100 Tracks of 2024

Right then, let's wrap this misbegotten year up in the acceptable fashion. As usual it's one per artist, otherwise it gets silly, and yes, we know a couple of them were released right at the end of 2023 but we either discovered them on a 2024 album or they came too late for that year's reckoning. Sorry for the Ek-toadying, haven't got the wherewithal to do a playlist on any other streaming service (anyone?)



Adrianne Lenker - Fool
Amber Mark - Sink In
Anna B Savage ft. Anna Mieke - Agnes
Anna Erhard - Botanical Garden
Arab Strap - Bliss
Arooj Aftab - Aey Nehin
Astraba - Sink The Moon
Beth Gibbons - Floating On A Moment
Bolis Pupul - Spicy Crab
Buck Meek - Beauty Opens Doors
Campfire Social - Swim Swam Swum
Caribou - Come Find Me
Caroline Says - Faded And Golden
Cassandra Jenkins - Delphinium Blue
Charli xcx - Girl, so confusing featuring lorde
Cheekface - Flies
Clarissa Connelly - Give It Back
Cold Specks - How It Feels
Cornelius - MIND TRAIN
Dana Gavanski - Ears Were Growing
Dancer - Didn't Mean To
Deerlady - Bounty
ELUCID - THE WORLD IS DOG
Emma-Jean Thackray ft. Reggie Watts - Black Hole
English Teacher - Albert Road
Fat Dog - Running
Field Music - The Limits Of Language
Fightmilk - No Souvenirs
Fold Paper - Nothing To Report
Fontaines D.C. - Favourite
Gemma Cullingford - Early Hours
Geordie Greep - Holy, Holy
Girl And Girl - Hello
Good News - Orange Juice In The Shower
Gurriers - Des Goblin
Hamish Hawk - Men Like Wire
Hayden Thorpe - He
Heartworms - Jacked
Hello Mary - Three
Holiday Ghosts - Big Congratulations
The Horrors - The Silence That Remains
Isobel Campbell - 4316
Jim Nothing - Raleigh Arena
John Glacier - Found
Johnny Foreigner - Orc Damage
Julia Holter - Spinning
Julia-Sophie - numb
julie - clairbourne practice
Kim Gordon - I'm A Man
King Hannah - Big Swimmer
La Luz - Strange World
La Sécurité - Detour
Laetitia Sadier - Une Autre Attente
Lambrini Girls - Company Culture
Laundromat Chicks - Cameron
Laura Marling - Patterns
Les Savy Fav - World Got Great
Little Simz - Mood Swings
Loose Articles - Are You A Welder?
Los Campesinos! - Holy Smoke (2005)
The Lovely Eggs - Memory Man
Lutalo ft. Claud - Running
Mammoth Penguins - Species
Mannequin Pussy - Loud Bark
Man/Woman/Chainsaw - EZPZ
Maria Uzor - What U Need
Maruja - The Invisible Man
mary in the junkyard - marble arch
ME REX - Canada Water
M(h)aol - Pursuit
Memory Of Speke - Wife Once
Minor Conflict - Glue
MJ Lenderman - She's Leaving You
My Best Unbeaten Brother - Slayer on a Sunny Day
Neutrals - That's Him On The Daft Stuff Again
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wild God
Nightshift - Phone
Nilüfer Yanya - Like I Say (I runaway)
O. - Green Shirt
The Orchestra (For Now) - Wake Robin
Okay Kaya - The Groke
Overhead, The Albatross - Your Last Breath
The Pill - Bale of Hay
Project Overload - Second Chances
Punchlove - Screwdriver
Sailor Honeymoon - Fxxk Urself
SAM MORTON - Double Dip Neon
Sky Ferreira - Leash
Slow Fiction - Monday
Sophie Jamieson - I don't know what to save
St. Vincent - Broken Man
sunnbrella - have your say
Trust Fund - The Mirror
The Tubs - Freak Mode
Tunde Adebimpe - Magnetic
Ugly - Icy Windy Sky
Vampire Weekend - Classical
The WAEVE - Song For Eliza May
WILLOW ft. Kamasi Washington - wanted
Y Dail - My Baby's In The FBI

