Best 50 Releases of 2024 (10–1 & Yearly Awards)
Our 10 favorite albums of the year, along with our award winners for Best Debut, Most Underrated, Best Non-LP, and of course Album of the Year. Not everyone is going to be happy with the placement of these 10 records, but the more we have looked at this list the better we have felt about the Top 10. What a diverse year of new music. We are glad that thanks to our supporters on Patreon we are still able to provide you these picks totally independent of major label or corporate interface. We tell it how it is, and this is what we felt:
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PAGE 1 (#50–31) – PAGE 2 (#25–11) – PAGE 3 (#10–1 & Award Winners)
10. Fontaines DC – Romance
Fontaines DC’s wistful western wails and buoyant art pop rhythms give a sharpness to a trailing shadow of shoegaze present across Romance. Struggles with numbness and madness accompany some great hooks and bleary guitar. Taking notes from The Cure school of moodiness and writing love letters to various ’90s alt rock groups paid off, Fontaines DC is now a proud reflection and purveyor of the 2020s occult sound. After what is easily their greatest departure from post-punk, we’re excited to hear what direction the Irish five-piece has in store for us in the future. – Anne Hurban
9. MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks
MJ Lenderman flexes his storytelling muscles on his glorious third studio album, Manning Fireworks. After toying with fuzzier textures, he’s leaned into his timeless country twang and raw guitar skills. While in the past MJ songs have focused more on washed sports figures or cartoons gone wild, on Manning Fireworks, the lyrics focus on the everyman. Well, every bad man. Each song’s protagonist somehow contributes to his own pathetic downfall, a comedic protagonist in the classical definition. All along, MJ remains an impartial and understanding observer, neutrally recording slices of life rather without judgment or scorn, just one-liners with the ghosts of David Berman and Mitch Hedberg on his shoulders. – Giliann Karon
8. Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven
I Got Heaven impressed me with the loud riffs and hypnotic, high energy of the vocals. Mannequin Pussy balance elements of hardcore, punk, and a sprinkle of indie—this record is messy, sexy, and confident. I Got Heaven gives space for reflection, anger, and forgiveness, while “Loud Bark” balances layers that feel hypnotizing and cathartic. Listening to this record is healing, which feels like an act of divinity itself. – Ryleigh Wann
7. Ekko Astral – pink balloons
One of the undeniable heavyweights to emerge this year, D.C.-based Ekko Astral strode to the forefront of the alt rock scene with their debut LP pink balloons. Frontwoman Jael Holzman sneers and sings with disarming heart and conviction, and a punk ethos thumps like a heartbeat under almost every song on the record (exemplified on “uwu type beat”). The music feels both effortless and perfectly calibrated. It’s also central to the record that the songs, both fast and slow, are concerned with solidarity, overcoming adversity, and knowing oneself; the intention of the music feels clearly oriented towards making those who are dispossessed feel seen and cherished. (Ekko Astral walk the talk, as well, shown by their single “holocaust remembrance day,” the proceeds of which they donated to evacuation funds for people in Gaza.)
But pink balloons also demonstrates an impressive sonic and emotional range; parts of the album strike a quieter, more contemplative note. Highlight “make me young,” sung in a sweet harmony sans percussion, feels like a bildungsroman in miniature, as the singers ruminate on being pessimistic and insane and on the difficulty and beauty of being themselves. The song is genuine in a truly rare way; Ekko Astral seem to have an intuitive gift for tone, movement, and homage. The title of their song “somewhere at the bottom of the river between l’enfant and eastern market” pays tribute to La Dispute, while adding an intensely local D.C. twist. It is a hallmark of greatness that this feels like music that no one else could have made—a portal to a future filled with brighter days. This album, to me, is the punk equivalent of a tiny jeweled box: intricately crafted, multi-faceted, and with details that reward close attention. The closer you look, the more gems appear. – Elizabeth Piasecki Phelan
6. Liquid Mike – Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot
This one makes me proud to be a Michigander. Liquid Mike’s Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot feels like an instant classic and brought me back to the earlier days of midwest emo and power-punk. Songs about finding new ways to pass the time become anthems with the catchy lyrics and earworm riffs. “K2” deserves to be played on repeat, if only to quip and gripe about how nostalgic it is. – Ryleigh Wann
5. Wild Pink – Dulling the Horns
After John Ross whittled Wild Pink’s lush, expansive heartland rock down to a whisper on 2022’s IYLSM, the only thing left to do was blow it back up. Dulling the Horns, which arrived ten days short of the two-year anniversary of the band’s last LP, feels like its equal and opposite reaction. Ross and returning engineer Justin Pizzoferrato used Weezer’s 1994 debut as a touchstone for the “rawer, grainier” sound he wanted on Dulling the Horns, and they delivered in spades. Fuzzy guitars tower over—but never overpower—layers of saxophones, synths, violins, and pedal steel. It makes for the loudest Wild Pink album to date, and one of the best. Ross still sounds incredible in this context, and his lyrics are wider-ranging than ever before, musing on Michael Jordan’s career, the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides, mobster sting operations, and Dracula’s religion, all in service of universal themes. Perhaps above all else, Wild Pink’s catalog is defined by uncertainty about the future, from Yolk in the Fur‘s recurrent admission that “I don’t know what happens next” to “losing days that never end / lost in anxious thought again” on “Track Mud.” On this album’s rousing “Eating the Egg Whole,” Ross revisits that idea. But this time, when he sings, “nothing last forever,” it’s a rousing chorus—an invitation to make the seize the moment and “let the inspiration come and run with it.” That was Wild Pink’s approach in creating Dulling the Horns, and it shows. There’s peace in uncertainty and as he says in the album’s closing moments, “if you can’t get along with it / you gotta just get on with it.” Maybe in the process you’ll make something great. – Zac Djamoos
