A non-exhaustive dozen with some of the best releases from 2024. In terms of total numbers, I think I was enamored with less total albums this year compared to 2023 – but if nothing else it spotlights a year of well-established bands making some of their finest work of all time.
Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future
This year we were treated to yet another release from someone who has more than earned her place on any list of the greatest living songwriters. Whether with Big Thief or solo, Lenker perpetually crafts some of the most gorgeously heartbreaking music of the age. Bright Future is fantastic end-to-end, and continues the tradition of expanding her canon with different versions of songs, this time with a new rendition of the already-much-beloved ‘Vampire Empire’, but the songs making their debuts, such as the soul-wrenching ‘Ruined’, are among the finest things you’ll hear all year.
Key tracks: ‘Ruined’, ‘Sadness As A Gift’, ‘Evol’
Photo from Columbus Theatre, October 2018
Charli XCX – brat
“Brat summer” may be long over, but there’s no denying the unparalleled impact British popstar Charli XCX had on the entire world, taking over every device with a screen – even Times Square. That unmistakable chartreuse hue accompanied an album capable of oscillating effortlessly between winking unseriousness and startling profundity underneath the skillful production of A.G. Cook. Just when it was looking like Chappell Roan would own the year, Charli arrived to firmly declare that camp was out, and coke was in. In truth, both women had a banner year, but Charli’s sheer dominance: the memes, the remixes, the omnipresence of it all – made brat an enduring phenomenon.
Key tracks: ‘365’, ‘Sympathy is a Knife’, ‘Von Dutch’
Chat Pile – Cool World
Would you like to experience being hit in the face by a brick, but in audio form? Look no further than Chat Pile’s latest. The band’s penchant for brutality continues on the record, and from the first guttural declarations of ‘I Am Dog Now’, it begins and remains a thrilling, antagonistic, and downright heavy listen.
Key tracks: ‘I Am Dog Now’, ‘Tape’, ‘The New World’
Photo from The Sinclair, September 2023
Courting – New Last Name
Courting have had an interesting evolution – they emerged on the scene with singles and EPs that placed them in the same breath as bands like Shame, but their debut full-length Guitar Music seemed designed to look back and scoff at those comparisons. The band have grown more focused for New Last Name, and what they’ve produced is a pseudo-concept album that dares to ask, “What if Matt Healy had an ounce of self-awareness?” Masquerading as indie rock is an album about absence and longing that is alternately hilarious and sad, even the sarcasm and snark inflected with a certain youthful essentialism that can only come from the abandon necessary to take such a daring leap.
Key tracks: ‘The Hills’, ‘Flex’, ‘America’
Photos from Space Ballroom, November 2024
Dehd – Poetry
The Chicago indie trio have made their finest album yet in Poetry, which is saying something for a band with records like Flower of Devotion under their belt. I find it hard to say much other than that the songs are so expertly woven it’s quietly astounding, with nary a wasted moment on the record.
Key tracks: ‘Light On’, ‘Dog Days’, ‘Hard to Love’
Photo from Brighton Music Hall, May 2022
Ekko Astral – Pink Balloons
One of the biggest breakouts of the year has to be DC punk outfit Ekko Astral. Let Pink Balloons be your gateway to the excellent discography atop which it now sits – inventive and punchy from start to its fittingly sprawling finish in ‘i-90’, it’s a noisy triumph and one of the best releases in the large sphere of punk music this year.
Key tracks: ‘baethoven’, ‘head empty blues’, ‘buffaloed’
Photos from Black Lace, Providence, March 2024
Fat White Family – Forgiveness is Yours
A welcome surprise earlier in the year was the return of Fat White Family after a five-year gap in releases. The UK band come back to the fore with what is resoundingly their best record to date, an outsized, theatrical, expertly-produced feast of sound. A particular highlight is ‘Work’, which channels – and revels in – the bizarre energy of bands like Sparks.
Key tracks: ‘Work’, ‘Feed the Horse’, ‘Polygamy is Only for the Chief’
Fontaines D.C. – Romance
As we detailed in our show review, Fontaines DC’s newest record sees them go full-bore into the strange territory that they skirted on Skinty Fia. Romance sees the band at their most multi-faceted: haunting piano, swaggering braggadocio, gorgeous orchestral moments – they all find a place here, and it’s capped by ‘Favourite’, which plays things surprisingly straight tonally while also being one of the brightest songs they’ve penned.
Key tracks: ‘Favourite’, ‘Romance’, ‘Starburster’
Photo from Roadrunner, October 2024
Future Islands – People Who Aren’t There Anymore
Also counting themselves among bands hitting new peaks well into their career in 2024 is Future Islands. People is their seventh record, but they’re absolutely on top of their game from lyrics to instrumentals. While I cannot recommend the band’s live shows enough, as you truly get to see frontman Samuel Herring cut loose and give himself over to the songs, the recorded version is a band of 21st-century veterans at one of the highest points of songcraft.
Key tracks: ‘The Tower’, ‘Peach’, ‘Give Me the Ghost Back’
Photo from Roadrunner, June 2024
Gustaf – Package, pt. 2
While Package pt. 2 may not be a far cry sonically from Gustaf’s first record, it is an incomprehensibly-tight refinement of what made them punch through the crowd so effortlessly. Highlights like ‘Close’ and ‘Weighing Me Down’ make it clear what attracted the attention of artists like Beck, and they closed out their year with a string of openings at LCD Soundsystem’s Queens residency. Tine Hill’s bass is the driving force of a five-piece assault led by Lydia Gammill’s unrelenting vocal delivery that can make any string of words feel like an accusation, paired as effectively as ever with Tarra Thiessen’s “audio-dragged” backing vox. A quasi-supergroup made up of members of Tea Eater, Francie Moon, and Hill’s solo project – they’re a veritable superpower of NYC.
Key tracks: ‘Close’, ‘Weighing Me Down’, ‘I Won’
Photos from Sonia, April 2024
Los Campesinos! – All Hell
File yet another under the headers of both long-running and UK-based bands firing on all cylinders. It’s got all the hallmarks: the interludes, the lengthy and/or snarky song titles… but what it has most of all is heart – and not the necromantic kind that puppeteers a sound from a decade or more ago and tries to fit it into the modern age; this is every bit the genuine article that Gareth Paisey and company have always worn on their sleeve, even now.
Key tracks: ‘A Psychic Wound’, ‘Feast of Tongues’, ‘Clown Blood; or, Orpheus’ Bobbing Head’
Photo from Paradise Rock Club, June 2024
Yard Act – Where’s My Utopia?
In a stunning feat of growth from what was already one of the UK’s finest verbose post-punk coteries, Yard Act upped the ante not only in terms of their songwriting but also their live presence. It’s part confessional soul-searching, part field report from the late-capitalist gutter, and a little bit of Pulp for good measure.
Key tracks: ‘We Make Hits’, ‘The Undertow’, ‘A Vineyard for the North’
Photos from The Sinclair, October 2024
Honorable mentions: Should you exhaust all the above options and/or want even more tunes to fill out your playlists going into 2025, seek out any number of the following: Rosie Tucker, Kim Gordon, Fat Dog, Cheekface, Hamish Hawk, Brutus VIII, Folly Group, Bricklayer, Been Stellar, Jade Hairpins, Font, Xiu Xiu, and Lip Critic.
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Photos and words by Collin Heroux