This list isn't to say I don't have more than ten favorite albums in 2024 because this year has been chocked full of great music. Maybe I'm just more in tune or something; I don't know. A couple years ago, I remember doing this list and saying up front that I felt like I spent way more time listening to older music. Not this year; I could barely keep up, and every time I thought I had this list finished, something else came my way and made me rethink everything. Here then, is perhaps the most tentative top-ten list I've done since 2013, when I kind of bitched out and did eleven.
Note: I did away with the numbering because the order is interchangeable and impossible to commit to. That said, Numbers one and two are definitely my favorite albums of the year.
• Zeal and Ardor - GREIF
The first Zeal and Ardor record written by the band, not just founder Manuel Gagneux, and it's fantastic. Very different from previous albums, but that's the thing that impresses me the most about this band - the evolution. From a mission statement that would have worn out its welcome in the hands of most others, Manuel has shepherded this project to new heights, and there's never a moment I'm not 100% enthralled.
Buy HERE.
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Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to SheAnother left-hand turn from Ms. Wolfe! There are moments on this record that remind me of mid-90s trip-hop, a la Poe's first record. There are also moments where I feel the dark echo chamber of Chelsea Wolfe's mind, and it continues to draw me into her strange, Stoner-brand Desert Psyche Rock. There's something so expressive about every aspect of the music Ms. Wolfe creates - I'm literally transported into what feels like a very clearly defined psychic space, each album its own specific time and place. Her world only briefly syncs up with the 'real,' which makes listening feel like I am literally catching onto pieces of her consciousness. It feels intimate and a little scary at times, like a lot of the best music does.
Buy HERE.
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Shellac - To All TrainsYeah, like the final Shellac album wasn't going to be on this list. I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of the band's previous record, and this one... shit, I've had a lot of internal trouble accepting this record simply because it's release dovetailed with the death of one of the most important persons in modern music. A Chicago native, like myself, and what's more, one of the last bastions of integrity turned up to eleven, Steve Albini. But Shellac's character is something etched into me across the divide since 2000's Thousand Hurts, the first Shellac record I bought and fell deeply in love with. The cynicism, the in-jokes that long-time listeners fall in on simply by having gotten to know these strange men who play jagged, angular analog indie rock with fists... it's all just such a pleasure, and I will miss it for the rest of my days.
Buy HERE.
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Moon Wizard - Sirens
I love this record! I had never heard of Moon Wizard before
Sirens was released somewhere in the first few months of the year, but this one has been a constant companion ever since. This four-piece writes and plays this blissfully melodic sludge that feels extremely well-defined for such a relatively young band. The melodic strains of lead singer Sami Wolf's voice are perfectly matched by Aaron Brancheau's guitar, whose riffs and arranging go from soaring emotional heights to "bash your fucking head in" even while wielding the spry, haunting melodies strewn across the runtime of this record. Magnolia is a forever song for me, burned into my brain upon contact and perhaps matched only by Luminaire's ghostly ability to snare the very breath from my lungs.
• The Cure - Songs For A Lost World
Talk about a late entry. As much as I am an eternal fan of The Cure's albums Pornography and Disintegration, I haven't really kept up with anything they've done since the late 90s. Even the other 80s/90s albums stay on the outskirts of my heart. I love Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Head on the Door, et al, but none of them are essential to my being the way the other two are. Then they release Songs For A Lost World, and Whammo! Another complete emotional sledgehammer! This is what I feel The Cure does best.
Both aforementioned previous albums destroyed me at different stages of my life, shattered me, and eventually put me back together. That's exactly what Songs For A Lost World promises; I'm just too emotionally defensive at the moment to allow it full access. You get it from the album's title, yeah? This fucker's poignant, especially when you consider it was released back in late October, right before... well, you know.
Upon first listen, every tune, every melody seemed instantly ingrained in me, so that upon each subsequent early listen, I felt I already knew every song by heart. These songs hurt, though. Maybe it's the times, maybe it's the fact that I came out of the first months of 2024 actively acknowledging that we now live in a dystopian future, but this album just feels like what the world needs to, well, go out on.
• Amigo The Devil - Yours Until the War Is Over
The album whose title I misquoted the most this year, Amigo the Devil has been increasingly endeared to me for a few years now, and I have my very good friend Mr. Brown to thank for that. The post-modern Singer/Songwriter tradition I fell in love with through Nick Cave and Tom Waits is alive and well in this man, as he balances the delicate and diabolical sides of his own existence against an ever-evolving tableau of scenarios that the most debaucherous of us can only shake out heads and say, "Goddamn, I'd like to buy this man a beer."
• Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves
Full disclosure, since this record was released in March, Justin has come to be a friend of mine. He's guested on
The Horror Vision twice this year; however, before the release of his score for a non-existent Giallo, I only knew him as a person I followed on IG. One I wasn't entirely sure how I discovered in the first place. We were obviously like-minded mutants, but when I saw him begin to post about this album, I knew it was going to be a huge record for me. Coincidentally, I spent the year writing a Giallo novel, and this record immediately slipped into place as a constant soundtrack for those sessions. It colored many key scenes in the book and put me in that very specific Giallo tone, which isn't exactly easy to do for the first time invoking it with prose.
Buy
HERE.
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Oranssi Pazzuzu - MuuntautujaOranssi Pazuzu's
Muuntautuja is the first record the band has released since I became a fan. I'm still not familiar with their entire body of work to date; it was late last year that the members of Baroness put this band on my radar by way of their "
What's in My Bag?" on the Amoeba Music YouTube channel, but the moment I hit play on their
Live At Roadburn album from 2017, I was hooked. I suppose their off-kilter approach to psychedelic Black Metal scratches the same itch for me that Blut Aus Nord does; the songs are all cohesive but unlike anything I've ever heard before. This was especially true the first time I hit PLAY on the track "
Valotus". It was late; I was buzzed, had headphones on, and didn't quite understand what exactly I was listening to. It was music, yes, but there was such a "Cosmic Occult" element to the sounds and arranging that I wasn't sure how most of what I was hearing was being made or orchestrated. I knew at that exact moment this would be an album that would earn my devotion by confounding me, by pushing the boundaries of what I like and listen to and comprehend about music.
Buy
HERE.
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Drug Church - PrudeI was only really familiar with Patrick Kindlon's name as one of the two writers on
We Can Never Go Home, the comic/graphic novel released by Black Mask Comics back in 2014. After that, I followed him through a few more series, not realizing this band I started hearing about counted him as singer. When my good friend Jacob recommended 2022's
Hygiene that year, it slowly became a go-to, and as it did, my research revealed Kindlon's involvement. Which, of course, only made me love Drug Church more.
Now, with Prude, I can honestly say Kindlon's lyrics are among my favorites out there at the moment. Lyrics aren't something I adhere to easily; I like a lot of music where I couldn't sing along if I tried. But
Prude is sharp and astute from the jump, and every track kicks ass musically, as well.
Buy HERE.
• Ministry - HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES
I don't know how Uncle Al keeps doing it, but Ministry continues to not just be relevant ideologically, but musically as well. Goddamn, if this isn't my favorite album of theirs since 2008's The Last Sucker. The samples are spot-on, the lyrics angry but (mostly) thought-provoking, and the songs blaze a path from track one through to the end, with penultimate track "Cult of Suffering" and its guest vocals by Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hütz weighing in as my favorite song of the year.
Buy HERE.
There you go. Seriously though, I could easily make a second top ten for the year. So many albums this year! Here's to what's coming in 2025!!!
