As the old saying goes: If you want to sculpt a statue of an elephant, you just get the biggest granite block you can find — and chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. I am trying to take the same approach to my year-end lists. I start with the giant slab of music contained in The Long List of everything I heard; then I chip away more than half the releases to form this massive, woolly mammoth of everything I wanted to hear again; and finally, I whittle that down to a still-elephantine Short List of ivory-pure excellence that you’ll never forget. Read on:
Ryan Adams
1985 / Heatwave / Prisoners (Live) / Star Sign / Sword & Stone / Blackhole
You can call Ryan Adams a lot of things — and a lot of people have, justifiably or not — but you cannot call him lazy.
For those who haven’t been keeping score at home, the absurdly prolific singer-songwriter and guitarist has released more than 30 albums in the past 23 years. And it seems he was just getting warmed up. While the rest of us were still nursing hangovers and wiping 2023’s sleep out of our eyes on Jan. 1, Adams surprise-released five new albums. Yes, you read that right: Five new full-length releases. To be precise, four new studio sets and one live album. A grand total of 77 songs that run the gamut from ragged roots-rock to moody meditations and even pugilistic punk salvos. What do they have in common? They’re all pretty goddamn fantastic. And he didn’t stop there; before the year was out, he released Blackhole, a long-lost album that he recorded in 2006 and then shelved. Fingers crossed he’s got a similar plan in place for 2025.
Barry Adamson
Cut To Black
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Cut To Black is Barry Adamson’s 10th solo studio album, and finds him in a fertile period of creativity, reflection and investigation.
Up Above The City, Down Beneath The Stars, the first volume of his memoirs, was released in 2021, charting the years from his inception in Manchester’s Brutalist heart, his difficult journey through childhood and how art and music became his liberation, via his father’s jazz record collection and the spy theme sounds of John Barry, through transformative years in Magazine, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, and up to the release of his first solo album, Moss Side Story in 1989. The book’s concept is typically inventive, with Adamson looking at the world as an observer. As he puts it, “I started to imagine my life without me in it. An author-as-observer, looking down upon this Murky World during that time and making a record of what I found there.”
Jeremie Albino
Our Time In The Sun
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When Jeremie Albino was a teenager, he started busking around Toronto, setting up along the boardwalk or on a street corner downtown. “Usually nobody was listening,” he says, “but occasionally one or two people would tell me it sounded great. They had places to be and things to do, but they would stop and listen for a little while. That kind of interaction felt very special to me, and that’s when I realized I really do love performing. That’s when I realized I could hold a listener’s interest and give something back to them.”
Albino has never felt that same connection to songwriting, but he made a breakthrough on Our Time In The Sun. Working with producer Dan Auerbach, he emerges as a sharp, observant songwriter who is quick with a clever turn of phrase and open to the emotional nuance of the stories. “I used to struggle with writing. OK, I used to hate it. Whenever I needed to write new songs, I would just sit there for months toiling away.” When he signed with Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label, however, they spent hours and hours bouncing ideas off one another, their sessions becoming a masterclass on how to write a good, solid song. “Something clicked right away,” says Albino, “and we ended up writing four or five songs a day. Before that, it would take me half a year to write four or five songs.”
Thee Alcoholics
Bear Bites Horse Sessions
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Crankers of amp, torturers of fuzzbox and denizens of small-hours salvation, Thee Alcoholics dished out a rancorous and righteous debut earlier this year with Feedback — an album that filtered gnarled riffage and motorik malevolence through a uniquely debauched prism in pursuit of some extremely ill-advised audial dystopia.