4. Half Waif – See You at the Maypole
Half Waif’s See You at the Maypole is an intimate and expansive journey through personal moments of pain, beauty, motherhood, and cyclical renewal. The synths, strings, and warm vocals form an emotional blanket much in the way that fellow Hudson Valley, NY, singer-songwriter Laura Stevenson’s recent albums have, developing between them almost a regional natural gothic style. These songs are an invitation to join in on Nandi Rose’s tenderly guided gut punch. We’re handed grief and understanding through lush keys and an ever-impressive voice in Half Waif’s most revealing album, and one in which Nandi has painstakingly crafted songs and tones that speak volumes. Listeners will find themselves pulling multiple distinct meanings from a single song or even a particular verse, and yet all of these messages seem intentional and correct. There are very few things in life that are pure joy or misery, and Half Waif is able so convey those in-betweens and beautiful conundrums with the mind of a poet and philosopher of endless talent. – Anne Hurban
3. Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood
Saint Cloud was something of a reset for Waxahatchee—Katie Crutchfield’s first album that fully embraced an Americana sound, her first album that really broke through, and her first album that was written sober. Tigers Blood doubles down on what made Saint Cloud such a hit; she leans even further into warm, graceful alt-country, working in pedal steel and banjo and slide guitar and harmonica and accordion (and more) throughout the LP, with some help from indie rock It Boy MJ Lenderman. From the first seconds of billowy, ever-expanding opener “3 Sisters,” Crutchfield gets right back to it, and the results speak for themselves. It’d be easy to think Saint Cloud would be a fluke for Waxahatchee, but from the opening seconds of Tigers Blood Crutchfield proves that wrong. It’d be easy to think Saint Cloud would be a career-defining masterpiece, too, and that might be right if Tigers Blood wasn’t even better. – Zac Djamoos
2. oso oso – life till bones
Depending on who you ask, 0so oso has anywhere from one to four stone cold classic albums. Brimming with both grief and hope, their fifth record life till bones finds Jade Lilitri pulling copiously from the bag of tricks woven together over those records to create perhaps his tightest, most streamlined album yet. Like fellow Long Islanders Macseal’s 2024 record, life till bones was recorded with Billy Mannino at Two Worlds, and the pair share a similar warmth to their sounds. On this album, though, there is an added sense of space in how everything is thrown together, with the lead guitar line that pops out of the left speaker on “that’s what time does” being echoed by the more metallic lead line cutting through the right speaker on “stoke,” the way every hit of the hammers on the piano seems to be recorded from the other side of the room, the occasional jangling of the tambourine, the faraway background vocals on the second verse of “stoke,” or in the meditative atmosphere of tunes like “many ways” and “seesaw.” Of course, it’s impossible to not think about the impact of the death of Tavish Maloney, Lilitri’s cousin and longtime collaborator in oso oso, while listening to life till bones, particularly in the gut-punch centerpiece of the record formed by “stoke” and “seesaw” (softened somewhat by the playful “dog without its bark”). From the second “seesaw” ends though, oso oso sounds like a band revived, on a victory lap to the album’s end with the run of “application,” “skippy,” and “other people’s stories.” These final songs contain lyrics that nod to oso oso’s past material, but the connections go deeper, as the cutesy lyrics and carousel guitar line in the chorus make “skippy” feel very much akin to “nothing says love like hydration.” Put another way, these are oso oso songs to their core—tunes by a band that hasn’t necessarily “found their formula” as much as honed their ability to express what they want in a way that hits you immediately but also burrows into your subconscious and bubbles away until a lyrical turn or guitar flourish all of a sudden sticks out like a revelation on your twentieth pass through. The record ends with a purposeful thud, forcing you to actually sit with and ruminate on the titular line of “look at all the people, looking at their phones / with how much time left? / life till bones.” – Aaron Eisenreich
1. Charli xcx – brat
The lyric “Man, I don’t know / I’m just a girl” echo loudly throughout Charli xcx’s party monster of a record. It is a fantastic take on the current zeitgeist. In particular, the digital culture, and young people’s widespread feelings of burnout masked under pleasures like going out and staying glued to social trends. brat absolutely defined 2024 from the moment it came out, flaws and all. It has a pop-rock-like fizz that sticks to the back of your throat, capturing something many other pop stars have failed to do lately. It emulates perfectly the nostalgia of Y2K trash-pop produced as if it were designed specifically for bumping at a rave. The album builds off everything Charli xcx has put out before it, yet it still feels fresh and alluring. The rambling structure of the album feels like a stream of emotions splayed over top hyper-club beats, and yet it finds strength in that spontaneity and lack of control. It’s everything everyone has said it is the past year. – Hope Ankney
THE WINNERS OF THE 11TH ANNUAL THE ALT MUSIC AWARDS ARE:
Thank you again for reading, sharing, and supporting us all of these years.
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