Unlimited Capacity: Favorite Music of 2024

Year-end list-making is a compulsion. It’s the best and the worst activity.

I love new music and telling people about that love. I have beefs with other people’s lists and the list-making enterprise in general. So many beefs.

(Lists that make absolutist statements about good and bad. Lists that resemble a horserace among pop stars, where we’re all compelled to declare what team we’re on. Lists based less on personal taste than trying to anticipate what history will remember. Lists that start with an intro about how impossible it was to choose, and then have all the same albums as every other list.)

The personal perils of making a year-end list are, for me: overthinking, trying to include all hundreds of albums I loved, paying too much attention to other people’s lists, pretending that my declarations about music matter more than they do, getting intimidated into inaction by the omnipresence of opinions out there.

Consider this a summary of my music tastes this year, but it’s summarizing nothing. I did very little writing along the way for this to summarize.  The only writing about music I did in 2024 can be held in your hand: tiny reviews for two issues of The Big Takeover print magazine, and my first book (De La Soul, J-Card Press, published this past July). This is a re-entry into the ephemeral online world, stepping forwards while looking backwards.

To spell out where I’m coming from, these days:

In terms of genre, at this point in my life, what I’m trying to keep up with is pop music – indie and mainstream, domestic and international; jazz, especially free, experimental, or genre-defying jazz-ish music; ambient and similar atmospheric music, as background or focus; hip-hop, including music from other genres with clear hip-hop influence; country, especially if it bears some trace of interrogation of the genre itself, or is bublegum-pop in disguise. And other stuff as it finds its way into my life – no rules.

I learn about new music from my everyday scavenging habits online, following listeners/labels/media etc. that will lead me in a good direction, and from press emails. And my own well-worn paths. I listen to records, CDs, cassettes and downloads (long live the ipod classic). No streaming unless I’m previewing things on Bandcamp or YouTube.

When it comes to music, I have an unlimited capacity for love – I find new music to love all of the time, and they all feel like the best thing ever created.

Here’s what I’ve decided are my 10 favorites of 2024, with digressions along the way:

1. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

The Way Out of Easy is a feat of recording; the liner notes detail the challenge Bryce Gonzalez had in capturing live performances by an unamplified quartet set up on the floor of a small cocktail bar. It is an act of memory. The music was recorded on a Monday night in January 2023, played by musicians who had an ongoing show at a now-defunct cocktail bar, ETA, for over 7 years.  It is a chronicle of improvisation – three of the four tracks were fully improvised, with the other building off a Jeff Parker composition that goes back to at least 2012 (see the trio album Bright Light in Winter).

Most of all, though, it is a remarkable, riveting blurring of genres by top-notch musicians (guitarist Parker, bassist Anna Butterss, drummer Jay Bellerose and alto saxophonist Josh Johnson). Songs hit tight grooves that blend and transcend musical styles, and then zone out into dream-spaces. It is everyday, multi-purpose music, to ride with, live with, and immerse yourself in.

[Side note: See also SML’s Small Medium Large, recorded at ETA as well, featuring Butterss and Johnson, in a quintet with Booker Stardrum, Gregory Uhlmann and Jeremiah Chiu. And Anna Butterss’ second solo album Mighty Vertebrate, and Josh Johnson’s  solo Unusual Object. Plus Uhlmann’s Small Day. And Chiu’s album with Ariel Kalma and Marta Sofia Honer, The Closest Thing to Silence. Not to mention just about anything on the International Anthem label that released several of these. One could build a best-of-2024 list with just all this stuff, and it would be impeccable.]

2. Church Chords – Elvis, He Was Schlager (Otherly Love)

Stephen Buono gathered together dozens of creative minds, hands and voices for this project, which started being built in Chicago a good 8 years, moving to LA and Philadelphia and maybe other places, bringing collaborators along the way (including Jeff Parker, Nels Cline, Takako Minekawa, Nate Walcott, many more). The music is built on layers of collaboration – taking an instrumental piece, finding someone to add lyrics, finding someone else to bring in vocals, someone else to add strange sounds and so on. Editing, producing, rearranging, stripping down and building up. Each song is a creative construction that no doubt had its own journey, and ends up as its own UFO. Funky dance music in a way, global amalgamations of weirdness too, and always sweet, smooth, strange…thought-provoking and physical.

