Favorite music of 2024
No rankings and no pretending this is the best stuff out there. Just a list of things that caught and kept my attention over the past year
Like the last telegraph operator caving in to this whole telephone thing, I finally began using a streaming service in earnest this year. I don’t think I bought any fewer releases, but the time I spent with them was compromised by my ability to listen to damn near anything at any time. The result is a year when I probably listened to more unique artists, but rarely stuck with anything long enough for it to really connect. Gone are the days when I would buy a CD and then live with it for a week or two until I had the money to buy another.
As a result, for the first time it was difficult to come up with enough albums to make a list. It wasn’t for a lack of great music — far from it. But so many things I heard passed by my ears once or twice only to replaced by the next thing. So what you have here is a list of the 20 albums that were so captivating that they pushed their way in and earned enough repeat listens to make a mark. Had I apportioned my listening time differently, this list would probably be very different… or at least longer.
But I’ll stand behind these 20 albums. The past week or so I have been revisiting them as I prepared this list, and it has been the most rewarding listening week of the year. They all hold up, and will cause problems as they demand my attention in 2025 when I’m trying to interact with new songs. I hope to find a way to strike a balance between the constant quest for the new and the desire to spend enough time with something to fully appreciate it. I guess that’s my first resolution for the New Year.
I have paired each of these 20 albums with another on the list. Sometimes the linkage is obvious, other times less so. But I have found that placing them in dialogue with one another can unlock certain qualities, or perhaps help to explain their appeal. They are in no certain order; that’s just how the list came together.
The above playlist includes one song from each of the 20 albums. I don’t use Spotify, but I couldn’t get all of the releases to show up elsewhere, so this is what we have. It feels like a good listen to me (or at least a way to sample the list through 30-second bursts for those who don’t subscribe to Spotify (and good for you!)). Now, on to the list.
Charles Lloyd — The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (Blue Note)
Julian Lage — Speak To Me (Blue Note)
I suppose the connection here is Blue Note Records, as these two are otherwise quite different. Lage is a former child prodigy guitarist, still only 36 years old more than 15 years into his recording career. He paired with producer Joe Henry who seemed to unlock the rootsier sound that was always lurking in Lage's playing. Lloyd, meanwhile, is an 86-year-old jazz legend making some of the most vital music of his career on this sprawling double album.
Finding the right collaborators might be another link between these two. Lage has a string of great albums to his name, but Speak to Me is perhaps his best. His usual backing of Jorge Roeder on bass and Dave King on drums are joined by others who flesh out the sound, but they never detract from Lage’s intensely memorable lead lines and inventive chording. And in some ways bears Henry’s fingerprints as much as Lage’s, a sort of rustic quality that lets the playing shine through due to the lack of gloss. In the same way, Lloyd connected with pianist Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Brian Blade on The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, and these younger players — seasoned vets in any other context — bring a spark to Lloyd’s compositions. There is no resting on laurels here.
Anna Butterss — Mighty Vertebrate (International Anthem)
SML — Small Medium Large (International Anthem)
One could make a case for Anna Butterss as artist of the year. Their 2024 includes a stellar solo outing, an engaging quintet album, participation in Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet record, The Way Out of Easy, and touring as a part of Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit.
Butterss’ solo album, Mighty Vertebrate, is the more jazz-oriented of these two records. The bassist finds a pulsing groove and leads their band through 10 tight tunes that play to the strengths of sidemen saxophonist Josh Johnson and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. It’s modern without losing the jazz feel.
Small Medium Large is more adventurous, an album borne of live improvisations that were edited, chopped, and rearranged in the style of Makaya McCraven or Teo Macero (depending on your generation). The result is more wide ranging despite the presence of Johnson and Uhlmann. There is still an underpinning of jazz, but it is part of a blend of sounds that defies categorization.
Chuck Johnson —Sun Glories (Western Vinyl)
Yasmin Williams — Acadia (Nonesuch)
Johnson and Williams inhabit the same soothing sonic space — Johnson on pedal steel and Williams on acoustic guitar — but neither is content to stay there. For Johnson, this means augmenting his usual ambient soundscapes with much more variation and rhythm than usual. I popped this on for the first time expecting to be transported as I drifted off. Instead, I was brought wide awake about two minutes into the opening “Teleos” as Ryan Jewell’s drums came in, and I realized I was in for a very different Johnson album. Or not, for as much as these new sounds startled, at its heart, this is an album built on the lush, echoing tones of Johnson’s pedal steel. Strings, saxophone and electronics join the drums to add previously unexplored textures, but this is still very much of a piece with Johnson’s previous work.
