The Year-End List
Truly what you have all been waiting for
What a year. My first full year as a parent was full of new experiences, trials, highs, and lows. It’s been amazing getting to be a dad to a great little guy. And sometimes I get to sleep! Wild! It has been a major bummer ending the year with an injury that has kept me from running since early September, but such is life. Gotta keep going with physical therapy and work on getting better and stronger.
But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to talk about the Jams of 2024.
My list seems to differ greatly from those at Stereogum, NPR, Pitchfork, and others, but I’m not surprised. Anyway, let’s get into it.
Albums
One Step Closer - All You Embrace
This album lodged itself in my brain and refused to leave. Since it dropped in May, it has been my constant companion, the album I keep coming back to. I liked This Place You Know enough, but nothing about that record prepared me for this. Softening their hardcore punch with the sort of Brand New worship that fueled so many great bands of the early-’10s, and ramping up the production values—the guitars sound so much bigger and crunchier here—this record evolves the band’s sound in a way that hearkens to the past while pointing to an exciting future.
Recommended listening: “Your Hazel Tree”Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal
This one caught me by surprise, and what a surprise. I was unfamiliar with Doechii before this, and I was blown away by the versatility Doechii displays across the album (sorry, mixtape) while also maintaining her singular, distinct perspective throughout. The beats are as murky as the Florida swamps she raps about, and the whole thing is an intoxicating listen.
Recommended listening: “CATFISH“Charli XCX - brat
I hope you had a brat summer. Obviously none of us could match Kyle MacLachlan’s, but we should all aspire to. Charli’s return to form after the pop-chasing Crash ended up being her biggest smash yet, signaling that we all just needed to catch up to her. Pivoting between loud, brash, confident anthems and moments of (relatively) quiet introspection, the album doesn’t have a dull moment, or a miss.
Recommended listening: “Von dutch“The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
I think we all would have understood it if the Cure called it a day or settled into legacy mode after the lackluster 4:13 Dream. And for a while it seemed like they had done the latter. But here we are, 16 years later, and the band feels revitalized creatively, tapping into some of the sonic language of Disintegration and Bloodflowers for a record that reminds fans of the band they love without sounding like they’re trying to recapture something that can’t be recreated.
Recommended listening: “Alone”Restorations - Restorations
For my money, this is the Philly band’s finest outing, and that’s saying something, as they have managed to make a pretty flawless catalog of great rock anthems. The six year wait between LP5000 and this were worth it. Pulling from the same Springsteen-indebted bar band well as The Hold Steady do, these fellas just keep getting better and better.
Recommended listening: “Film Maudit”Gouge Away - Deep Sage
Famously, the pandemic pretty much killed this band. They had all moved away, and it looked like Burnt Sugar would be their swan song. Then, out of nowhere, they got back together and assembled this stellar album from afar. The band has incorporated a host of new sounds into their hardcore, and is all the better for it; you’d be forgiven for not calling this hardcore at all.
Recommended listening: “Spaced Out”Glitterer - Rationale
“I miss Title Fight,” or “I wish Title Fight would get back together,” is a constant refrain from a certain type of person online. This person, I suspect, has not been listening to Glitterer, because the band has evolved to sound like where Title Fight was going anyway, and that especially true of Rationale. Blending the punk of Shed and the more shoegazey aspects of Hyperview, I have no need for Title Fight as long as Glitterer exists.
Recommended listening: “Plastic”Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood
OK so right up front, I am That Guy who says that Waxahatchee will never top American Weekend for me. I played the crap out of that record and it means a lot to me and always will. That said, Katie has grown tremendously over the years and keeps getting better and better. Tigers Blood is another stellar record in her catalog, cementing her place as one of the best musicians out there.
Recommended listening: “Right Back to It“NØ MAN - Glitter and Spit
RVA knows how to do heavy shit. The city has a storied tradition of punk, hardcore, and metal that absolutely rips. NØ MAN’s pummeling second full-length builds on Erase, easily one of my favorite heavy records of the last few years, and continues mixing the legendary might of Majority Rule with the vicious vocals and lyrics of Maha Shami into a potent cocktail of heartbreaking rage and fury.
Recommended listening: “Can’t Kill Us All”Planes Mistaken for Stars - Do You Still Love Me?
When Planes frontman Gared O’Donnell passed in 2021, it seemed like that was the end of the band’s story. So the existence of this album, with Gared’s final recorded works, is a miracle. And even without the gravitas added by the tragedy hanging over the record, it would be an emotional triumph living up to the band’s best work. Gared’s ragged vocals, bursting with emotion, and the band’s dark, atmospheric post-hardcore are all firing on full cylinders, leaving behind a perfect coda for one of the genre’s great bands.