[See also Church Chords’ Bandcamp site for various alternate versions of the album’s songs.]

3. Astrid Sonne – Great Doubt (Escho)

“Light and Heavy” is the name of the minute-long instrumental that opens Great Doubt, by the Danish composer/violist/now-singer-songwriter Astrid Sonne. That’s how the music and the songs feel, both light and heavy. The first major question on the album, on “Do You Wanna”, is whether it makes sense to bring a human being into this cruel world. Questions are in the air throughout the album, as the title implies, and the music itself, airy and strange, wraps those questions up in more questions. It’s all minimalist, gorgeous, melancholic and filled with uncertainty.   

[See also the Great Doubt EDITS companion album.]

4. Advance Base – Horrible Occurrences (Run for Cover)

Owen Ashworth has been essentially a short-story writer, in song, for the bulk of his career. Horrible Occurrences is his most haunting and powerful album yet – compact, deeply human tales set to comforting yet eerie synth tunes. You know how your parents will tell you stories of tragedies that happened to someone you knew as a kid? Or your mind will call back to some strange terrible story you were once told? Horrible Occurrences is filled with those stories, all centralized in a fictional town called Richmond. People are constantly disappearing, sometimes returning but never quite the same. There are stories of revenge, of accidents, of youthful indiscretions and momentary scares. Every human in the town – like all of us – is touched by past traumas, doubts and fears.

[See also – Owen Ashworth runs the label Orindal, which has an unimpeachable lineup of smart and strange music. This year,  A Million Easy Payments by Little Kid, and Robert Stillman’s live collection Something About Living (recorded while on tour as The Smile’s opening act) are definitely worth wrestling with.]

5. LL Cool J – The Force (LL/Def Jam)

I feel a bit like one of those old-fogey rock critics who puts every new Springsteen or Dylan album on a year-end list like it’s a return to form. Except this is a return to form – the best LL Cool J album since 1990 (Mama Said Knock You Out). And it also is a step forward; there are songs here the likes of which he’s never done – POV narratives (the voice of someone just released from prison on “30 Decembers”, the voice of a vigilante targeting racist cops on “Spirit of Cyrus”) and songs steeped in Black culture/history and his place in it (“Black Code Suite,” “Basquiat Energy,” “Huey in the Chair”). Then there’s the musical palette: Q-Tip, who produced every track, paints in vibrant colors built from deep dives through obscure music — German prog rock and similar is right there with the sort of jazz and funk he explored with A Tribe Called Quest. This is way too lively and innovative to be categorized as ‘old man rap.’

[See also – Common and Pete Rock’s The Auditorium Vol 1 is another charming, if more straight-laced, collaboration between hip-hop legends.]

6. [Ahmed] – Giant Beauty (Fönstret)

The Bandcamp site for the UK jazz quartet [Ahmed] says they make music “to listen, dance and think to,” which is the most humble yet accurate way to describe how huge and all-consuming their sound is. In tribute to the bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, each of their performances takes one of his songs and creates freely from that base, expanding in every direction and lighting the world on fire, within the span of one hour. Giant Beauty is a behemoth box set capturing 5 of those performances from the same 2022 festival – and there are recordings that offer as much to dig into and be surprised by. It’s a complete adventure.

[See also – Their one-track, one-hour album Wood Blues (a take on “Oud Blues”) is just as majestic and powerful; it would be in this spot on the list if I weren’t a sucker for the epic qualities of a 5-disc set. [ism]’s Maua captures a fine performance by three-fourths of the group. The group’s restlessly creative pianist Pat Thomas released  a great solo piano album, The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir, and a thorny album of hip-hop messing-about, This Is Trick Step.]

