It’s that time of the year. 2024 has been a pretty good year for music. Like I’ve been saying since 2013, I did not listen to as much music as I would have liked to. Still, there were a lot of releases that really struck me. Here are five of my favorites:

5. Martha Skye Murphy - Um

Um is an album that haunts me. It isn’t something that I found myself listening to often through the year, but every time I did I found it beautiful, dark, and strange. I wish I had the vocabulary for experimental music to really do this justice. It’s like if Kate Bush pared down her arrangements and production, and made all of her music sound more sinister. Even that description is doing it a disservice because Martha Skye Murphy is clearly operating on her own level. Um is totally enrapturing. Incredible album to take with you on meandering autumn walks.

Favorite track: Pick Yourself Up

4. Thou - Umbilical

The idea of music being “scary” is such an absurdity to me. But if there was ever such a band that deserved that descriptor, I would have to give it to Thou. Umbilical is so intense and punishing that I would describe the experience of it less like listening and more being smothered. Its production is so immense that it’s almost dizzying trying to take it all in. The 2020s have been a great decade for metal and heavy music in general, and this is easily among the best of the best.

Favorite track: House of Ideas

3. Gouge Away - Deep Sage

One of the reasons I don’t listen to as much new music in my 30s as I did, say, in high school or college, is because music was such a social activity for me. Listening to, debating, and discussing music was such a huge part of social circles I was in, both online and in person. I think this aspect of sociality in music goes away for most people around the same time. It’s hard to make room for it when life hands you other priorities and you have to be a lot more intentional about finding new and exciting things.

This was recommended to me by my friend Tyler and it’s far and away the 2024 album I’ve listened to the most. I always appreciate being able to connect something I’m listening to with other people. I’m not saying anything new or interesting, but people really do make music better.

It’s felt like hardcore has been having a resurgence the past several years, and a lot of it is great, but Deep Sage to me has just felt so urgent and refreshing. It’s hard not to just think of the Pixies when trying to find a way to orient myself around this, given the band name Gouge Away, but it is what it is. That being said, it has the sort of intense, manic energy you would find in any of the best Pixies songs, but at the core of it is still really memorable songwriting that’s just abrasive enough that it’s not quite pop. I listened to this a lot when I was watering plants.

Favorite track: Maybe Blue

2. claire rousay - sentiment

It’s 4 a.m. You’re wide awake because the anti-psychotics you use as a sleep aid aren’t working. You’re wondering where your life has gone so wrong, why you feel miserable and lonely; why it feels like there’s a gaping hole at the core of your being. You just want to sleep. But all you can do is think, and feel.

claire rousay is a name I’ve heard floated around from people who are into experimental music. I’m a dumb guy. Sometimes experimental music seems too smart for me. I like music with fast drums, loud guitars, and lots of screaming. Modular synths and expensive guitar pedals scare me. But then I came across this performance of lover’s spit plays in the background that just moved me to tears. It instantly became my favorite song this year.

sentiment is one of those albums that’s hard to write about connecting to because it’s frankly embarrassing to wallow in self-pity. But it’s a gorgeous collage of sound that is as potent as it is fragile, like a small, intricate sculpture that could shatter in your hands at any moment. At least, that’s what it feels like to be awake, alone, in the transitory hours between night and dawn. It’s an album about feeling like your worst self, knowing it, and being unable to escape from the impossible gravity of that self-loathing. It’s been a difficult year, as all years have been. I can only take comfort in knowing someone else feels the same.

Favorite track: lover’s spit plays in the background

1. smiling broadly - for a moment i saw myself as inexorably beautiful

There is a Brian Eno quote that goes around fairly regularly on the internet. For those unfamiliar, it’s this:

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”

I think of this quote a lot when I listen to smiling broadly, and this album in specific. It’s so hard to describe exactly what this album is. Is it hyperpop? Is it inspired by J-rock? Is it power pop? Whose idea was it to rip guitar leads over obscenely fast break beats?

I love how messy and loud this album is. I love that it feels like a million ideas trying to grab your attention at the same time, and like it’s going to spill out of the speakers like a burst dam. This, to me, is the sound of music so overwhelming it feels like it’s trying to escape the very medium that contains it.

I’m in awe that this came from mostly one person. It’s so life-affirming but not in a cloying way that can ring hollow. It’s funny, and melancholy, and joyous, often at the same time. Listening to this conjures up memories of being out with friends, in the wee hours of the morning, just shooting the shit, being glad you’re alive. It makes me want to drive somewhere far, go to the beach, watch a sunrise, any number of things that make the stupid things we spend most of our lives doing seem insignificant. Like hazel, of smiling broadly, says in her Bandcamp bio: “all we have is each other forever. die smiling thru.”

There are few things I find genuinely inspiring anymore and this is one of them. It makes me want to pick up my guitar, or open up Ableton, and just make something.

Favorite track: 120% get it together

That about wraps it up for my favorite music this year. I’m also working on a post about movies this year I really loved. In the meantime, here are some other albums I really liked that were released this year:

Hana Vu - Romanticism
SahBabii - Saaheem
Faye Webster - Underdressed at the Symphony
Nilüfer Yanya - My Method Actor
Doris - Ultimate Love Songs Collection
Kendrick Lamar - GNX
Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven
Christopher Owens - I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere
Charli XCX - brat
Billie Eilish - HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
Julie - my anti-aircraft friend
Bill Orcutt - Four Guitars Live