Top 50 albums of 2024: 10-1

But first, a reminder:

50 Lip Critic - Hex Dealer
49 New Starts - More Break-Up Songs
48 Isobel Campbell - Bow To Love
47 Drahla - angeltape
46 TORRES - What an enormous room
45 Magana - Teeth
44 Hello Mary - Emita Ox
43 MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
42 Nightshift - Homosapien
41 mui zyu - nothing or something to die for
40 Clarissa Connelly - World Of Work
39 St Vincent - All Born Screaming
38 Yard Act - Where's My Utopia?
37 Caroline Says - The Lucky One
36 Cheekface - It's Sorted
35 Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Past Is Still Alive
34 Julia Holter - Something In The Room She Moves
33 Keeley Forsyth - The Hollow
32 Anna Erhard - Botanical Garden
31 Shellac - To All Trains
30 Neutrals - New Town Dream
29 King Hannah - Big Swimmer
28 Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us
27 Deerlady - Greatest Hits
26 Niamh Bury - Yellow Roses
25 Laetitia Sadier - Rooting For Love
24 ELUCID - REVELATOR
23 Geordie Greep - The New Sound
22 Fontaines DC - Romance
21 Mammoth Penguins - Here
20 Dana Gavanski - LATE SLAP
19 Laura Marling - Patterns In Repeat
18 Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand
17 Gruff Rhys - Sadness Sets Me Free
16 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God
15 Dancer - 10 Songs I Hate About You
14 The WAEVE - City Lights
13 Arooj Aftab – Night Reign
12 Nadine Shah - Filthy Underneath
11 Arab Strap - I'm totally fine with it 👍 don't give a fuck anymore 👍

---

10 English Teacher - This Could Be Texas
The definition of an assured debut, taking on the post-punk tag and hammering at its parameters amid shimmering, cracked melodies and meaningfully elusive lyrics



9 Chemtrails - The Joy Of Sects
Psych-garagers go menacing glam-apocalyptic, indelible bubblegum melodies and surf riffs for the end of the world by whatever means



8 Trust Fund - Has It Been A While?
Ellis Jones returns and strips down to autumnal English folk, largely strings and fingerpicking, while considering what memory and ageing does to you



7 Nilufer Yanya - My Method Actor
Yanya's confidence continues rising, with this establishing her place as avatar of scratchy anxiety and dynamics used in service to self-reflective peaks and depths



6 Overhead, The Albatross - I Leave You This
Belfast post-rock returnees mine an emotional core based on loss and celebrating life through mostly instrumental electro, sample and beats infused soundscapes



5 Fightmilk - No Souvenirs
Finding their calling as strident power-pop riff monsters and cathartic lyrical cues in social pressures and interpersonal vulnerability. Should be big room ready if things were just



4 Adrianne Lenker - Bright Future
Nobody else has Lenker's sense of ease with the profound or turning the meditative into something to hang on to even when her transportative guitar playing is stripped back to countrified airs



3 Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
Gibbons' solo debut traces a weighty woody path from the Rustin Man albums into a sparse, unsettling sound somewhere around celestial folk, affected by ageing and loss



2 Johnny Foreigner - How To Be Hopeful
Back! Back! Back! And sounding absolutely re-energised hanging on with the usual everything-pop-emo-punk-at-once abrasion to the rollercoaster from chaos to depth to enlightenment that coincides with and then rejects the world's bonfire. There's even love songs!



1 Los Campesinos! - All Hell
Yeah, our number one is a band returning after 7-8 years away who've been an absolute STN favourite for not far off the entire twenty-years-next-April (of which more at the time) of our existence, whose album holds off from the top a band/record we would describe in ABSOLUTELY THE EXACT SAME WAY. But LC! with the whites of their eyes ablaze is a special thing, and we find them on a speed run taking elements of almost every previous album to produce a dynamic whole against which to project pinpoint personal anxieties and world crumbling, often resorting to new angles on the old regular lyrical concerns - yes! Chalk off a Gareth reference to xG! - seems that much more urgent yet also that much more worn down by the ageing/maturing/surely I'm too old and too far gone to still be doing this band? process that's been the underlying driver of their development throughout



Top 100 tracks on Monday!

