2024 Honorable Mentions
The first of three posts sharing the music that brought me joy in 2024. Here are my “Honorable Mentions” from another fantastic year in music.
Welcome to the first of three album of the year posts on Joy in the Journey! Longtime readers will know that it's been an extremely busy year for me, particularly the second half of the year. While I've listened to close to 300 brand new albums this year, most at least twice in their entirety, I haven't been able to obsessively track them as I usually would (I was gonna say "as I normally would", but there's nothing "normal" about my obsessive tracking process).
This lack of tracking has had several ramifications:
I've clearly missed out on some stunning albums because I either haven't had the time to listen to them or I've lost track of an album and haven't been able to give it sufficient listens.
I've saved a lot of time that I'd normally have spent on creating spreadsheets, tracking, ranking, relistening, reordering, and starting all over again.
I've been somewhat liberated from the obsessive attention to detail that my normal process entails and, as a result, have been freed to perhaps enjoy the music a little more.
My reaction to the above ramifications? Such is life! I'm never gonna be able to listen to all the new music releases. Perhaps my time is better spent learning to love more of what I already like rather than trying to like something I'm not sure about. Maybe, just maybe, there's space for me to obsess a little less, enjoy a little more, and take life (and the music) as it comes. Sounds absolutely lovely but who knows, I may just revert back to form next year, we'll see.
I've recently been reflecting on how I want to run my AOTY posts this year. The simple fact of the matter is that, with only a few weeks left in the year (yikes!), I don't have time to go as deep as I normally would, both in the compilation of the list itself and in the writing about each album. I've (reluctantly) accepted this reality and have, by necessity, decided to make a few concessions:
I won't be doing 50 albums this year and am happy instead to stick with forty albums.
I'm not referring to these as the best albums of the year. It may be semantics, but let's just consider these my favorites - the albums that I went back to regularly and/or brought me joy.
Broadly, I'm not gonna rank the albums this year. Instead, I'm splitting my picks into three buckets: 20 honorable mentions, a runner up bucket (11 to 20) and a favorites bucket. Within each bucket I won't be ranking but will instead be listing the albums alphabetically by artist.
I don't have time to write blurbs about each of these albums. Rather than spend hours that I don't have trying to write what these albums mean to me, I'll instead be providing an excerpt from a critical review for each album. I'll also include the link to the review for those who are interested in further reading. I may try to write something about each of the albums in my favorites bucket, but that's dependent on whether I find the time and how the rest of the year goes.
Happy listening!!
Honorable Mentions Spotify Playlist
Amiture - Mother Engine
Review from Distorted Sound:
Mother Engine is a delightfully warped collection of tracks that refuses categorisation; country riffs brush up against trip-hop drum machine loops, whilst glittering synths sparkle in the background of reverb-soaked vocals that haunt the very fringes of some songs. It’s a dramatic and often gripping affair that has wide-reaching appeal despite its enigmatic nature.
Standout Track: Rattle
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Bruno Sanfilippo - Pianette 2
From the album’s Bandcamp release page:
Bruno Sanfilippo is unveiling his latest creation here: 'Pianette 2', a captivating piano album that delves into the complexity of emotions and nostalgia. Following in the wake of the first volume, the 12 compositions of 'Pianette 2' maintain the enchanting essence of this series, inspired by dreams, the fantasy of mechanical toys, and the essence of the circus. Bruno immerses himself in his childhood, exploring the magic of memories, innocence, and boundless imagination.
Standout Track: ClarOscuro Rose
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Emily Barker - Fragile As Humans
Review from Folking.com
A quietly ruminative and introspective contemplation on the mysteries, melancholy and beauty of life and the human experience in its spectrum of love, loss, grief, hope and connection, where, like this wonderful album, fragility is also an unbreakable strength.
Standout Track: With Small We Start
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Future Islands - People Who Aren't There Anymore
Review from Under The Radar
Herring is now single once more, with new dimensions of heartache to pour out on record—only this time, he’s doing it as a weathered expert. As a result, People Who Aren’t There Anymore feels like a new kind of Future Islands record, one that wants to balance pain and joy, gratitude and grief, showing how both sides of the coin are necessary for a full life.
Standout Track: Deep in the Night
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Past is Still Alive
Review from Pitchfork
The Past Is Still Alive represents a turn back toward more traditionally Americana textures after 2022’s Life on Earth, a kind of electronic rewilding project that followed the slicker, self-consciously conceptual The Navigator. The sound is dusky, naturalistic, one-third electric and two-thirds acoustic; we see softness and joy in the human experience and, lurking in the background, violence, fentanyl, and barrels of crude.