Williams broke through with her 2021 album, Urban Driftwood, and has capitalized on the larger budget of her new home at Nonesuch Records to create a more expansive sound palette to surround her melodic and inventive guitar playing. She is joined by a stars like Don Flemons and Aoife O’Donovan, but the heart of these fleshed out songs remains Williams’ unique guitar playing.
Steve Wynn — Make it Right (Fire Records)
Johnny Blue Skies — Passage du Desir (High Top Mountain)
Lumped together because I hope Sturgill Simpson can learn a thing or two from Wynn… and it feels like he's halfway there. He said at one point he would only make five albums. Then he fudged by making a couple of wonderful records that recast his own songs in a bluegrass style, and now this under a different name. Whatever mental gymnastics he needs to do to keep making music, it's worth it. This is perhaps the most pure distillation of his talents, his countryish songs leaning heavily into soul territory.
Wynn has made music under a number of different names, most famously his own and as leader of the Dream Syndicate. That band returned after a 30 year layoff and has made four good to great albums. But that is just one gear for Wynn, and when he resumed the band, his solo career was mothballed. Until now. A new memoir, I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True, led to a new solo album. It finds Wynn revisiting nearly every sound he has pursued, from retro rock to country to some twisted version of pop. Wynn realized long ago that it is worth pursuing your muse, no matter the declarations or constraints that may stand in your way. This is a welcome return, and I hope he continues to straddle the line between band and solo work.
Bill MacKay — Locust Land (Drag City)
The Messthetics — The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (Impulse)
These two are all about finding new collaborators to expand your sound, to brighten the corners of your artistry. Guitarist Bill MacKay has nearly 20 records to his name, either as a solo artist, part of a duo, or part of a group. His latest album, Locust Land, doesn’t sound like any of them. They all sound like him, but in different ways, and the new one benefits from all of those collaborations and connections. MacKay wrote, played and produced the album, with a few friends adding elements along the way. But it is an album borne of all that came before. You can tell that MacKay learned from those previous projects, and learned about what he can do in the process. The result is an assured album of at times psychedelic folk-rock with plenty of great guitar playing.
The Messthetics — Fugazi’s rhythm section and guitarist Anthony Pirog — already was an example of collaboration that works. The instrumental project blends Joe Lally and Brendan Canty’s bass and drum tumble with Pirog’s twisted jazz strangulations. Now add one of the most dynamic jazz saxophonists in James Brandon Lewis, and you have one of the most exciting, dynamic albums of the year. Imagine being told the guys who drove “Bed for the Scraping” would one day record for Impulse Records, and you realize how important it is to find the right bandmates.
Shane Parish — Repertoire (Palilalia)
Wendy Eisenberg — Viewfinder (American Dreams)
These two guitarists are joined by their membership in the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet. I had the chance to see both this spring in that capacity, and each did a solo set to open (along with the fourth guitarist, Ava Mendoza, whose own The Circular Train is a solid album as well). Each has done something different on these latest releases. Parish’s Repertoire finds him performing solo acoustic interpretations of a wide variety of songs from the likes of Aphex Twin, Charles Mingus, The Minutemen, and Alice Coltrane, among others. It is a marvel of arrangement, making this disparately sourced songs feel like parts of a cohesive whole.
Eisenberg’s album is sonically dissimilar to Parish’s. Where he condenses the sound of ensembles into that emanating from one guitar, Eisenberg augments their guitar with ensembles. After getting Lasik surgery so they could see better, Eisenberg created music inspired by the change. "Finally able to see the world unmediated, everything about my relationship to tactility, immediacy, and perception changed," they write. The bulk of this is ambitious, left-field jazz, instrumental music that foreground's Eisenberg's guitar while not letting it dominate as the other players are given room to explore.