Top 50 albums of 2024: 20-11

20 Dana Gavanski - LATE SLAP
Twisting guitar-pop melodies until they don't quite feel right, capturing the skill of musical optimism and lyrical hollowness



19 Laura Marling - Patterns In Repeat
Motherhood suits Marling's meditative side, intimate and homely whilst considering what her new life looks like



18 Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand
Bookish, raffish and full of theatrical introspectiveness (yes, it's possible), self-critical as much as it takes others apart



17 Gruff Rhys - Sadness Sets Me Free
The 25th album Gruff has been involved with launches into his baroque era, widescreen strings decorating lounge-pop on heavy topics



16 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God
After the experimental, grief-laden phase, a return to full band enormity with strings and choirs as if trying to force rapture



15 Dancer - 10 Songs I Hate About You
Jittery, strutting and friction-free, the closest Glasgow gets to the second coming of Life Without Buildings without being slavish imitators



14 The WAEVE - City Lights
Coxon and Dougall's Scary Monsters-meets-motorik-meets-English folk-meets-Broadcast act goes widescreen, now with added Roxy Music sax



13 Arooj Aftab – Night Reign
Nocturnality proves the perfect setting for the depth and delicate breadth of folky-jazzy soundscapes with room for surprises



12 Nadine Shah - Filthy Underneath
Narrating her own breakdown pushes the intimate electro-gothic of Kitchen Sink into new meaningful dimensions, even soulful in places



11 Arab Strap - I'm totally fine with it 👍 don't give a fuck anymore 👍
Their eighth might be their best album; it might also be their darkest as Aidan Moffatt bares his fangs over digital atrophy and hostility

Top 50 albums of 2024: 30-21

30 Neutrals - New Town Dream
Glaswegian transplanted to California gets to examine the human stories of tenement life from afar in an agit-janglepop setting



29 King Hannah - Big Swimmer
A big step forward for a second album, narrating a diaristic candour as the guitar explodes the languorous meditation states



28 Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us
A recalibration based on taking stock of previous ideas and twisting them into new dramatic shapes


27 Deerlady* - Greatest Hits
(* also referred to as Mali Obomsawin, Magdalena Abrego)
Stately, harmony-laden folk songwriting "about intimacy under colonialism" injected with shoegaze noise to great effect



26 Niamh Bury - Yellow Roses
A dark horse from the Irish scene, Bury's plaintive, poetic folk and pure voice feels fully formed on arrival



25 Laetitia Sadier - Rooting For Love
Sadier's first album since Stereolab reformed refines their various forms of Marxist space-lounge pop while not overlooking the acid



24 ELUCID - REVELATOR
The so far less celebrated half of Armand Hammer goes hard and heavy, challenging a hostile world over pummelling industrial noise



23 Geordie Greep - The New Sound
If Donald Fagen got really into King Crimson, tropicalia and mescaline...



22 Fontaines DC - Romance
And suddenly things go stratospheric at the same time as they go ambiguous, borrowing from electronics, chamber strings and janglepop alike



21 Mammoth Penguins - Here
Melodic power-pop dynamos rawer than ever as Emma Kupa tries to work out where she stands and what being in a band in 2024 actually is

Top 50 albums of 2024: 40-31

40 Clarissa Connelly - World Of Work
Copenhagen based producer/composer's rich voice drives brooding piano-led experiments in Celtic-aligned folk hauntology



39 St Vincent - All Born Screaming
Stepping back into a daze, harsh beats rubbing against vulnerable self-consideration amid nods throughout to previous highs (i.e. not Daddy's Home)



38 Yard Act - Where's My Utopia?
A reckoning with James Smith's self in the wake of lockdown fame with the new aid of strutting post-LCD synths



37 Caroline Says - The Lucky One
Intricate, sometimes countrified folk vulnerability and heart-scouring, tackling the nature of lingering and evoked memories



36 Cheekface - It's Sorted
More original compositions from America's local band, idiosyncratic post-TMBG wryness in the remains of late stage capitalism



35 Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Past Is Still Alive
Alynda Segarra returns to Americana roots and imbues them with nostalgic imagery and hope for something



