60. Twenty songs from 2024
January 17th, 2024
Listen: Spotify
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Though I didn't write to you about them (yet), I loved a lot of things last year: Wim Wenders' Perfect Days, Steven Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along (particularly this performance of 'Old Friends'), getting back into letterpress printing at the London Centre for Book Arts, Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow, the noble sport of petanque, and this album by Swedish musician Tottomori that sounds like the soundtrack to a purely speculative Studio Ghibli video game. But here are twenty songs I loved, too. Better late than never.
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1. Jessica Pratt - Better Hate (Bandcamp)
We talked about this. Jessica Pratt's Here in The Pitch was my favourite record of the year—a ghostly postcard from 60s California, diaphanous and reverb-heavy.
2. Ginger Root - No Problems (Bandcamp)
Cameron Lew makes McCartney-inflected city pop with an immaculate aesthetic, all VHS scanlines and star wipes. The creative direction and elaborate lore of the whole project is wildly impressive, and culminated in a super charming 20-minute short film. Meet you in the galaxy!
3. Cola - Keys Down if You Stay (Bandcamp)
This must be how it feels to be a perfectly skimmed stone.
4. Saya Grey - AA BOUQUET FOR YOUR 180 FACE (Bandcamp)
A clockwork prowl, clipped and ethereal. There might not be an album I'm more excited about this year than SAYA.
5. The Smile - Zero Sum (Bandcamp)
A brassy, serpentine groove. Thom Yorke is at his best when leading a beefy phalanx of undersea horns (see 'The Daily Mail' for proof). Probably my favourite song last year to reference Windows '95.
6. Gustaf - Close (Bandcamp)
A song about edging that never lets you finish...
7. Magdalena Bay - Image (Bandcamp)
...and one that absolutely does. Imaginal Disk is a bratty, concept-heavy pop indulgence, and 'Image' had the best drop of the year, a fuzzy 10ft tall bassline that completely wrecks shop.
8. Hamish Hawk - Juliet as Epithet (Bandcamp)
"Haven't you heard? I smother the chances I get/And when they hurt to remember, I forget."
9. Improvement Movement - On The Bus (Bandcamp)
Harmonising with your boys.
10. Chris Cohen - Sunever (Bandcamp)
Pep talk to a sapling. Paint A Room was another of my favourite records of the year.
11. Waxahatchee - Right Back To It (Bandcamp)
A new hall-of-fame heartbreaker. There wasn't a better chorus in 2024...
12. The Bug Club - Quality Pints (Bandcamp)
...unless you count a song that is all chorus, irresistibly beery and boneheaded.
13. Ducks Ltd. - Hollowed Out (Bandcamp)
Perfectly polished Canadian jangle-pop drawing from a seemingly inexhaustible well of pep, going by the show I saw back in May.
14. Katy Kirby - Cubic Zirconia (Bandcamp)
Speaking of shows I saw last year, is there anything sweeter than the genuine deer-in-headlights surprise of musicians faced with a crowd in an unfamiliar city that sings their songs back to them? Not for my money. 'Cubic Zirconia' is a queer love song for people on planet Earth, which can't help shooting starwards.
15. Sam Evian - Rollin' In (Bandcamp)
A easygoing lope along the water...
16. Haley Heynderickx - Seed of a Seed (Bandcamp)
...to meet you in the woods.
17. Ugly - The Wheel (Bandcamp)
A maximalist potluck at the feet of a blazing wicker man. Just watch this band tame a rowdy crowd into obedient focus through sheer force of a capella.
18. MJ Lenderman - Wristwatch (Bandcamp)
An efficiently tragic character portrait apprenticing at the David Berman workshop.
19. Cheekface - There Were Changes in the Hardcore Scene (Bandcamp)
It was a year beginning with 2, so naturally there was another Cheekface album that I loved. No other band translates the vernacular of the therapized and terminally online into something so funny, familiar, hook-laden. I've seen this band four times in the space of two years, and every time has been a joy.
20. Vulfmon - Got To Be Mine (Bandcamp)
No notes.
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