Standout Track: Alibi
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
IDLES - TANGK
Review from Under The Radar
The very best bands, the rarest and most special, are often the ones who can shed the trappings of their genre while staying true to their ethos and essence. On TANGK, IDLES have broadened their horizons while retaining the guts and soul that made them. With prudence, craft, and ambition they’ve created something that borders on the monumental. Divisions be damned.
Standout Track: POP POP POP
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Jane Weaver - Love in Constant Spectacle
Review from The Quietus
Love In Constant Spectacle is an illustration of progress over reinvention. And in art as in life it’s maybe less romantic to steadily test and improve on yourself in incremental ways rather than making dramatic changes. There’s an allure to burning everything to the ground and starting over, but a constant re-examining of yourself and your work requires facing what you’ve done up to this point. Weaver’s own study allows her to consistently build on her body of work rather than just recycling it. And it’s invigorating to see an artist hit her stride more that two decades on from her first solo release.
Standout Track: Perfect Storm
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch
Review from NPR
On Here in the Pitch, Pratt writes herself out of time with sturdier architecture that gestures toward '60s baroque pop, with the pure tone of a jazz singer and melodies that seem to have existed forever, too. Her chords are crisper, her singing more concrete and commanding, occasionally imagining echoes of lost Bowie or Beatles ballads aside her twilight bossa nova grooves. Call those latter moments Astrud Gilberto in Hollywood — evoking the Brazilian jazz singer's intimate take on Burt Bacharach in 1969 — but even as this music adds touches of glockenspiel, flute, saxophone and organ, Pratt's voice seems to quiet those instruments, a psychedelic reconfiguration of space and scale.
Standout Track: Life Is
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Kacey Musgraves - Deeper Well
Review from Sputnik Music
On the surface, Deeper Well may seem like a rainy day album that is too stripped-down and ephemeral to make a lasting impact. While it certainly has a few weaker tracks, the core of the record is truly breathtaking to behold. It’s a moment of self-discovery and commitment to growth that eschews the lavish tendencies of Star-Crossed for something more personal, honest, and vulnerable. Musgraves’ venture into folk is befitting of this moment’s gravity; it’s not her usual brand of gazey country-pop because she’s a woman whose life is in transformation. Her desire to ditch self-indulgent habits and home in on what truly matters is infectious, and Deeper Well serves as a reminder to do exactly that.
Standout Track: Cardinal
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Khruangbin - A LA SALA
Review from The Guardian
Khruangbin’s latest marks a return to their relaxed, mid-tempo origins. Each member displays a subtle mastery of their instrument: bassist Laura Lee Ochoa is steady, interweaving with drummer Donald Johnson Jr’s metronomic groove, while guitarist Mark Speer’s top-line melody soars effortlessly. The effect is expansive, spanning the sun-kissed sonic vista of May Ninth, the humid funk of Pon Pón, and yearning balladry of Les Petits Gris. Across the album’s 12 tracks, we never hear a shout, heady drum fill or crescendo. Instead, Khruangbin’s strengths exist in relative quietude, making their intricate music sound so gentle that it lulls the listener into a newly imaginative state.
Standout Track: Hold Me Up (Thank You)
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Liela Moss - Transparent Eyeball
Review from Louder Than War
Transparent Eyeball has an immaculate and ultramodern production but is aware of its past, an old friend that visits occasionally but doesn’t stay. Opening song Prism is a perfect example, with a near hip-hop beat and a sample of an old instrument like an Oud or Qanun. A snaking vocal melody turns into a gothic rock track, not dissimilar to the first Death In Vegas album. It’s a brilliant, relaxed, yet driven piece and a perfect start.
Standout Track: Prism
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Lionlimb - Limbo
Review from AllMusic
As on their past work, the album centers on singer/songwriter Stewart Bronaughand drummer Joshua Jaeger. The big difference this time out is the cadre of guest female vocalists who duet with Bronaugh throughout the album. Prime among them is Angel Olsen, with whom Bronaugh and Jaeger are longtime bandmates. Here she brings her dusky vocals to "Dream of You," a woozy, tragically romantic anthem that explodes with a fuzztone guitar lead. Equal parts Portishead and Serge Gainsbourg, the song underscores the crate-digging inspirations at the core of Lionlimb's style.
Standout Track: Dream of You
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Loma - How Will I Live Without A Body?
Review from Far Out Magazine
Despite the obvious musical adeptness at play here, without the right setting, mindset, and general approach to consuming such a delicately shaped album, certain parts could lose grip of those it attempts to captivate, its soft edges delightful only to those who are willing to embrace its consistent lack of weight. Still, there’s already a heady amount of dazzle there, enough to allow the shortcomings to dissolve into the background.