The monstrous Bear Bites Horse Sessions are a live-in-the-studio document recorded at Bear Bites Horse studio in Haggerston, London, chronicling a band breathing life into a Stoogesian paradigm, and doing so whilst barely breaking a sweat. Taking essential elixirs of in-the-red mania, hypnotic repetition and deathless swagger, these 12 jams walk a crooked path that neighbours the nihilistic vortex of Loop, the saturnine lurch of The Fall and the deadpan derangement of The Heads — but remains possessed of a maverick charisma and mischief all its own. Lovers of lysergic heaviosity and the sound of a Marshall 4×12 violently spluttering its last will find much to satisfy here, but moreover Bear Bites Horse Sessions is a testimony to sonic punishment as a gateway to new horizons, audial excess as a path to wisdom, and answers, right or wrong, being found in the bottom of a glass.”
Amyl And The Sniffers
Cartoon Darkness
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles — on the same mixing console that captured Nirvana’s Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours — the latest Amyl And The Sniffers album is their most diverse yet.
It stretches from classic punk to the glammy strut of hit single U Should Not Be Doing That to the stormy balladry of Big Dreams to pugnacious punk of Jerkin’. The Sniffers are back and back with a vengeance — bigger, brighter, smarter and sharper in every way. “Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tiptoeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they’re helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern-day god,” says singer Amy Taylor. “It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness. Cartoon Darkness is driving headfirst into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible but doesn’t even exist yet — a childlike darkness, I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it’s novelty. It’s just a joke. It’s fun.”
Louis Armstrong
Louis in London
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Louis In London documents the last great performance by the most influential American jazz musician of all time, Louis Armstrong. It was recorded live at the BBC on July 2, 1968 — just weeks after the groundbreaking, Grammy-winning artist hit the No.1 spot on the U.K. charts with What A Wonderful World.
From redefining jazz with his revolutionary trumpet playing to singlehandedly inventing popular singing, Armstrong made a greater impact on American popular music than any other single artist before or since. In July 1968, Armstrong and his renowned band, The All-Stars, travelled to England and entered the BBC’s London studios to record a performance, full of vitality and joy, that manifested some of the most inspired singing and trumpet playing of his career. Captured in high-fidelity audio and video, Louis In London presents Armstrong delivering everything from the first composition he’s known to have played in public — W.C. Handy’s Ole Miss — to hits like What A Wonderful World and classic versions of such hits as Mack The Knife and Hello, Dolly!”
Atarashii Gakko!
AG! Calling
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “AG! Calling is the first album in five years from dance vocal unit Atarashii Gakko!, and the followup to their 2019 full-length Wakage Ga Itaru.
AG! Calling includes the single Tokyo Calling, a song that wowed overseas audiences at this year’s Coachella — one of the largest music festivals in the United States — as well as Fly High, the theme song for the upcoming film Hanma Baki vs. Kengan Ashura. Whirlwind group Atarashii Gakko! represent a new generation of Japanese youth (seishun in their native language), one embracing personal expression and pushing against traditional boundaries a little at a time. The outlandish quartet — comprised of kawaii-but-fierce Mizyu, wildcard Suzuka, graceful Kanon and funky Rin — break genre walls to create music mixing elements of pop, jazz, hip-hop, rock, and more, delivered with punk energy and featuring frantic dance moves, choreographed by the four members themselves.”
The Avett Brothers
The Avett Brothers
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Avett Brothers’ new self-titled album — their first in five years — was produced by longtime collaborator, friend and early champion Rick Rubin. The Avett Brothers is as much untitled as it is self-titled, for as Thomas Keating said: “Silence is God’s first language — everything else is a poor translation.”
From the album’s all-vocal opening to the sharp, scrappy and scorching rock ’n’ roll blast of lead single Love Of A Girl — along with the novel strains of folk, roots, synth and strings that have landed The Avett Brothers numerous Billboard Top 5 and chart-topping albums, three Grammy nominations, five Americana Music Awards, a documentary co-directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, and so much more — this record is one that revealed itself naturally over time. Recorded in Malibu’s Shangri-La Studios, as well as Nashville, Mar Vista, and the band’s hometown of Concord, N.C., The Avett Brothers is a collection of songs seen through a lens of independently studied spirituality; questions and considerations in the interest of the divine unknowable.”