Recommended listening: “Fix Me”Drug Church - Prude
Maybe you’re not a Self Defense Family fan. That’s fine, wrong but fine. Maybe Patrick’s whole thing puts you off. Understandable. But if you haven’t let Drug Church’s tuneful, thoughtful take on hardcore into your heart, you are fucking up.
Recommended listening: “Myopic“Pet Shop Boys - Nonetheless
Coming off a trilogy of record with Stuart Price, Nonetheless is a refreshing break from Price’s signature style, which definitely felt like diminishing returns by the time Hotspot rolled around. The songs here are strong, lyrically and musically, while balancing the dancefloor bangers of Electric and Super with the more melancholy Elysium. Forty-plus years into their career, the Boys manage to keep evolving.
Recommended listening: “New London boy”Speed - ONLY ONE MODE
Does your hardcore band feature a flutist? No? Well maybe it should. Take-no-shit hardcore from down under, released by the always-excellent Flatspot Records, that breakdown on “The First Test” should send you moshing through the wall.
Recommended listening: “The First Test”Yambag - Mindfuck Ultra
You can’t call an album Mindfuck Ultra and not expect me to check it out. And the album is, as they say, exactly what it says on the tin. 11 songs in 10m 50s, this is pure, undiluted hardcore. Hardcore for the speed freaks, to bite a phrase from GEL. Convulse Records is on a hot streak, and this is one of the highlights of a very good year for them.
Recommended listening: “Party Song”Shygirl - Club Shy / Club Shy RMX
Spotify classifies these as EPs, but whatever. Shygirl is amazing. Her songs exude power and confidence, both musically and lyrically. And an in-your-face sexuality that doesn’t get to the almost-cartoonish levels that Sabrina Carpenter does (I love the over-the-top horniness of Sabrina’s music, it should be stated).
Recommended listening: “encore.”Spaced - This Is All We Ever Get
Buffalo gets cold, and this album sounds like a lake effect winter. Brutal, a little weird, and with a groove that would make upstate forebears Snapcase proud (though less St. Anger-ass snare [I love you, Snapcase]).
Recommended listening: “Downfall”Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Wild God
In the lead-up to this album, Nick said this was a “joyful” album, which is a weird way to describe any Nick Cave record, but after trio of Push the Sky Away, Skeleton Tree, and Ghosteen, almost anything would seem joyous by comparison. But he’s right, in a way; there’s a sense of life and joy to this record that stands in contrast to the gloom of his most recent work.
Recommended listening: “Conversion”The Hope Conspiracy - Tools of Oppression/Rule by Deception
New HopeCon is a reason to celebrate. While this sounds more like All Pigs Must Die than Death Knows Your Name, that project basically sounded like the next stage of Hope Conspiracy anyway. Kevin’s throat-shredding vocals still sound incredible, and the band sounds heavy as hell.
Recommended listening: “Of a Dying Nation”Normani - DOPAMINE
Did anyone really believe Normani’s full-length would actually come out? How long has this thing been in the works? If it had come out and been an over-worked, over-produced mess it would not have been surprising. Instead, we got a fantastic set of tunes that move effortlessly from driving anthems to chill R&B. Easily the best Fifth Harmony-related release of the year.
Recommended listening: “Big Boy”Sprints - Letter to Self
Garage-y post-punk straight out of Dublin. Catchy, danceable, with some pretty cutting, vicious lyrics and stellar vocals from Karla Chubb. If you’d told me the band took inspiration from the first couple Hole records, I’d believe it.
Recommended listening: “Heavy”
EPs / Demos / Etc.
There were a lot of good EPs out this year. My list here has a strong Baltimore bias, with four locals showing up (Doubt, Grudge, Praise, and Tripper). Sorry, Charm City hardcore rips. Can’t be helped. COLONY DROP was a very last minute find that rocketed onto the list, thanks to my man Dan for the recommendation. Gundam + D-beat is guaranteed to get my attention.
Some surprises, both good and bad
Who expected Paris Hilton’s return to recording to yield some actual jams? Her take on Ultra Naté’s iconic “Free” featuring Rina Sawayama was a delight, and her track with Megan Thee Stallion (“BBA”) would not leave my head. The album isn’t all winners—the pair of collabs with Sia are underwhelming—but still, a lot of it was a welcome surprise.
On the flip side, I was very excited for a full-length from British DJ The Blessed Madonna; I’ve loved her singles and her Future Nostalgia remix album. But the album is way too long, and the highs are all songs that have been out for a while. The Kylie Minogue-featuring “Edge of Saturday Night” is a furious banger and one of my favorite songs this year, but I’d rather hear it in the context of Tension II, where it also appears.
The playlist
Of course, what would a post like this be without an accompanying playlist? It’s got highlights from the releases featured above, plus some other great songs from 2024. Get jammin’, my friends.