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:
Earth Tongue
Great Haunting
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Acclaimed New Zealand heavy-psych duo Earth Tongue have just released sophomore album Great Haunting. It sees Gussie Larkin (vocals, guitar) and Ezra Simons (vocals, drums) reach for new heights and horrors, possessed by relentless riffs and demonic distortion. “On Great Haunting we’ve tightened things up, and added MORE of everything: More layers of guitar fuzz, more soaring harmonies, more oscillating vintage sense and more tom rolls!” shares Larkin.
Earth Tongue is a heavy psychedelic rock two-piece band hailing from Aotearoa. They are renowned for their spellbinding fusion of ethereal melodies and thunderous drums. They have carved a niche within the global music scene, captivating audiences with their mesmerizing live performances and transcendent sonic soundscapes.”
Elbow
Audio Vertigo
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Elbow’s 10th studio album Audio Vertigo marks a significant change for the group following 2021’s Flying Dream 1. In the words of lead singer and lyricist Guy Garvey, Audio Vertigo was built from “gnarly, seedy grooves created by us playing together in garagey rooms” and is both more direct and sonically varied by purpose that its predecessor.
Characterised by the band as an album heavy on stomp, swing, and infectious oil-can funk beats, Audio Vertigo sees Elbow on the front foot, fusing their love of varied and various styles on a collection that ranges from the Beastie Boys-meets-John Bonham breaks of opener Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years and the “theme for a futuristic cop show” Lover’s Leap to the infectiously funky Balu. The wide-screen ambition doesn’t end with the music. Guy delivers a lyrical sweep on the album that considers our obsession with star crossed lovers, admonishes, and forgives his self-delusion, puzzles the nature of loss in a digital age, and narrates a real-life knife fight, all the while finding friends, real and imagined, and experiences, genuine and mythical, along the way. Long a fan of Radio 4’s In Our Time, the lyrics of Audio Vertigo match that program’s scale and scope in their ambition and their execution, including surely the only recorded presence of the Chandrasekhar Limit in a pop song in Knife Fight.”
Joe Ely
Driven To Drive
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nearly two dozen albums and several million miles after he first took to the endless highway, Joe Ely presents his first true road album: Driven To Drive.
The collection of songs about and inspired by motorized travel was curated by Ely, who swept off the flat plains of the Llano Estacado of West Texas in the mid-1970s like a whirling tornado, fronting a legendary band that was too rock for country and too country for rock. The wild, wide-open honky-tonk roadhouse sound of the Joe Ely Band gave their hometown of Lubbock its first music hero since Buddy Holly. Movement in these songs is measured in many ways: Cars, 16 wheelers, motorcycles, Greyhound coaches. There are pedal-to-the-metal anthems burning down a straight strip of twolane blacktop; a lazy meander on the Gulf blues highway; a tale of going on the lam on the Interstate; stories of getting from here to there; and songs about going nowhere at all. The lord of the highway is calling. Joe Ely wants to take you for a ride.”
Faces
Complete BBC Concert & Session Recordings 1970-1973
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Faces will make fans Shake, Shudder, Shiver with Complete BBC Concert & Session Recordings 1970-1973, a comprehensive box set compiling all of the group’s BBC concerts and surviving studio sessions. This new collection — much of it previously unreleased — has been remastered with the full participation of surviving bandmembers Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood and Kenney Jones.
Once thought lost, many of the recordings were recovered from Faces’ own archives and private collections. (Notably, only one BBC session of three songs remains missing.) Rarities include a stereo mix of the May 13, 1971, Paris Cinema concert, which was only broadcast in mono, and a February 1973 show that was never aired due to the BBC’s concerns over the band’s onstage banter with the rowdy audience. Complete BBC Concert & Session Recordings 1970-1973 spans the band’s formation and meteoric rise. Exploring a period of intense creativity, which included four Faces studio albums (First Step, Long Player, A Nod Is As Good As A Wink…To A Blind Horse… and Ooh La La) and several solo albums that Stewart recorded with most of the band (Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells A Story, Never A Dull Moment and Smiler).”