Standout Track: How It Starts
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Maggie Rogers - Don't Forget Me
Review from Line Of Best Fit
Don’t Forget Me is an ultimately refreshing set from an artist who seems like she needs to reinvent with each album cycle, not because of outside pressure but for her own growth. Rogers is an artist’s artist – often sharing snippets of thoughts behind songs on Instagram, and mentioning that she wrote these particular ones pen to paper, fully formed. It’s always charming, but in its best moments, Don’t Forget Me is often phenomenally well-written, a solid show from an artist who’s likely to linger in your memory for a while.
Standout Track: The Kill
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
NewDad - MADRA
Review from Clash Music
With this debut album, it’s clear that the band has evolved, both in sound-wise and they’re portrayal of universal feelings. It’s an album that feels personal to whoever listens, and yet still discerns itself as belonging to NewDad through the use of elevated sound and new dream-pop styles. As a debut, it cements the band as one with a long path ahead of them. As an album, it’s a deeply moving, mesmerizing work with themes that stick with you long after listening.
Standout Track: Where I Go
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Rosali - Bite Down
Review from Paste Magazine
Of course, any band worth its weight benefits from songs with a strong gravitational pull, and Rosali dishes those out in heaping helpings. Like No Medium before it, Bite Down is packed wall to wall with tunes that are unsettled but unhurried, generous with melody, wandering but never lost, and reliably steady despite the never-ending twists and turns of an earthly existence. But above all, they are beautiful, broken and built around the kind of raw emotional uncertainty that will resonate with anyone who has ever lived, loved and/or lost.
Standout Track: Bite Down
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
The Smile - Wall of Eyes
Review from Pitchfork
After decades refining, refusing, and reformulating the Radiohead sound, Yorke and Greenwood seem emboldened to stop resisting—to loosen up and let their songwriting impulses absorb whatever happens to be on their stereo that day. Wall of Eyes gives center stage to jazz, kosmische, prog—aesthetic signposts and satellite genres usually kept in the more established band’s wings. The Smile, though stranger and wilder, more comfortably fit in the omnivorous art-rock tradition.
Standout Track: Wall of Eyes
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
St. Vincent - All Born Screaming
Review from The Guardian
That said, the music on All Born Screaming is too restless and packed with ideas to count as 90s revivialism. You’re equally likely to encounter a sudden burst of soft rock, some Zapp-ish electro-funk, a neatly done exploration of reggae’s weird sense of space or an epic Baba O’Riley synth arpeggio as you are a thunderous industrial rhythm. Nothing stays in one place for long, including Clark’s voice, which shifts from a spectral presence that mushes words into incomprehensibility on opener "Hell Is Near" to almost painfully in-your-face on "Reckless".
Standout Track: Hell Is Near
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
TORRES - What an enormous room
Review from Clash Music
Though TORRES may not showcase the hooks of some of her counterparts, what she lacks in melodic memorability she makes up for in innovation and a clear and distinct commitment to the redevelopment and rejuvenation of her own artistic identity. ‘What an enormous room’’ is an amalgamation of its title: an expansive collection of tracks, difficult to define, but somehow remains undeniably TORRES.
Standout Track: Collect
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
Yama Uba - Silhouettes
Review from SLR Magazine
Yama Uba was formed in 2017 by (Akiko) Sampson, who was joined by (Winter) Zora in 2020. With evocative and charismatic vocals from both Sampson and Zora, the debut full-length Silhouettes, was five years in the making. Combining the infectious sounds of sweeping guitar, rumbling bass, soaring saxophone and velvet synthesizers over synthpop beats, Yama Uba makes several nods to their post-punk and darkwave predecessors, yet creates a sound entirely their own.
Standout Track: Shapes
CLICK HERE to listen on your preferred platform
I'd love to hear your thoughts on these twenty albums. Please hit me up in the comments and let me know which ones you loved, hated or were indifferent about. Any new discoveries for you? What were some of your "honorable mentions" of 2024?
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Love, love loved Madra! Same with Maggie Rogers' record.
I really wanted 2024 to be the year that Hurray for the Riff Raff truly won me over. It's an incredible record, but it just couldn't break through to that next level for me. Maybe I just need to listen to it a bit more?
I wanted to mention that I played the Loma song and was thinking "I know this artist." And that's because I have her two earlier albums! It's been a while since her last one (I think 2020?) and I remember really digging the mood/s her songs convey.
It's funny that she has a song on her first album titled, "I Don't Want Children," when "How it Starts" is all about her pregnancy/birth. Of course "IDWC" is not really about not wanting children, but it shows the growth (literally) in her songwriting.
https://open.spotify.com/track/23HyI5stpTNVkhB0yR6rx0?si=77007123443a4385