Patricia Brennan Septet — Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic)
Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion — Rectangles & Circumstance (Nonesuch)
The work of these two women transcends genre in satisfying ways. Patricia Brennan’s Breaking Stretch swings while maintaining the same improvisational spirit that has characterized her work to date, and she is working with an increasing number of musicians as she works to capture her vision. Her usual group of percussionists is joined here by saxophonists Jon Irabagon and Mark Shim, and trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, who all add to the melodicism of the tracks, bringing a texture and a strong Latin vibe to the proceedings. Bennan does interesting things with pedals that remind me of Mary Halvorson's guitar work, stretching and molding the sound of her instrument until it sounds like something else before snapping back into shape.
Meanwhile, contemporary classical composer/vocalist Caroline Shaw continues to branch out, and her latest album, recorded in partnership with Sō Percussion, Rectangles and Circumstance, is a satisfying example of that growth. The clattering percussion here is propulsive, very different from the work of a string quartet. When Shaw’s vocals come in over top on songs like “Sing On,” which finds masses of Shaw accompanying her lead vocal while the four percussionists provide a bed of rhythm, it is something wonderful that defies categorization.
Peter Perrett — The Cleansing (Domino)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds — Wild God (Mute)
Monochromatic palette aside, these two are joined because it feels like we are living on borrowed time with both artists, that it would have been greedy, if not downright foolish, to expect anything this good from either at this stage of the game. Perrett seemed hell-bent on destruction in the ’80s after his band, the Only Ones, imploded (but not before leaving behind the near-perfect “Another Girl, Another Planet”), while Cave has struggled with his own demons for decades. But each has emerged with his strongest album in years. For Perrett, it’s a double album that looks mortality squarely in the eye and says, “I don’t want to overstay my welcome.” His kids assist, as do some heavy hitters like Johnny Marr, but this is Perrett’s album, that wry, speak-sing warble the same at 72 as it was 45 years before. The difference is that he has much more life to mine from a lyrical standpoint, and the result is an unflinching look at mortality.
As I’ve written elsewhere, I was thoroughly captivated by Nick Cave’s Wild God. I’ll hold to the unranked nature of this list, but if pushed to keep just one of these 20 albums moving forward, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be this one. The majestic orchestration, the lyrical focus on joy and the divine, the welcoming yet confident swagger all add up to an album that demands your attention. Cave, just five years younger than Perrett, has a vastly deeper catalog. But in their own ways, following their own paths, the two seem to have arrived at the same place — one resigned, one with arms outstretched.
Rosali — Bite Down (Merge)
MJ Lenderman — Manning Fireworks (Anti-)
My affection for Manning Fireworks comes despite, not because of, the hype surrounding it. I was actively turned off, ready to dismiss Lenderman as a one-note novelty. Yes, the Michael Jordan song was catchy, but what else? This seemed like a kid enamored of the Drive-by Truckers and Jason Molina, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I didn’t foresee a long career. But with this album, he has synthesized influences and found a voice of his own. The songs are richer, the lyrics deeper. He still falls back on easy patterns, but this is an album that rewards repeat listens. And he’s so unassuming that if you can ignore the fawning praise from middle-aged music critics relieved to hear guitars, it’s difficult not to root for the guy.
I was already on board with Rosali and have been watching her steady climb over the past few years. Like Lenderman, she is a young artist with good influences who has found a way to push through to create her own sound. Working with members of David Nance’s band Mowed Sound (another artist I wish I’d spent more time with this year) she has created an album of songs with intimate lyrics and expansive arrangements, like Crazy Horse backing Linda Ronstadt. It’s a beautifully ragged record.
Pernice Brothers — Who Will You Believe? (New West)
Bill Ryder-Jones — Iechyd Da (Domino)
We wrap up with a couple of pop craftsmen, one I’ve followed from the very beginning, another I just discovered. Both made records completely out of step with modern tastes, and thank God. Pernice led the Scud Mountain Boys through three country-leaning records, then fully embraced his Bachrach tendencies with Pernice Brothers. After an absence during which he wrote more prose than songs, he has returned with albums that picked up where he left off. Who Will You Believe? It’s another album of finely crafted classic pop with erudite lyrics.
That brings us to Bill Ryder-Jones. I hadn't heard of of him prior to this album, and had heard and had little interest in his band, The Coral. I couldn't hope to pronounce the album title, but it was everywhere at the beginning of the year, and it kept hanging around when I would be looking for something to listen to. It is a richly arranged album with strong melodies that rise above the orchestration.
UP NEXT: Favorite books of the year, coming next week!