Fantastic Negrito
Son Of A Broken Man
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Fantastic Negrito’s Son Of A Broken Man encapsulates the essence of his celebrated body of work, combining hard-hitting distorted guitar riffs with melodic ballads, all threaded together by the unexpected twists that define his unique sound.
This album stands as his most personal yet, diving deep into themes of family, deception, and the human desire to hide one’s true self. At its core, the record explores the timeless conflict between father and son — a conflict rooted in Negrito’s own experiences of being misled by his father, who wove a false narrative around his identity and heritage. “When I was 12 years old, my dad stopped talking to me and kicked me out of the house,” said Fantastic Negrito’s alter ego Xavier Dphrepaulezz.“I never saw him again and he ended up dying while I was in foster care. This is me talking to him and telling him what I’ve done with my life.”
Fat Dog
Woof.
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “It’s fucking Fat Dog, baby” — some eight months on since their sprawling debut single King Of The Slugs was released, the sentiment remains strong as the first words of the band’s debut album Woof. are bellowed out by frontman and squadron leader Joe Love (real name: Joe Love).
One of the most exciting breakthrough bands of the past few years, conjurers of the sort of frenzied and wild live shows not seen in the capital for years, and with only a handful of tracks out thus far, Fat Dog have justified the hype witih their brilliant and mind-bending record. When the chaotic south London rabble known as Fat Dog formed, they made two rules: 1 | They were going to be a healthy band who looked after themselves, and 2 | There would be no saxophone in their music. Two simple edicts to live by — and two resolutions long-since broken by the Brixton five-piece. “Yeah, it’s all gone out the window,” says Love.”
The Fleshtones
It’s Getting Late (…and More Songs About Werewolves)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In a world where there are no more heroes, The Fleshtones walk the earth like Roman gods.
It’s Getting Late (…and More Songs About Werewolves) is a smash that could have dropped at any point in The Fleshtones’ epic career — it is an outburst, and a celebration of their patented Super Rock sound. Unlike their contemporaries, they have not dialed down the tempos to compensate for osteoporosis, they have not lost anything on their fastball, and continue to throw it for strikes. The hardest-working band in garage rock have never sounded better, and now you see why they’ve been your favorite band’s favorite band for decades.”
Fontaines D.C.
Romance
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Romance is Fontaines D.C.’s most ambitious record yet, its 11 tracks constellating ideas that have been percolating among Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass) and Tom Coll (drums) since they released Skinty Fia in 2022.
The sonic evolution of the band, who bared their teeth in early records with antagonistic punk sensibilities, is an ascent into grungier breaks, dystopian electronica, hip-hop percussion, and dreamy Slowdive-esque textures that may surprise fans. The shoegaze touchpoints first pressed on Skinty Fia unfold on Romance like a purpling bruise. Working with Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur) in the producer’s chair, the band left behind any “retro aesthetic,” as Chatten says. “We say things on this record we’ve wanted to say for a long time. I never feel like it’s over, but it’s nice to feel lighter.”
Fu Manchu
The Return Of Tomorrow
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Return Of Tomorrow is Fu Manchu’s first new album in six years, and the veteran desert-rock stoners made sure that it was worth the wait. Their 14th album, fittingly released on June 14, is their first double LP of new material, and it was conceived of as a vinyl listening experience.
The first LP features seven songs in their iconic heavy-fuzz sound, including the title track and the relentlessly catchy Loch Ness Wrecking Machine. The second LP sees the band mellowing out with six slower tempo jams, including the synth inflected Solar Baptized and the title track. Like the band’s most recent album Clone Of The Universe, and their three-part Fu30 EP series, The Return Of Tomorrow was recorded at The Racket Room in Santa Ana by Jim Monroe (Adolescents, Ignite) and co-produced with Fu Manchu. Says founding guitarist and vocalist Scott Hill: “When I listen to music, it’s either all heavy stuff with no mellow stuff mixed in or just softer stuff with no heavy stuff. I know a lot of bands like to mix it up and we have done that before, but I always tend to listen to all of one type of thing or the other. So, I figured we should do a double record with seven heavy fuzzy songs on one record and the other record six mellow(er) songs fully realizing that maybe I’m the only person that likes to listen to music that way.”
