BMOTY 2024
Music remains as vital to me as it did when I started making these lists 10+ years ago. It remains my salve for hard times, my obsession, my job, my passion. No matter what happens in the outside world, I know for a fact that there will always be new music to discover, new bands to research and new albums to be on this list. As always, these are just what I listened to and enjoyed the most this year. Maybe you’ll find something you like in here and if not, that’s cool too. Let me know your favorites and I will give them a listen.
Sega Bodega was my introduction into a world of underground pop music that I was not familiar with prior to this year. To me, pop music is boring because, by necessity, it has to fit certain forms and guidelines. Like when a chorus hits, when verse 2 comes in, how many beats per minute are acceptable. Its boring, vapid music played in malls and on commercials.
Or so I thought.
Little did I realize that there are artists out there who take the concept of pop and twist it to fit new forms, who take those restrictions and toss them out the window in favor of originality and emotion. They don’t have millions of listeners on Spotify, they don’t play giant arena shows or show up on Disney soundtracks. Artists like Eartheater, Dorian Electra, Oklou and others are paving their own look and sound, uninterested in what the ‘mainstream’ is doing.
On his third record as Sega Bodega, producer Salvador Navarrete creates a near perfect album that epitomizes this new wave of pop music. Written while in the middle of a manic period, the record shifts in tone from the frenetic, chaos fueled energy that marks mania to a dark, brooding and somber tone during the depressive come down phase. Songs like ‘Kepko’ and ‘Elk Skin’ could almost be dance songs, but are more suited for headphones, while later on the album songs like ‘Humiliation Doesn’t Leave A Mark’ are best late at night when everything is dark inside and out.
However, the real outstanding piece here is the central song of the album ‘Set Me Free I’m An Animal’ which the whole rest of it revolves around. Built around a simple guitar pattern and a vocal melody processed to oblivion, it manages to convey the raw emotion of being a human and not in control of anything in a short three and a half minutes. “Letting go of all that I could be” is the theme here, relinquishing control of the self and letting the animal run wild. A reclaiming of our very nature as dumb beasts. Its an absolutely stunning song and album and my favorite of the year.
A Swarm of the Sun - An Empire
Just when I think post-rock is dead and played out, I hear an album like this and it brings me right back. A Swarm of the Sun are a Swedish duo that are unafraid to take the time necessary to build their drama and their mood so that when the inevitable crescendo finally comes, it feels deserved. It feels necessary. Eschewing the generic arpeggiated guitars and fx pedals of most other post-rock bands, ASOTS instead focuses on pianos, organs and trombones, to craft their sonic landscape. When guitars do enter, they absolutely crush the listener in waves of distortion and heaviness.
Lyrically, the band uses simple haunting phrases to communicate their message. Which empire is the band talking about when they sing “It leaves me inside this / inside this silence / in this empty place / leaves me to suffocate”? Or when they say “Breathe in the light / breathe in the smoke”? This is about a world as an empire. A stifling place we are all being forced to fit into and we are running out of air. The catharsis delivered by the heavy parts of this record are a way to express that rage, paranoia and helplessness that is dominating every day life for many.
One of the big trends in the metal scene this year was the break out of the hardcore / metalcore genre into a bigger audience. Bands like Knocked Loose and Gel have penetrated into the mainstream more than any other act before them and it's a great thing because it's giving other totally underrated bands a chance at success. Bands like Heriot, Missouri Executive Order 44 and Lifecrusher all made awesome records this year that I may not have heard were it not for more metalcore bands being pushed on socials and represented by labels.
For me, the best of the bunch came from the Finnish group RATS WILL FEAST. All the important elements of the genre are here: crazy fast riffing and drumming, tasty breakdowns that have my head banging and a blistering vocal performance. What sets RWF apart is how they sneak in a quiet breakdown here and there, or on penultimate song ‘Tourmaline’ manage to write a whole post-rock song that kills. The album also has a melodic theme that plays out in several songs. It all feels more mature, more refined and more intentional than you’d expect from such a young band. I hope they get way more attention in the future.
The current landscape of indie rock is dominated by 90s revival acts embracing the distortion pedal and writing riff based alt rock songs. It's fine and good, but at the risk of sounding like a sad old man, it's all been done before. Maybe living through it once makes it a little less cool the second time around.
A bright spot in the indie rock landscape this year came from the Seattle based group Glass Beach. The album opens with a rumination on what makes art and how its created before diving into a set of songs so diverse that it really left me wondering if it was all the same band on my first listen. It actually reminds me of another 90s band, Tripping Daisy, not so much in sound but in the spirit of wild abandon in their song writing. Nothing is off limits and everything is worth trying. Drop in some black metal screaming before going into an orchestral James Bond-esque interlude? Sure, that's the song ‘Slip Under The Door’. Start like a normal indie rock song before bringing in a full horn section and creating an acid jazz freakout? No problem, that's the song ‘Motions’. How about a 9 minute progressive rock song to close the album? Yep, that’s ‘Commatose’. You get the idea. In a landscape where bands are content to rehash and paint with one color, Glass Beach are an explosion of light.