34 Julia Holter - Something In The Room She Moves
The unstable melodies Holter has made her own blossom even as they settle into something ruminative and meditative, and jazzier



33 Keeley Forsyth - The Hollow
*That* voice pierces even further against her most ethereally foreboding backing yet, almost elemental when big strings and brass appear



32 Anna Erhard - Botanical Garden
Entertainingly wry Courtney Barnett-ish indiepop vignettes with electronic underlining from Swiss-born Berliner



31 Shellac - To All Trains
Steve Albini's last stand is also his band's best album in quite a while - taut, skronkily noisy and with no longform experiments

Top 50 albums of 2024: 50-41

50 Lip Critic - Hex Dealer
Intense 32 minutes of full-on New York electro-dance-punk, like DFA's circuits overheating



49 New Starts - More Break-Up Songs
Darren Hayman's new band in the long shadow of Hefner, all Velvets chug, power-pop dynamics and map-of-the-heart lyrics



48 Isobel Campbell - Bow To Love
Fleabitten queen of the hushed reckons with the modern world in low-key dream-folk tones



47 Drahla - angeltape
Leeds abstract art-rockers return after five years still embracing the deadpan angular instability



46 TORRES - What an enormous room
And Mackenzie Scott, having settled into herself at last, is going to fill it with chunky alt-rock that veers just left of centre



45 Magana - Teeth
Jeni Magana steps away from backing Mitski live to imbue her "witchy rock" with electronic and orchestral elements and self-reckoning



44 Hello Mary - Emita Ox
Intricate 90s college rock throwbacks dissolving into and evolving through noise and dissonance



43 MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
Drily literate clssic country-rock character pieces and modernist guitar heroics



42 Nightshift - Homosapien
Shifting Glaswegians embrace swooning, shifting, deliberately awkward slackerdom and the prospect of hope in darkness



41 mui zyu - nothing or something to die for
Eva Liu's second solo album approaches the void from several angles, one moment reflective ambient, the next detuned lo-fi pop

New sounds: 25/11/24

Astraba - Sink The Moon
Apart from this being a London band's debut there doesn't seem to be a lot of background to Astraba, which can feel suspicious for ones so fully formed, but they're a band who seem to have much in front of them, routed in layered psychedelia that shifts from Mazzy Star-adjacent wistfulness to spiralling surges, all still ethereal at heart and all that.

Augustin Bousfield - Baildon Space Station
Bradford's Bousfield is one of those musical polymaths who's been around in the firmament with hands in all sorts of genre's pies but has one big thing that could get him handshakes in most of Britain's pubs, namely that he wrote the theme to Deal Or No Deal. Much more recently he co-wrote and produced Saint Etienne's last LP I've Been Trying To Tell You and has just released his debut album Anymoor, a suburban synthpop cascade primarily involving keytars and off-beat moves liable to trip the unwary up as the melodies stutter, the kind of DIY small scale warped disco-not-disco-pop as exhibited by a single described as "Lovers walk the moor under a beautiful burnt sky as the ISS waves from above" and accordingly sounds more retro-futuristic than practically anything else around right now.



CIAO MALZ - Two Feel Tall
CIAO MALZ is Brooklynite Malia Delacruz and her debut EP Safe Then Sorry is out on distributors of high quality materials Audio Antihero on December 6th. The lead track is the kind of song that tries to skip sunnily along its guitar-pop way while covered by the visible dark cloud of confusion, introspection and self-worth, a kind of audio metaphor for how everything else wants to go at a much faster rate. Soccer Mommy would be the obvious touchstone, but it's unsurprising to find Elliott Smith is Delacruz's big influence.

CIAO MALZ · Two Feet Tall

Divorce - Antarctica
The Nottingham outfit's embrace of a countrified Americana that still finds an accessible enough hole for them to have toured with your favourite still extant corporate indie band of the late 00s. Yes, it's another summery track being released out here in late November, breezy guitar and crossing dual harmonies belying the dark, questioning heart of the lyrics that wouldn't disgrace The National, offset by metronomic drums, weeping violin and subtle pedal steel.