Bingo Fury
Bats Feet For A Widow
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bingo Fury’s noirish, furiously inventive music — marrying Scott Walker-esque balladry, poised jazz and agitated no-wave — has marked him amongst the U.K. avant-garde’s most exciting young voices. Bats Feet For A Widow is the multi-instrumentalist and madcap producer’s debut album.
The album was recorded in a local church in Bristol and inspired by Fury’s tangled feelings towards his strong religious upbringing. You can hear the old building everywhere amidst the rich jazz performances of his band: Meg Jenkins (bass), Henry Terrett (drums), Harry Furniss (cornet) and Rafi Cohen (guitar, glockenspiel, piano). You can also hear tossed house keys, wine glasses and strange acousmatic experiments — all channelled into a powerfully cinematic, deeply romantic album. At its heart is Fury’s crooning bass vocal, lending a vivid and slyly humorous voice to universal themes of love and pain. Bats Feet For A Widow is an album of extremity. In all respects — its sonic palette, strange experiments, obscure references, offbeat one-liners, heart-breaking sentimentality and surging creativity — it is astonishingly full. Fury duly ends it on a note of maximalism: “you know I’m trying to give you everything / It all gets in the way.”
Future Islands
People Who Aren’t There Anymore
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Future Islands were never meant to last. But after 18 years and 1,400 live shows, Future Islands show they’re not only still here; they’re making the most powerful music of their fascinating but unexpectedly long and storied career.
For Future Islands, albums aren’t a static reflection of a moment in time; they are a fluid chapter in their lives that can change and mutate. People change and pull away. The band are no different, coming up against their future while staring at their past. They’re not the same people they were when Future Islands began nearly two decades ago. They are now spread about, some settled down and some still moving. People Who Aren’t There Anymore reflects the transience of a band’s existence; the rare privilege of travelling all over the world contrasting with the sadness of fleeting moments in and out of people’s lives. Being everywhere but also nowhere. Remembering the lives lost and the living they’ll never see again, cherishing the present and being grateful for the past. The seventh album from the band — Samuel T. Herring (vocals, lyrics), William Cashion (bass, guitars), Gerrit Welmers (keyboards, programming) and Michael Lowry (drums) — follows 2020’s As Long As You Are. People Who Aren’t There Anymore heralds a new chapter for Future Islands who, despite having formed nearly two decades ago, continue to challenge themselves and each other.”
Liam Gallagher & John Squire
Liam Gallagher & John Squire
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Collaborations don’t get much more biblical than this. Solo star, Oasis legend and force of nature Liam Gallagher has teamed up with John Squire, one of the most influential guitarists and songwriters of his generation via his time with The Stone Roses.
“I think John’s a top songwriter,” says Gallagher. “Everyone always bangs on about him as a guitarist, but he’s a top songwriter too, man, no two ways about it as far as I’m concerned. There’s not enough of his music out there, whether it’s with the Roses or himself. It’s good to see him back writing songs and fucking good ones. The melodies are mega and then the guitars are a given. But I think even when you take all the fucking guitars off, you can play the songs all on acoustic and they’ll all still blow your mind.”
Get The Fuck Outta Dodge
Just.Keep.Looking.Forward
Just when I thought my best-of-2024 list was almost done, my favourite U.K. garage-punk duo rear up once again with a new EP of their magnificent bullshit. Hallelujah and goddammit all to hell.
For those who are already familiar with the Get The Fuck Outta Dodge experience, rest assured that Just.Keep.Looking.Forward bears all the usual hallmarks you have come to know and love (or at least grudgingly tolerate) from the gruesome Sheffield twosome of James and Ren: Megaton bass riffage from the former. Relentlessly walloping drums from the latter. And let us not forget an absurd amount of killer melodies, savage lyrics and frenzied grooves — all stuffed into 90-second songs captured on the fly with no-fi production, zero filler and negative fucks given. Can you give a negative fuck? If anybody can, it’s these guys.”