Anyone familiar with this list will recognize Jaar’s name. He has been one of my favorite artists in any medium for 10 years. His originality and creative spark are unmatched and whenever he releases a record, I take it very seriously, trying to unpack what he has going on, the themes he’s working with and where he might be going next. Piedras was an evolving project started in 2020 as a piece for an art installation. It morphed into a radio program and then a full play and this album is the soundtrack for all those. The play's central theme revolves around the idea that truths, memories and identities speak from the cracks, or the "in-between" spaces. That idea is played out in the music as transmissions from another place or time. These songs sound old, new, timeless, all at once. The highlight song for me is ‘Aqui’ which revolves around the phrase “Tell me what its like to be from here”, a line written about the brutal dictatorship that Chile experienced under Pinochet, but still very accurate to many currently in the US. Is identity where you are from or where you are?
Pretty sure this is the album most people will have at least heard of, but for good reason. Freeing Thom and Johnny from Radiohead has produced some of their most original work in years. You still get the Thom piano ballad and the Johnny Greenwood guitar freakouts but they feel like they come from a different artistic place. They aren’t beholden to an older project and a stadium of fans to worry about what’s acceptable (not that Radiohead ever really cared), but something like the end of ‘Under Our Pillows’ would be a hard sell in between Karma Police and Creep. For me the most noticeable aspect of their second, and best, record is how it can switch between feeling very loose in its structure and performance to sounding incredibly tight and arranged. No song embodies this more than the penultimate song ‘Bending Hectic’. The drums here sound like they are just playing at the edges of the beat during the verse. Thom’s voice floats over the top unconcerned with taking too long on any particular phrase or word. Johnny’s guitar bends in and out of tune throughout. But then the chorus hits and you realize, this isn’t some improvised group jamming it out, but a powerhouse of a writing team at the top of their game, and its all part of the act. They want you to believe they no longer give a shit, but that just makes it all the more powerful when you realize they still do.
Childish Gambino - Bando Stone and the New World
Of the two Childish Gambino records released this year, Bando Stone was the one that I kept coming back to. To me, Donald Glover is one of only a few true artists working today who has an uncompromising vision of who he is and what he wants to create. Between his genre defying videos, his award winning shows and his massive albums this guy has nothing left to prove. So when he says he is making a movie and doing the soundtrack himself, I have total confidence that it will be interesting and worth watching / listening.
People criticized this album for being too all over the place in terms of style. He’ll move through a total rock n roll anthem like ‘Lithonia’ straight into a progressive R&B jam like ‘Survive’ before taking a detour into jazz with a guest spot from Kamasi Washington and finishing it up with a real hip hop jam like ‘Talk My Shit’. It's totally all over the place, and that’s exactly why I like it so much. Production on all the songs is absolutely top tier and I never get the sense that Glover is doing something half assed, even when he is doing a duet with his son to a backing track of the alphabet. It works because I feel like I am getting the full picture of the artist and not just one facet. He lays it all out for the listener and says “This is who I am”. No approval required.
Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere
Death metal doesn’t get much more cosmic than this new album by Blood Incantation. Not just because the guitar solos are surrounded by solar system sized reverbs and vocals that seem to emerge from the event horizon of a black hole, but because the band knows exactly when to open up the sonic landscape with clean guitar, synth leads and even a Tangerine Dream guest spot. It reminds me more of Pink Floyd than any other metal album I could name drop, particularly in ‘The Message [Tablet II]’ which sounds like a Wish You Were Here outtake for half the song. This album is a voyage worth taking in one sitting, something that I thought was really lacking from most metal albums this year.
I was never a huge Black Midi fan, but the strength of the first song on ‘The New Sound’, the solo album from that band’s singer, was an instant hook for me. The Steely Dan-esque jazz freakout style of opener ‘Blues’ is like taking a shot of adrenaline before strapping in to listen through the stories that Greep weaves on these 11 songs. His characters are all pure sleaze and bluster. The plots of the songs almost always involve sex or death (or both). His rhythm section feels like a drunken bordello band while his guitar picks out chords like a porno soundtrack. Its all so lurid and graphic that it sometimes gets dangerously close to parody, but the musicianship is impeccable and the arrangements so tight you walk away thinking, “Man, what the fuck is wrong with that guy?”. I love that. Greep might be a cool dude in real life but you really don’t want to hang out with the characters in his songs.
Because I spent so much time working on the NoNight album this year I found myself listening to more edm than I usually do, but I am thankful for that because there are so many rad artists out there right now doing cool stuff. One of my favorites is British artist Kelly Lee Owens whose minimal take on dance music combined with her angelic voice is like a salve for difficult times. From opener ‘Dark Angel’ which sets the mood with an incredibly positive and uplifting synth line to closer ‘Trust and Desire’, a bittersweet vocal ballad, the whole album flows like a meditation on love, loss and dreams. With headphones it becomes transporting and easy to get lost in.
