my best of 2024, the year word-of-mouth won
shaking off post-election blues to talk about the year's hot shit
Hi! So it's been a few weeks since my last post, when I was feeling extra downtrodden after the election and admittedly sort of losing it. I now have enough distance to admit that I managed to give myself brainworms pretty hard by paying way too close attention to politics through all of October. Podcasts, constant news, and even a light dabbling in AM MSNBC coverage pickled my brain. Remember: friends don’t let friends watch cable news!!
Look, I’m still very stressed about the future, but in the normal range of late 30s and having a toddler anxiety. It helped deleting a bunch of social apps and doing some extremely life-affirming shit – also, I tried to wean off Twitter etc by just reading Substack Notes but good god the nuclear dogshit on this site makes me almost embarrassed to blog alongside the amateur punditry and bad takes. But, more importantly, I finally got to actually think about this year's best music and what it all ~*~meant~*~.
I was taken by One Thing’s “New Rules of Media” this week – specifically the first new rule
Everything is a personality cult, and maybe just a cult.
To me, this defined the records that succeeded in 2024.
I had a much longer rant written about the theory of secret knowledge vs. the monoculture w/r/t the best music of the year, but my main takeaway is I'm just hopeful in seeing how much the records that won 2024 felt like they were built for cult followings first, and culture followed suit. The musical moments that were truly special this year felt like started from honest-to-god word of mouth, fandom-as-conspiracy in the group chat energy – from Chappell Roan’s Tiny Desk to the BRAT wall to Diamond Jubilee getting BNM while only available as a single two-hour YouTube link. Amidst Spotify turning to more generic music to pad mood playlists, the music that stuck around rewarded effort and participation and traveled thanks to real human excitement – and that’s something to celebrate whether you’re a fan or an artist.
Regardless of what worked for you, below are my favorite moments and ideas for music of 2024, with a playlist to match (here it is on Apple Music too)! I'll be back in January with regularly scheduled programming I appreciate your patience as I tried to de-crazy myself before coming back to Substack – hope to see you again next year!
Best breakdowns
Floating Points’ Cascade is muscular, mean, and somehow both incredibly focused and searching and expansive. Most importantly though, its singles had extremely sick breakdowns. ‘Key103,’ ‘Birth4000,’ and ‘Del Oro’ all had killer left turns in the middle, sucking the air out of the track with a deft shift out of woozy, reverbed exposition into sudden focus.
Runners up: Kelly Lee Owens “Dreamstate,” The Dare “I Destroyed Disco”
Favorite critical pan
Sophie Kemp aced it with her Fcukers EP review, but I’ve thought more about “apples and bananies music” than any other critical writing this year.
Country record of the year
After all of the uproar about Bey getting panned at the CMAs, can we all admit that Cowboy Carter didn’t have the juice? There isn’t a single song on there that I thought about beyond the first listen, except for maybe “Tyrant.” That said, 2024 was big for crossover country, but it’s Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future that held the year’s high water mark with a full LP of Townes Van Zandt-level songcraft and aching melancholy.
Runners up: Zach Bryan (obv), Kacey Musgrave (almost entirely on the strength of “Cardinal”)
Best guitar solo
Jonny Greenwood’s work in the Smile continues his consistent role as music’s most singular riff delivery man, but this random kid doing a math rock Larry Carlton at 0:36 in this cover of “Million Dollar Baby” stayed in my open tabs for weeks.
Best long-ass album
Long records aren’t just for major label “deluxe edition” cash grabs! The weirdos took to the mats this year with a throwback to handwritten CD-R Gnostic indie vibes, where artists went four LP sides deep to dig in on What It All Means. I have to give this one to Mount Eerie just because I would love to hear 80 minutes of whatever is on Phil Elverum's mind every year for the rest of his life.
Best Adlib
MUSTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD
Best debut LP
The main reason I started this Substack was to find new music to fall in love with, and Robber Robber’s debut LP Wild Guess was my absolute favorite discovery this year. Their mix of early Blonde Redhead, mid-period Deerhoof, L.A. doomer pop a la Autolux and paisley concrete post punk meant they were right up my alley, but frankly also made for one of the best guitar records of the year.
Best guitar teacher on the ‘gram
The person most likely to make me pick up my guitar in 2024 it was Ella Rae Feingold, whose modest to-camera guitar lessons are a glimpse into a mountain of funky intelligence. She’s been a nasty session player for the likes of Erykah Badu and Bruno Mars for many years, but her love of funk guitar goes wayy deep, surfacing sick library clips of Jesse Jackson, or just breaking down a killer Kool & The Gang riff for the hell of it. She has a Patreon that’s definitely worth your money, but even her IG is a gold mine of funky lessons and parts that might even make the herbiest herb into a bad dude.
Best NYC debut
Best New York City debut has to go to jittery dance-punkers SNOWMEN, whose debut single “You Can't Relate” was deeeeply stuck in my head for months. Unlike some of the current downtown scene cosplay hedonists, these guys are not sexy boys having a sexy time – always the cardinal sin of anything that is both dancing and punk – instead they make songs that are nervous, sweaty, and anxious, and know to make just enough sense to make you want to sing along – always a rant, never a manifesto.
Best new place to find un-Shazamable deep cuts
I’ve never been so mad at leaving my phone at home as when I dropped into Laziza, a new Middle Eastern spot in Bed Stuy. The food is great, and the drinks are excellent, but most importantly their DJ programming is built on a foundation of extremely cool deep '70s soul cuts. You know shit is real when Shazam doesn't know what's on the speakers – if you're local, I highly recommend checking them out, and don’t be afraid to ask the DJ what they're dropping.
Best Friend Rock
I will NEVER stop plugging the homies here on the Unskippables, andI wanted to give them their own category this year as I had so many talented friends release incredible music that I got to see before it hit Spotify or got to work with them on other projects. I've put a bunch of their tracks in the playlist, but my favorite was by my very good friend Nick Sylvester who put his voice to tape for the first time(!) under the name Licorice. “Beautiful Boy” was initially for a soundtrack to American Son, but then releases as a single on his son's birthday. As I said when it dropped, it’s “a gorgeous mix of buzzing Frippertronics prog and cutting lyrics about the passage of time – at its heart, it’s a simple ode to the silly life lessons you rarely learn on purpose, collected in a breathless and lithe swipe of bouncing pop.”
Honorable Mentions: Slic “WEEEEU,” Tony Vaz, Needy Beast, Liam Benzvi & His Splash Band, MICHELLE feat. pal Sofia D’Angelo
that’s all, y’all. see you in 2025!
This was excellent.
(thank you tyler)