Babe Report
Did You Get Better
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With a squall of guitar and a crash of drums, Chicago noisemakers Babe Report finally release their debut album — the rough-and-ready Did You Get Better. Arriving two years after their exhilarating debut EP, and featuring 10 new songs that speed by in under half an hour, it’s an immediate and breathless arrival.
Opening track Turtle Of Reaper arrives in a flurry of noise and energy. Presented as an indictment of the fear-mongering in click-bait media, it’s a cacophonous two-minutes of scorched vocals and frenetic drums, the chorus a call back to 12/31/99, when all the news told people to turn off their computers before Y2K hit. However it finds you or you find it, Did You Get Better finds a way to take the reins, ploughing headfirst into its journey and rarely looking back for approval, to even worry if anyone else is joining for the ride.”
Bananagun
Why Is The Colour Of The Sky?
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “To say that the four years following the arrival of their debut album had been tumultuous for Bananagun would be an understatement. Released during the height of lockdown in the summer of 2020, the group were forcibly “scattered” following the release of The True Story of Bananagun. Australia’s ultra-strict lockdown rules made it nigh on impossible for the band to get together at all, with the only rehearsals requiring them to sneak past military checkpoints undetected.
Coinciding with this was a great period of personal change for the band’s singer-guitarist, flautist and songwriter Nick van Bakel. “I had a myriad of mountains to be crossed, which was pretty challenging,” he explains. “So I just cocooned into lots of spiritual side quests and soul seeking.” This climate of upheaval does not go unheard on Why Is The Colour Of The Sky? While it’s by no means a pessimistic work — far from it — it’s an album that departs from the ultra-slick bursts of sunshine-pop and afrobeat that defined True Story… , and muddies the waters with a heavy blend of incendiary jazz and freak-beat experimentation. It’s Bananagun all right, but braver, bolder and more mysterious than ever…”
Baratro
The Sweet Smell of Unrest
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Baratro was born when guitarist Federico Bonuccelli (Council of Rats) and bassist Dave Curran (Unsane) met at a show in legendary Milan squat Cox18 and started to trade riffs and song ideas.
These experiments led to the band’s creation, with Luca Antonozzi (Marnero) joining in to complete the lineup. After a few months of practice and a couple of shows in Italy, they recorded their very first six songs in the empty concert hall of Cox18, consequently released as the Terms and Condition” EP in July 2021. Given the worldwide shutdown of live performances through 2020/2021, the band focused on writing new music and eventually started recording the 11 tracks on their first full-length The Sweet Smell of Unrest.”
Better Lovers
Highly Irresponsible
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “By challenging each other to progress, Better Lovers challenge heavy music to move forward along with them.
Driven by the same restless spirit and clear intention, this cohort of longtime musicians have rallied around a shared vision of creative fearlessness and relentless energy. Playing with a chemistry bordering on magic, the musicians — vocalist Greg Puciato, guitar Jordan Buckley, guitar Will Putney, bass Steve Micciche and drummer Clayton “Goose” Holyoak — naturally evolve on their debut album Highly Irresponsible. Puciato keeps it simple: “New album. First full-length. It’s a typical thing to say, but we’re excited to start getting this thing out there. Everyone really brought their best to this and brought out the best in each other.”
The Bevis Frond
Focus On Nature
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Focus On Nature is the new studio album from celebrated post-psyche singer songwriter Nick Saloman and his band The Bevis Frond. It delivers 75 minutes of glorious melodies that span ’60s psych, English folk, the art-punk of Seattle’s Wipers, the buzzsaw pop of Dinosaur Jr. and Jimi Hendrix-esque explorations. There’s always an element of playful Englishness to their music.
Heavily influencing the likes of Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Elliot Smith, Pavement and more, the cult icons have produced another off-kilter mix of melodic piano-led melancholy, acoustic ruminations, scratchy garage rock with a punky edge and full-on guitar histrionics. Like its much-praised predecessor Little Eden, the new record studies the world’s weariness but fills out a bigger canvas; fast food and global warming, broken hearts and long gone nights out, everyday immortality and being God’s gift all share space. It’s like Pete Townshend at his most thematic; Big Star in all their acoustic glory, perfectly balancing the punky garage-rock combo who end up running on Empty with David Gilmour breaks that elevate it all to grandeur.”