Emma-Jean Thackray feat. Reggie Watts - Black Hole
If there was anything more surprising this week than the repeat of the recently thought out of commission modernist jazz-funk polymath, it's that the only thing she's not responsible for bar the mastering on her first release in three years is a not entirely necessary interjection from the US comedian/beatboxer/general musical bandleader into the cosmic shuffling psych-jazz that nods equally at Roy Ayers and Parliament.



The Pill - Woman Driver
Getting ready for every new band tent next summer, Lily and Lottie's (and Rufus)' third two minute stop-start rager of high quality outlines, with no small amount of sarcasm, the titular related gender fender bender.

The Pill · Woman Driver

Sacred Paws - Another Day
Banjo! This is a new turn from Ray Aggs, and Ray Aggs has not been short of new turns across their thousand other projects, although it's actually their dad that plays it. Otherwise the first track from Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers' Scottish Album of the Year winning duo in five years retains their jerky post-punk special sauce, skipping, staccatoing and driving just as they always have whatever stringed instrument is at the forefront, just with a C&W tint emphasised when Aggs gets their reliable fiddle out in the outro.



The Wind-Up Birds - Guards
Leeds' highly experienced sardonic political post-punk firebrands, the group that taught Yard Act everything and James Smith will gladly tell you that, have a new single, searing guitars over Kroyd proselyting on moral panics and people in positions of privilege, all the usual good stuff.

New sounds: 15/11/24

Autocamper - Summertime
Manchester by spiritual way of Dunedin, the janglepop revivalists (if it ever needs reviving, or indeed counts as one) have their calendar all wrong but their spirit absolutely in the right place, scratchy and jolting while borrowing The Clean's organ melodies.



HONESTY - TORMENTOR
Formed from the ashes of Eagulls, HONESTY really clicked for us seeing their front-projections and elusiveness heavy live set at Swn festival last month. Florence Shaw contributes to U R HERE, their debut album out February 7th, but there's nothing but the rocky undercurrent of post-punk about their sound, indebted much more to dark trip-hop, eddying synth waves that almost resurrect chillwave, glitchy IDM pulses and deep bass churn that gradually overwhelm in semi-restrained intensity.



John Glacier - Found
The London MC and producer has been doing interesting things for a couple of years now, culminating for the first phase in Like A Ribbon, out February 14th. The electronics fall over each other in stuttering beats and arpeggiated loops whilst Glacier's voice has the best female British rappers' sense of poetic misleading understatement.



Laundromat Chicks - Sunburn
Another summery song released just as the weather changes from autumn to winter? What's going on? Our favourite Viennese return with what might qualify as a countrified shuffle that flirts with the dreamiest of acoustic indiepop, occasionally sticks the fuzz pedals on just to remind you what they can do, then lapses into a quick anthemic coda just because. Third album Sometimes Possessed is out on 24th January... and they're coming over to the UK at last! Only confirmed gig so far is The Great Escape, which presumably means one tiny show full of VIP wristband holders, something in London and nothing else ever because nobody outside the south-east is allowed to enjoy any good things any more.



Man/Woman/Chainsaw - EZPZ
The sort of title track from their debut EP Eazy Peazy is as good a place as any to get into M/W/C's command of lift-and-separate dramatics (although if you blanche at Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road, you're going to hate what's coming soon), uplifted by Lola Cherry's shifting martial drumming.



Mary In The Junkyard - This is My California
Another Swn highlight, the trio's new single is more straightforwardly ethereal and sepia-toned nostalgic than the 'Big Thief at the Windmill'-style recent This Old House EP, but straightforward is its own concept when songs shift and express unease like theirs do.



Minor Conflict - Glue
Newly signed to the rarely less than fascinating PRAH Recordings, Bristolians Minor Conflict have that classic synth/bass/harp power trio line-up, vocalists Natalie Whiteland and Josh Smyth swapping lines before launching into a fascinating tapestry of abstract poetics, occasional sprechgesang, wordless chorale, angular bursts reminiscent of labelmates Pozi, jazzy percussion and delicate, well, harp. Who knows what it will all mean when Parallels EP is released on January 24th.



