January 4, 2025

Two Benefit Releases + Best Albums of 2024

New Releases

In the past month I've been part of two releases that benefit great organizations:

1. The "pretty" one: Just Like Honey (Jesus and Mary Chain cover) w/ NYC band Her Heads On Fire. Proceeds benefit Sandy Hook Promise.
2. The "abstract" one: Uitwaaien w/ DC band Czonka ("Uitwaaien" is a Dutch term meaning "to go out on a windy day to clear one's mind"... so the cello is partly the "wind" here). Proceeds benefit The Trevor Project.

The best albums of 2024

Gigantic 2 1/2-hour YouTube Music Playlist of Nearly Everything Below (I know not everyone has YouTube Music but at least it’s a service where anyone can listen to the whole playlist, even if there are ads — and it’s not Spotify. The latter train wreck of a service has somehow gotten even more cartoonishly evil recently, which is a subject for a future newsletter)

J Robbins — Basilisk: J released not only one of the best records of the year, but one of the best of his entire catalog, and that’s saying something. A must for any punk, hardcore, post-punk, post-hardcore, art-rock, post-postcore-core, or plain-old music fan. And yes, I play on a couple songs on this one, but it would still be perched atop my 2024 list regardless.

DIIV — Frog In Boiling Water: One of the most beautiful loud shoegazey albums ever made, but also inexplicably released with one of the best Web 1.0-style tribute sites to Time Cube.

The Cure — Songs for a Lost World: A masterpiece and (IMO) the spiritual successor to Disintegration.

Chat Pile — Cool World: The heaviest. The bleakest and most dystopian. But also infectious and cathartic.

Magdalena Bay — Imaginal Disk: Perhaps the best art-pop album of the year; incredibly ambitious yet successful on all fronts.

Blushing — Sugarcoat: The platonic ideal of shoegaze pop.

Metz — Up On Gravity Hill: It’s like post-hardcore Catherine Wheel. Genius.

Four Tet — Three: Each song blooms and grows like a time lapse of a tree in spring.

Chelsea Wolfe — She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She: A deeply affecting post-rock/industrial exploration of sobriety and darkness.

Saint Etienne — The Night: A very understated but very brilliant ambient pop exploration of how being alive late at night feels.

But wait! There’s more… Here are the best albums of 2024 you definitely haven’t heard:

Daria — Fall Not: The best-sounding tone of any currently active rock band. It’s a delight that this Angers, France group has reunited and just put out a new album.

Do Not Machine — Celebrations to the End: Also the best-sounding tone of any rock band, because it includes some of the Daria members… but this group has sadly disbanded. Still, check out their album from earlier this year.

Alcest — Les Chants De L’Aurore: Also French! But more blackgaze/cinematic and vast.

Cogents — Desolace (feat Neil Fallon of Clutch): Also cinematic, but extremely dark ambient/electronic pieces from Ross Hurt (of Rigs of Dad fame), with his friend (and Clutch drummer) Neil Fallon. Incredible.

Blanko Basnet — Entelechy: The album I listened to perhaps the most of any in 2024. It’s the perfect bright Sunday morning album—but deeply musical and rich at the same time. A bit jammy, a bit southern, a bit post-hardcore, a bit…. yacht rock? …but also indescribably original. Includes members of Hammer No More The Fingers.

Palomino Blond — You Feel It Too: Grunge is alive and well with these Gen-Z Floridians.

New Freedom Sound — Two Freedoms: Yes, I played on this one, but I’m just so proud of it. Post-wave jazz/classical improv loop spirituals. Vinyl still available!

Continuals — s/t: “Indie emo Minutemen” feels dismissive, but if any of that intrigues you, listen. This is one of the best DC groups currently active.

Locrian — End Terrain: Epic post-apocalypse extinction anthems. Yes, I play on a couple songs, but it earns its spot here regardless.

Minnows — Foreign Moon: “If you like this type of music (rock-focused shoegaze), what other band do you need?” — J Robbins

Bolts of Melody — Film Noir: From Swervedriver frontman Adam Franklin, this is more of a notional film score than an album, but it succeeds wildly.

Hudson Freeman — Killing Time: Genius unassuming lo-fi indie grunge folk from Brooklyn.

Yesness — See You At The Solipsist Convention: Don Caballero drummer Damon Che is BACK, and partnered with the El Ten Eleven drummer. What?!

Eastern Pine - Extended Play: Speaking of Pittsburgh, a bunch of post-hardcore vets just got together and made a perfect late-90s early emo album. I feel like I’m back in a VFW hall in the best way.

Sick Again — s/t: Pure rock from a completely unknown brother duo from England. Yes, I play on a couple songs, but it earns its spot here regardless. (not on the playlist)

Honorable Mentions:

• Mary Timony — Untame The Tiger
• Kim Deal — Nobody Loves You More
• The Pixies — The Night The Zombies Came
• Beth Gibbons — Lives Outgrown
• Idaho — Lapse
• Julie — My Anti-Aircraft Friend
• Nada Surf — Moon Mirror
• Horse Jumper Of Love — Disaster Trick
• X — Smoke and Fiction
• Spirit of The Beehive — You’ll Have To Lose Something
• Shellac — To All Trains
• Ezra Glatt — Endless (not on the playlist)

What did I miss that I absolutely should hear? Reply or leave a comment (link at the end) and let me know!

Final Thought

As we turn to 2025, which will undoubtedly include nightmares beyond our comprehension, I feel surprisingly calm, and perhaps even inspired! A few people have tried to name the energy we need to cultivate at this juncture—here are two that I particularly liked:

“…the kakistocrats are…flooding the zone with insane bullshit…[let’s] counter that by flooding the zone with weird, beautiful, outrageous good things”

— Phil Barbato

“What we need is a radical, rebellious, fuck you optimism. The kind that spits in the face of despair and keeps moving forward anyway, middle finger raised and teeth bared…It’s a kind of hope that doesn’t wait for permission or assurance…A fuck you optimism doesn’t lie to itself. It sees the train wreck coming and still decides to plant flowers on the tracks. It knows full well that the flowers might get crushed, but plants them anyway, because the act of rebellion is its own reward.”

— Joan Westenberg

What weird, beautiful, outrageous good things could you get into this year?

GW