Andrew Bird
Sunday Morning Put-On
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Andrew Bird’s Sunday Morning Put-On features Bird’s own unique takes on classic songs by Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Lerner & Loewe, Rodgers & Hart and more. The record finds him re-immersed in a lifelong love of mid-century, small group jazz and the Great American Songbook.
Accompanied by a masterful rhythm section — Ted Poor on drums and Alan Hampton on bass — Sunday Morning Put-On marks the culmination of a passion that has been building within Bird for nearly 30 years. The music he interprets dates back to his formative encounters with the titans who have consciously and subliminally influenced his career, and all of its numerous changes and acclaimed chapters. Sonically and personally, Sunday Morning Put-On is unlike anything he has done before.”
Black Pus
Terrestrial Seethings
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Black Pus is the guttural, raw, freeform project of singular drummer, vocalist and artist Brian Chippendale. A heavy drum foundation and distorted electronics anchor Black Pus’s sound, and remain directly connected to the intensity of his duo with Brian Gibson: Lightning Bolt.
Recorded at Machines With Magnets by engineer Seth Manchester, Terrestrial Seethings is pure energy — pure Black Pus, capturing precision, frenzy, and ecstatic performance in all its glory. After two decades, Chippendale’s imagination and curiosity continue to push his world of twisted joy in expressive new directions. Chippendale’s approach to crafting music as Black Pus mirrors his restless and indomitable spirit as a creator. The core of the project is his daily and solitary practice of making music and art. It is as meditative and cathartic as it is inquisitive and spontaneous. “This art is a river of energy that I jump into and ride along with,” says Chippendale. “It’s not really music made to tell written stories. It’s energy music first and foremost.”
The Blasters
Over There: Live At The Venue, London – The Complete Concert
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Americana music legends The Blasters were recorded on their first international tour in May of 1982 at The Venue in London, England. Six of those tracks were released on Slash Records as a 12″ EP that year. Four more tracks were included on the anthology Testament in 1997.
As part of a catalog deal for The Blasters’ recordings with Liberation Hall, the label has uncovered 13 more tracks and released the complete concert. The bandmembers are firing on all cylinders, captured just they were taking off in London, thanks in part to Shakin’ Stevens’ cover of the Dave Alvin-penned Marie, Marie, which stormed the top 20 of the U.K. charts. The complete concert is quintessential listening, and a magical music moment for any fan of the band. The CD booklet includes new liner notes from Chris Morris, rare photos and memorabilia images.”
Bleachers
Bleachers
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There’s a rich depth to the band’s sound on Bleachers that’s laid out in bright, soulful technicolour.
The album is frontman Jack Antonoff’s distinctly New Jersey take on the bizarre sensory contradictions of modern life, on his position in culture, and the things he cares about. Sonically, it’s sad, it’s joyful, it’s music for driving on the highway to, for crying to and for dancing to at weddings. There’s something reassuringly touchable and concrete about its sentiment: exist in crazy times but remember what counts. Since releasing their debut Strange Desire in 2014, the band have built a huge, passionate following across three studio albums, becoming renowned for their impressive live show and infectious camaraderie. The band’s previous album Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night took them to new heights, showcasing Antonoff’s immersive songwriting and, as one reviewer testified, his innate skill at “supersizing personal stories into larger-than-life pop anthems.”
Boy Golden
For Eden
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In For Eden, Boy Golden searches for the best of all possible worlds. Utopic and wistful, this journey is a continuation of his “follow your art” proselytizing that began with his Church of Better Daze debut.