The Orchestra (For Now) - Wake Robin
So, as we were saying, Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road. Spectacular opening the Mountain stage as Green Man Rising winners and subject to the traditional whispered hype based on that one bloke who puts full sets on YouTube, there's seven of them, their debut single crosses the eight minute threshold and is a tumbling riot of dramatically intricate violin and piano flourishes and polyrhythmic drumming outbreaks in multiple movements, even, from languid to impassioned.

New sounds: 5/11/24

Chemtrails - Miss Anthropocene
A straggler of a track, soon to get a 7" release, following The Joy Of Sects and ahead of a tour is another bugged-out glam stomp that expresses a desire to turn into a whale to escape TERFs and maybe uniquely for pop namechecks the Dunning-Kruger effect.



Fruit - Racehorse Deathwatch
The north-east sextet have been called "a morose and angry John Cooper Clarke fronting Mogwai". Well, that's as maybe, but it's far more in tune with your favourite modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks. What stands the track out from the vats of modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks is their post-Slint capture and release shifts, explosions of compressed noise dallying with sudden time signature changes and divebombing down to minimalism.
M(h)aol - Snare
Losing a charismatic frontperson would kill most bands, but M(h)aol have adapted since Róisín Nic Ghearailt left just over a year ago - they've also shed their bass player since then - with drummer Constance Keane taking over as vocalist. In fact the new single ties in with the change in that way, being about the gendering of instrument learning coupled to nervy, awkward Krautrock-adjacent off-beats and hypnotic noise.
Snõõper - Relay
Snõõper couldn't help but be one of our highlights of this year's End Of The Road Festival (a lot of fun, thanks), what with the prop-adorned, crowdsurfing, all-hyperenergy speed-punk assault like a vaguely more approachable Melt-Banana or Polysics. Ahead of a new tour they've dropped what for them counts as a ballad, merely quite fast for most of the time while still all razorblade bass and stabbing riffs.
Tunde Adebimpe - Magnetic
No sooner have TV On The Radio reformed for live dates next year - we note they're in the UK over Green Man weekend - than Adebimpe announces an as yet release date-free solo album on Sub Pop. Ironically the first single reaches back to imperial phase TVOTR in their Dancing Choose/New Health Rock/oh alright then Wolf Like Me in its buzzing, digitised insistent beat and Tunde's full commitment preacher's voice.

New sounds: 28/10/24 (deluxe version)

Yeah, this is what happens when you're picking up after a couple of weeks - so many new tracks pile up and so little time to go into detail about them all.

Anna B Savage - Agnes
From third album You & i are Earth, out 24th January, a track featuring Irish folkie Anna Mieke on an album partially about Savage's move to Ireland and as spectral as ever even as the surroundings blossom outwards.



Beckon - Hands
Second single from next week's debut album Between The Bridge And Tree.



Bon Iver - THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS
The most early trad Bon Iver track from his new EP SABLE,



Clarissa Connelly - Give It Back
Already a new track after the underrated album from earlier this year World Of Work, unspooling art-folk delicacy.



Fightmilk - Yearning And Pining
Last single from No Souvenirs, out 15th November. Did we mention they're not only playing next March's Leicesterval but the Sunday for which tickets, unlike the Saturday/full weekend, are still available?



Heartworms - Warplane
Finally an album coming, Glutton For Punishment on 7th February.



Laurence-Anne - Melancolia
La Sécurité - Detour
Pulling double duty in signpost new singles, firstly a dreamy, lovelorn song in Spanish (!), then the post-B-52s/Le Tigre art-punk collective she belongs to are newly signed to Bella Union and heading to the sprung dancefloor.





lobby - folding out
Goat Girl's Lottie Pendlebury is half of a duo that initially locate themselves amid the popular slowcore lot but meander and develop, with we detect a little Delgados influence, through string motifs and another bloody saxophone into a slow burn crescendo that peaks somewhere near Sonic Youth.



Man Lee - Best One
Brooklyn-based duo present their awkward groove as collage, managing to work "transubstantiation" into the lyric.



Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory - Afterlife
Yeah, that's how she's presenting herself on the eponymous we-suppose-technically-debut album on February 7th.



Snazzback feat. Grove - Equinox
Our longtime favourite basement rabble-rouser collaborates with fellow Bristolian "new wave dancefloor instrumentalists", come out with a spiralling jazzy groove.