David Gilmour
Luck And Strange
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “David Gilmour’s new album Luck And Strange was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is his first album of new material in nine years. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with Alt-J and Marika Hackman.
Of this new working relationship, David says, “We invited Charlie to the house, so he came and listened to some demos, and said things like, ‘Well, why does there have to be a guitar solo there?’ and ‘Do they all fade out? Can’t some of them just end?’ He has a wonderful lack of knowledge or respect for this past of mine. He’s very direct and not in any way overawed, and I love that. That is just so good for me because the last thing you want is people just deferring to you.”
Goodnight, Texas
Signals
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Goodnight, Texas are a band you’ve almost certainly heard by accident somewhere. And now on second look, you’re deep in their catalog and they’re telling you stories about trapped coal miners and lovebird bank robbers. Banjos and mandolins twinkle.
Now you’re seeing Avi Vinocur and Patrick Dyer Wolf and their band live and they’re swelling to a fever pitch, suddenly singing quiet harmonies off-mic, and then rocking out again. You’re talking to them at the merch table for a good while and you’re legitimately excited about their new album Signals because, more than ever before, it captures the vast dynamic range of the show and blends it with their expansive and intricate songwriting.”
Kim Gordon
The Collective
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but there was a space. Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were built played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music.
Now we’re listening to The Collective. And thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. Really, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here. It’s dark inside. Haunted by synthesised voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says — Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted. That makes the music.”
Gossip
Real Power
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On Real Power, their first album in 11 years, beloved indie pop/rock trio Gossip reunite with acclaimed producer Rick Rubin, who helmed the band’s pivotal 2009 album Music For Men. At the coaxing of Rubin, the band started recording in 2019 after completing a tour for the 10th anniversary of Music For Men.
Recorded at Rubin’s home studio in Kauai, the process was temporarily halted by the pandemic and resumed when restrictions lifted. The result is an 11-track celebration of creative expression, and the power of chosen family in the aftermath of collective and personal trauma. The timing is ripe for a Gossip reunion, and Real Power heralds a new era and renewed sense of purpose for the trio. “When we began, so much about Gossip was about running away — that was always in the music,” says Ditto. “We survived. We came from nothing, and we got the fuck out of there. And to be here 20 years later and still making music together is just incredible.”
Laura Jane Grace
Hole In My Head
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A musical force since Against Me!’s debut in the late ’90s, Laura Jane Grace has never shied away from themes of political commentary, environmentalism, social critique, and candid self-exploration.
Following the 2012 public announcement of her gender transition, Grace racked up accolades. Against Me! released its most acclaimed record to date, Transgender Dysphoria Blues in 2014, which was followed by an Emmy-nominated 10-episode companion documentary, True Trans with Laura Jane Grace. In 2016, Grace teamed up with journalist Dan Ozzi to co-write her acclaimed memoir Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist. Hole In My Head is Grace’s 12th album and an exciting hallmark in her colorful and extensive career. Recorded at Native Sound in St. Louis with David Beeman and mixed and mastered by Matt Allison (engineer for acts such as Lawrence Arms and Rise Against), the album is a sonic curio cabinet containing multitudes. Hole In My Head features warm ’50s-rock-influenced guitar riffs, saved-for-later lyrics, love letters to St. Louis, dysphoria apparel, and thoughtful reflections on a punk life lived.”
Laura Jane Grace & The Mississippi Medicals
Give An Inch
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Laura Jane Grace And The Mississippi Medicals — the new rock quartet fronted by Grace and featuring Matt Patton of Drive-By Truckers (bass), Mikey Erg of The Ergs (drums) and Paris Campbell Grace (vocals, percussion) — present the band’s debut EP Give An Inch.
Recorded by Patton at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, MS, Give An Inch ushers in yet another new and exciting chapter for the Emmy-nominated artist, author and activist as she calls upon the various talents of these seasoned musicians, led by the singles All Fucked Out and the rollicking Karma Too Close.”
