly reveals its dynamic, rhythmic, and hypnotic patterns. On their bandcamp page, they refer to the record as “a beautiful example of what can happen when you patiently and consistently chip away at an idea over a long period of time.” When this record has you in its jaws, you get stoked to stay still, to repeat yourself over and over again, and focus on the beautiful little changes all around you. - Pads
Strange Burden - Font
Snakes eat themselves, flesh moves without a body, a haunting invader breaks into your house just to insult your dad’s fashion taste. Things are fucked up in the world of Strange Burden. Like an evil version of The Rapture, Austin’s Font want to make your body move and your mind worry. They indulge in moments of surprising beauty like the funky hymn “Cattle Prod” but mostly Font’s here for mania. The staccato, uneven pulses of “It” recalls the brutal dance of James Chance, “Sentence I” is post-cowboy-punk, and the year’s best cowbell appears on closer “Natalie’s Song.” Barnburner “Hey Kekulé” plucks a techno piano line, but with Thom Waddill’s unnerving charisma, it feels like voguing at a wake. - Nate Stevens
The Thief Next to Jesus - Ka
Another classic under his belt and he can’t even enjoy the success. Kaseem Ryan died in October at 52. The Brownsville firefighter and musician left behind a swarthy discography of great portent and quiet purpose. The Thief Next to Jesus, which was released two months before his passing, was Ka’s most devout record, as well as, perhaps, his most expressionist. Album centerpiece “Broken Rose Window” finds him stating matter-of-factly, “Human nature ain’t changing / Hope the gods adjust.” Later on closer “True Holy Water,” he confronts his muse directly: “I’m here for you / Sweat, bled, shed a tear for you.” Ka’s prayers, humility, and music will be remembered. Rest in Power. - Hunter
Only the Stars Know of My Misfortune - Isleptonthemoon
What if the light at the end of the tunnel was not just a single guiding light, but billions of them, pinpricks of paralyzing possibility off in a distance so far that no one in their right mind would try chasing one, if they could ever hope to choose? What comes from the moment when you realize that the stars don’t care what you do, because they don’t even know you exist? What is left of life on this celestial body other than staring at limitless possibilities, knowing that the single fate afforded us is all we have? Isleptonthemoon, an anonymous solo recording project from Georgia released by Austin Lunn’s Bindrune recordings, asks all of these questions while making a unique blend of dream pop and cosmic black metal. It posits that the solution to existential dread is to comfort and scare yourself in equal measures, quiet, loud, quiet, loud, repeat. Stare into the void and hold onto the ones you love. - Pads
Trash Can Lamb - K. Freund
Make a jazz tune. Then remove every part but the ephemera: the studio noise, the light chattering of the musicians, the clack of a sax’s valves. Now you can begin.
Glitch can be a strange, foreboding world, but not in the deft hands of K. Freund. Saxophones drift in and out of beds of coiled sound, blasts of noise and whirling synths creating an airy, light touch to every song. “Freund” means “friend” in German, and Trans Can Lamb lives up to its creator's moniker. A welcoming, foreign world, burbling like a giddy alien. - Nate Stevens (Listen to our interview.)
Voice Memos from a Winter in China - Mary Sue
Ignore the title for a moment; this is one of the warmest, most welcoming rap albums in recent memory. Singapore’s Mary Sue works in collages and fragments, retelling the story of his tour in China. New friends, old flames, and his family flit through the shattered narrative, all guided by blissed out, chopped up production. There are moments of meditative grief but never sorrow. There’s too much energy in Mary Sue’s flows to stay fettered to the past for too long. Instead, the infectious energy at the core of Voice Memos from a Winter in China is a catalyst, a hypeman to venture into the unknown. - Nate Stevens (Listen to our interview.)
What You Want - Ogbert the Nerd
Fuuuuuuck me this one just rips. The long-awaited sophomore shit-kicker from the “only emo band in New Jersey,” Ogbert the Nerd, is a barely contained conflagration that celebrates the destructive power of four best friends in a basement making loud noises. They are a free-wheeling freight train of attention deficit destruction. They sound like The Replacements, if Paul Westerberg was Tik Tok “famous” (compliment). The lyrics center around Madison James’ experiences breaking free from a parasitic relationship, and while they’re mercifully free of details, their pain, rage, and agency burn white hot. It’s a lot easier to figure out what you want when you keep yourself busy breaking shit with your best buds. - Pads