A counterpoint to 2023’s For Jimmy, For Eden is largely a work of solitude; recorded entirely to cassette with an SM57 in a cabin in the woods. The album’s origins — analog and off-the-grid — speak to the more personal, self-reflective mood of the collection. While Boy Golden’s favourite mountain road makes a cameo, the album’s country waltzes, banjo and mandolin-laced acoustics glow softly under the light of a pink moon.” From the gentle yet justified bravado of Burn, a sweetly boastful tune about his band’s excellence, to the tenor guitar pluck of Three Scenes, For Eden is the next chapter in Liam Duncan’s journey. With songs like The Way, a folk song set in Amsterdam, the muted layers of Never Have 2 Leave a la Stranger in the Alps, and the starry-sky stillness of Your Love (Where It’s At), Boy Golden continues his chill roll.”
Leon Bridges
Leon
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Leon is the fourth album and first solo release in three years from Grammy-winning Texas singer, songwriter and performer Leon Bridges. “Leon has been a long-time coming,” Bridges says. “I started writing pieces of it as far back as Gold-Diggers Sound. They didn’t fit what I was trying to do with that album and I tried moving on. But I couldn’t shake them because they’re part of me. And, if I’m honest, also because I think this is some of my most excellent work yet.
“In many ways, Leon has been in the works since my childhood. This record is about simpler days. It’s about time spent in my beloved Fort Worth and the experiences that made me the man I am today. It’s soulful music in the truest sense — it’s imbued with my soul. I’m excited to share these stories about my home, about nostalgia, about my upbringing, about where I’m from, with all of you. I hope this music brings you back to your roots and your journey.”
Bright Eyes
Five Dice, All Threes
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Five Dice, All Threes is a record of uncommon intensity and tenderness, communal exorcism and personal excavation.
These are, of course, qualities that fans have come to expect from Bright Eyes, nearly three decades into their career. The tight-knit band of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott tend to operate in distinct sweeping movements: Each unique in its sound and story but unified by a sense of ambition and ever-growing emotional stakes. Even with this rich history behind them, these new songs exude a visceral thrill like nothing they have attempted before. Oberst has always sung in a voice that conveys a sense of life-or-death gravity. At times throughout Five Dice, All Threes, you may feel worried for him; other times, he may seem like the only one with the clarity to get us out of this mess.”
Jake Bugg
A Modern Day Distraction
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “U.K. troubadour Jake Bugg returns returns to his roots on his rock-driven sixth album A Modern Day Distraction — a record that turns up the noise while shining a light on the injustice he’s seen dealt to family and longtime friends.
Produced by Metrophonic at Metrophonic Studios in London, A Modern Day Distraction, was born out of a frustration of societal inequality. Bugg found that a time had come when he just couldn’t look away. “People might say ‘What do you know?’ or ‘Just stick to music,’ ” he says. “I’ve got a bit of money, but we all know the people this affects. I was just writing it because it was the way I felt. It pisses me off — especially in a country like ours where we have the means and funds to take care of the people suffering the most, but we choose not to.”
Cedric Burnside
Hill Country Love
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Cedric Burnside has just released his deeply personal and artistically bold new album Hill Country Love. The record vibrantly explores the subset genre of Hill Country blues, infused with Burnside’s singular experiences and musical heritage from the rolling hills of Northern Mississippi.
Hill Country Love was recorded in an unconventional location — an old building in the small town of Ripley, MS. This space, initially earmarked to be Burnside’s juke joint, created an authentic and resonant sound environment, capturing the essence of the album’s soulful and gritty aesthetic. Produced alongside fellow Mississippian Luther Dickinson, the album’s 14 tracks were completed in an extraordinary two-day session, highlighting the spontaneous and raw energy of Burnside’s music. Beyond the music, Burnside’s story is one of resilience, evolution, and the enduring power of family legacy. His journey from drumming in his grandfather’s band to becoming a celebrated artist in his own right is a narrative of dedication and passion for the blues tradition. Hill Country Love is an immersive experience into the heart of Hill Country blues, inviting listeners to partake in a musical journey that is both deeply personal and universally relatable.”