Grateful Dead
Friend Of The Devils: April 1978
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Grateful Dead the bullseye with the eight previously unreleased stellar shows that make up Friend Of The Devils: April 1978. Filled to the brim with peak performances from the band’s post-hiatus period, this collection captures the historic tour where Drums begat Space, morphed into Drums > Space and cemented The Rhythm Devils’ second-set power move from the music business to the “transportation business.”
Spring 1978 found The Grateful Dead consistently weaving spontaneous magic, showing signs of great promise and potential — from the no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll in Tampa to the lengthy communal getdown in Pembroke Pines to Jacksonville, where the twain emerge fully formed, offering the primordial opportunity for “soul retrieval.” It’s evident in the dynamic range delivered on back-to-back nights at the intimate Fox Theatre and through the laid-back unity of the band’s performance in Durham at Duke, a comfort that carries over to Virginia and West Virginia where the playing is unbridled, bursting with momentum, threatening to carry itself away. And nowhere can you hear that more clearly than through Betty Cantor-Jackson’s original recordings, reliably crisp, bright, and vivid.”
Grateful Dead
From The Mars Hotel 50th Anniversary Edition & The Angel’s Share
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Fifty years ago, the Grateful Dead were cooking with gas. It was spring 1974, the band had successfully emerged from a series of hectic, harrowing times, and would soon follow their transformative Wake Of The Flood with the second acclaimed album release on their very own Grateful Dead Records: From The Mars Hotel.
During the eight months that had passed between those two beloved LPs, the group also played some of their most exploratory music and largest venues to date, famously amplified by the homemade, 75-ton Wall of Sound that they debuted on March 23, 1974, at their hometown Cow Palace in Daly City, CA. Eternal staples such as Scarlet Begonias, Ship Of Fools and U.S. Blues would first be introduced into setlists along that season’s tour, before the Grateful Dead spent two months recording and honing them in the studio for From The Mars Hotel. Not to mention classics like China Doll and Loose Lucy, or Pride Of Cucamonga and Unbroken Chain — the final two tracks Phil Lesh would sing on a Grateful Dead studio album. Now, as Grateful Dead members and tributaries continue to celebrate and bring so many of these formative songs to the masses, From The Mars Hotel has been remastered and expanded with newly unearthed material and rarities, in honor of its 50th anniversary.”
Geordie Greep
The New Sound
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Is The New Sound a tonic for these times? Let’s ask Geordie Greep. “Music can be so much more than learning to play the same as everybody else,” he says. “It can be anything you want. With recording The New Sound, it was the first time I have had no one to answer to. Being in a band (Black Midi), we often have this ‘We can do everything’ feeling, but you are also kind of limited in that approach, and sometimes it’s good to do something else, to let go of things.”
Geordie’s debut solo album boasts a brand of high quality, all-embracing alternative pop fun not heard in a very long time, walking the line between the ridiculous and brilliant with a teflon-coated aplomb. How the record came about is a thing to marvel at. Over 30 session musicians were involved in its making on two continents. Greep says, “Half of the tracks were done in Brazil, with local musicians pulled together at the last minute. They’d never heard anything I’d done before, they were just interested in the demos I’d made. The tracking was all done in one, maybe two days.”
Guided By Voices
Strut Of Kings
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Guided By Voices (the ever-evolving act led by prolific indie-pop wizard Robert Pollard) build on 40 years of history with the majestic and triumphant Strut Of Kings, the indie-rock icons’ 41st (!!) album.
Largely recorded in Kings County, N.Y. (aka Brooklyn), the album is perhaps a gesture towards the malevolent “kings” on the world stage. As The Serene King waltzes across the battlefield, Emperor Pollard evokes castles, King Kong and strutting roosters, a surreal yet regal journey. Believe it or not, Pollard and co. claim Strut Of Kings will be the only new Guided By Voices album of 2024. Either way, it includes some of GBV’s hookiest nuggets in recent memory.”
