This year has been the proverbial game of 2 halves. The first 6 months of 2024 produced a trickle of great albums. A couple of them have stuck with me throughout the year, a testament to how good they are. However, towards the end of the summer there was a virtual deluge of outstanding albums, many within a 4-6 week period. For me, this has been one of the best years of music for quite some time. My favourite album of last year, Daughter’s Stereo Mind Games, was a well loved album but I’ve hardly listened to it since. Many of this years albums will live with me for many years to come.
The notable mentions category was strong this year. Roger Martinez under his Horizontal Excursions guise released Inner Space. I missed his listening party as I was seeing King Creosote but I bought the album when I got back from the gig. It’s proper space ambient. Huge swells of sound and deep ambient drops.
Spoiling us with 2 albums this year The Smile are prolific. Although Walls of Eyes has Bending Hectic, Cutouts is a more memorable album. Probably the more downbeat of the 2.
Whilst Ride’s later albums don’t reach the heights of Nowhere and Going Blank Again, I take my age into account when forming an opinion. I was in my late teens/early 20s when the first 2 albums came out. Weather Diaries and This Is Not a Safe Place (Kill Switch 💪) are strong albums but Interplay is the pick of their latter albums. Packed full of anthemic moments and signs of classic shoegaze. For most of the year I thought the album was let down by Side 3 which is just that bit weaker. Over time I’ve warmed to those tunes also.
Pet Shop Boys put out the best pop album of the year in nonetheless. Loneliness and A New Bohemia covering both ends of the pop spectrum.
Cigarettes After Sex released Xs. I read of a different direction but what I heard was the CAS of the last 2 albums. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but they appeal less and less as time goes on.
Held by Trees (highly recommend checking them out) released the expanded edition of Solace for Record Store Day. I didn’t include it in my top 10 given the album was originally released a few years back. Their EP with Martin Smith, who added vocals to the project for the first time, included one of my favourite songs of the year in Lay Your Troubles Down.
James released Yummy to continue their high standard of output putting out an album a year over recent years. Listening back to that album recently, I only then realised how good it is. Kudos to them for pressing a 52 minute album to a single bit of vinyl.
Another year, another Fontaines DC album and further softening of the edges. They’ve grown into a mature outfit pretty early on. In Grian Chatten they’ve got a rare talent. Starbuster and Death Kink show signs of what they once were. In Favourite I hear a different direction. One I hope they don’t go in. At the moment, it all works whatever they do, wherever they head.
bloody/bath finally committed an album to vinyl. Their sound is evolving to include a little less darkness, even dipping their toes in shoegaze. I snapped up the vinyl as the first 50 or so were numbered, signed, prints etc.
Those albums were all great in their own right but in age old tradition from 10-1:
10. All Good? – Nonkeen
Seeing Nils Frahm finally this year was a highlight. The pissing rain on a July evening couldn’t dampen it. There were 2 nippy women who insisted on talking through the gig until my wife had enough and sssh’d them. Nils has released the very short and stupidly expensive Day album and also the live Paris in December. However, the Nonkeen album is the one I feel I know best.
All Good? is Nils and his 2 friends making an album that sounds like Nils Frahm but doesn’t in equal measures. There’s the big ambient moments like Exclamation and more rhythmic work such as That Love. It closes with the rousing Mark. Nils Frahm always represents the ambient and downbeat genres very well.
9. Da Vinci Genius – Sasha
An album that came just a little too late in the year to trouble the upper reaches of this list, but it’s still a fabulous album. Predominately ambient / modern classical, there are still a couple of occasions where Sasha cuts loose into more familiar territory (Super Hero & Last Supper). I hoped, before the album came out, that it would be an evolution from Scene Delete into even more ambient territory. It is. This is the Sasha of my 50s.
8. In a Landscape – Max Richter
I can take or leave Max Richter’s film scores and TV work but it’s his studio projects that are special. There’s always a significant gap between them so they are events to me. In a Landscape came out the same day as Luck & Strange (see later) and got a little bit overshadowed by it. Over time I played it more and I came to appreciate it for what it is, beautiful and full of emotion. The album reminds me of the voiceless Voices project. The stuff that appeared on Voices 2. In fact Spotify often plays some of that album after Landscape is finished. I rarely notice the transition.
7. Iechyd Da – Bill Ryder-Jones
It seemed back in January that everyone loved this album, me too. Along with The Smile it brought a bit of musical class to a month sometimes bereft of it. I played it for a few months until other albums, that were as good, were finally released. I’ve always enjoyed his solo albums but this is my favourite of his by a stretch. Full of melancholy and really catchy tunes. First album of the year and I finally get it as a Christmas present.
6. Frog In Boiling Water – Diiv
It was Jacko that suggested these guys to me. He was right to. There’s been a lot of modern day shoegaze bands, often homogenous. The Asteroid No. 4, Blankenberge and Diiv stood out to me. Both Asteroid and Diiv released albums this year. This was the better of the 2. An album that stuck after a few listens and I now know very well. Strong start to finish.
5. Growing Eyes Becoming String – The Telescopes
For a long time this was my favourite album of the year as it was released the tail end of Q1. Apparently, it was recorded 10 years ago. It’s The Telescopes at their dark languid best. Far more accessible than the Taste era output. This album has a vibe that’s been stuck to throughout. Really delighted they are producing stuff like this now.
4. Songs of a Lost World – The Cure
I bought this as Mrs W wanted to have it with a secondary interest in it myself. It’s definitely an album aimed more at my tastes. It’s like a darker Disintegration and closes with the epic End Song. There’s a darkness that runs through it. Surprised at just how much I love this album. For me, it stands shoulder to shoulder with Disintegration as their best work.
3. Luck and Strange – David Gilmour
This album is pure Gilmour. Loads of solos, relative restraint being exercised until album closer Scattered when he enters full Comfortably Numb mode. The songwriting is a great, especially on The Pipers Call and Sings but the highlight is Between Two Points where his daughter performs the vocals, perfectly. I was surprised to find out on Jools Holland that it’s a cover version. I didn’t care much for the 2 extra tunes on CD and streaming platforms. It was kinda perfect as it is. It’s an album that exceeded my expectations.
2. No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead – Godspeed You! Black Emperor
It helps having seen them perform half of this live this year on that roasting hot Barrowlands evening. It’s easily become my favourite album of GY!BE even eclipsing Skinny Fists. It’s musical, visceral and memorable. It was well worth buying the vinyl at the gig for Track 7 (Untitled). A 13 minute ambient sesh which brings the album to a natural conclusion which other formats don’t have. Listening via streaming, the album fairly abruptly ends.
1. Ritual – Jon Hopkins
Wow! I appear to have written on Twitter when I first heard it and it’s still Wow! now. From that first intake of breath at the start, the album lives at its own pace and is never hurried. It’s a masterclass in a subtle shifting of gears until a relative peak time. The smallest incremental build occurs at just the right moments. Layering and layering until breaking down to a big ambient drop and an outro via a Nils Frahm style piano piece. It’s genuinely a work of art. This is an album that will live with me for life. I’ll be telling anyone that’ll listen, just how good Ritual is bla bla.
As always, it all starts again in January. Mogwai and The War on Drugs (Live Drugs Again) are already preordered.
Jaykits 