7. Rema – HEIS (Marvin)

Rema had one of the biggest hit songs in the world the last couple years – “Calm Down” was #1 on 10 countries’ charts even before the US-appeasing (much inferior) Selena Gomez duet remix hit here a year later. It earned several historic marks for an Afrobeats song, and for a song by an African artist, period. (For example, first song by an African artist to hit 1 billion streams on Spotify.) So what did Rema decide to do next? Not try to replicate it, by any means, but rather dive deep into Nigerian music of the current-day, and his own impulses and inspirations. Turning to a variety of young producers to re-energize the roots of his sound, he’s created a cocky and sonically twisted victory stance. Within an intentionally villainous sound, he brags about his success and builds a bigger chip on his shoulder, in a playful way. An exhilarating next step, for sure.

[See also -so many great Nigerian artists that are threatening to take over pop music worldwide. Two other favorites for 2024 were Tems’ Born in the Wild and Asake’s Lungu Boy.]

8. Mope Grooves – Box of Dark Roses (12XU)

With Mope Grooves, Stevie Pohlman made synth-driven UFO-like pop mysteries that also challenge listeners to reconsider assumptions and work to change the world. The 27-track Box of Dark Roses comes with a written manifesto on trans rights and collective action. In those liner notes she writes, about the album, “If i’m ever hard to get a hold of u can find my whole heart in here.” Pohlman passed away in early 2024, leaving this album as a final statement from a thought-provoking artist who seemed early in her creative journey. It’s a dazzling maze of ideas and feelings, dreamlike in its structure and sound, and never less than heartfelt in its drive to instigate change.

[See also: The label 12XU released what were probably my favorite reissues this year – multiple albums by the ‘90s experimental rock-pop trio Love Child, featuring Rebecca Odes and Alan Licht. While I’m thinking about reissues, I was blown away by Pete Jolly’s Seasons (reissued by Future Days Recordings); it was one of my most-listened-to albums this year. I also enjoyed getting acquainted with the ‘80s Spanish post-punk band Décima Víctima, through Munster Records’ reissues.]

9. Violence Gratuite – Baleine à Boss (Hakuna Kulala)

The artist Violaine Morgan Le Fur has been a creative force behind the Nyege Nyege festival, which brought her into collaboration with innovative electronic producers from Uganda. Educated in art and devoted to a creative life (dance, design, visual art, etc. – peep her handmade mermaid tale in two of the album’s videos), the quickly recorded Baleine à Boss is her first foray into music. Influenced by current African electronic music, French pop styles, no wave, her exploration of her Cameroonian roots, her interest in art as a spiritual practice, and no doubt a myriad of other touchpoints, it’s a winning kaleidoscope of sounds.  

[See also – On the same label, Masaka Masaka’s Barely Making Much and Ratigan Era’s Era are both debut albums that put pleasurable spins on familiar genres (techno-ish dance and dancehall, respectively. Nyege Nyege Tapes highlights this year included Arsenal Mikebe’s Drum Machine and De Schuurman’s Bubbling Forever.)

10. The BV’s – Taking Pictures of Taking Pictures (Kleine Untergrund Schallplatten/Shelflife)

The latest album from the German indie-pop band The BV’s fits the perfect blend of melancholy dreaminess and crisp, chiming melodies – with allusions to the Cure, the Radio Dept and other groups turning a general sense of malaise into something gorgeous.

[See also — If I were doing a best indie-pop list, like I did for PopMatters for 15 years, I’d likely have the Mope Grooves and BV’s albums on it, and round out the top 10 with Mammoth Penguins’ open-hearted Here, The Reds, Pinks & Purples’ Unwishing Well (or the multitude of other great digital EPs and singles from them), Nightshift’s Homosapien, Fred Thomas’ career-hallmark Window in the Rhythm, Userband’s Looking for a Band, Wut’s Mingling With the Thorns. And then I might try and count April Magazine’s Wesley’s Convertible Tape for the South though it first came out in 2023, and Cindy’s Swan Lake, though it’s an EP. ]

22 more great albums, for good measure. In alphabetical order:

Lastly, here’s a video playlist I threw together, featuring representative songs from most of the albums above.

Happy New Year, wishing you peace and happiness ….