Swansea Sound - Toxic Energy
An imagined duet between Elon Musk and Terry Hall. "The strange noise at the end is a recording of a Tesla Cybertruck accelerating, losing control and exploding as it hits a wall." Hey, we're bringing them back to Leicester on 29th November!



The Tubs - Freak Mode
Dead Meat in its Sugar-if-formed-by-Richard-Thompson glory was one of our favourite British albums of last year; next year's Cotton Crown, out 7th March and reflecting on Owen Williams' reaction to the death of his folk singer and journalist mother Charlotte Greig, seems set to be much the same.

New sounds: 10/10/24

Dancer - Man Of Distinction/R.AGGS - Uncertainty
Bloody hell, Dancer, they've only just on Friday released their split LP with Whisper Hiss and now here comes another split, this time a limited 7" with Ray Aggs of so, so many great things that's included in the price of their 30th November gig at Glasgow's The Old Hairdressers, though there will we're assured be a limited number otherwise available. Dancer's half is jittery and hosts one of those repeated riffs that feels like it's always been around; Aggs for their part plays with gradually enveloping electro beats before the trademark hi-life spidery guitar makes a connective appearance.

Errol's Hot Wax · Dancer & R.AGGS - Split Single (SCS002)

Laundromat Chicks - Cameron
Our Viennese favourite return with a rattling uneven jangle of sexual confusion reminiscent to us of mid-00s Swedish contenders Cats On Fire. Third album next year!



The Pill - Scaffolding Man
Like A Certain Other Band, The Pill are two women from the Isle Of Wight who formed a band together in 2019 and deal in a forthright playful scrappy urgency and sexually sardonic lyrics. Bale Of Hay was possibly the year's most weirdly addictive debut single, and now they're dealing with being seen in the bath by the titular workman delivered in a way that makes it seem like they're not sure how to react. It seems like they'll be doing a lot of festivals over the next year; cult status, and potentially more, awaits.



Stuart Pearce - Fuck No, I Jangle
Well, that's your description right there. The band Stuart Pearce - from, yes, Nottingham - have been a lot more forceful, accelerating jerky and socio-politically driven over previous releases. Now they retreat to a vaguely stompy, psych-drenched shimmer that seems like it could have been released either immediate side of Madchester.



Winter Gardens - U/U
Brighton's Winter Gardens have been on the periphery of something big for quite a few years now and might be at least on the way to finding it with this not quite electro, not quite shoegaze, not quite post-punk meeting point of tension and uncomfortability where guitars alternately dart and swell, synths aim for the skies as if they got lost from an actual anthem and drums aim for the industrial, on top of which Ananda Howard delivers sung/spoken counterpoints.



Young Knives - Dissolution
Yep, he's still calling himself the House Of Lords. The brotherly duo's last two albums took a deliberate turn away from the associations of their hitmaking era to embrace dark electronics and industrial noise. Now, maybe due to reissuing those first two records last year, they've gone back to embracing something akin to it, not least in titling January's seventh album Landfill. So, stop-start riffs and rhythms and sardonic semi-spoken vocals meet the awkwardness - think early XTC or Pere Ubu at their most approachable - and the lyrical consideration of ego death.

New sounds: 3/10/24

Beckon - Festoon
The London six-piece fronted by Faith Taylor, once of Suggested Friends and Chorusgirl, describe themselves as "alternative folk/heartland rock" and, yeah, that's about as good a thumbnail description as we can offer, what with sax, forceful chorus and quasi-heroic solo plus violin, harmonies and shuffling beat. Debut album Between The Bridge And Tree is out at the end of the month.



Cheekface - Flies
America's Local Band return with what if their last couple of albums are any judge will be on an album to be given a surprise Bandcamp-first release one Tuesday in February. It features Jeff Rosenstock on sax. Don't worry in the slightest, you wouldn't automatically notice it.



Dancer - Didn't Mean To/Whisper Hiss - Go Again
The pair's split EP on HHBTM Records is out at the end of the week, our favourite art-post-punks more channel Dry Cleaning's big intricate guitar shapes against the taut groove this time around, though Gemma Fleet is as elusive as ever. On the flip of the 12"/just along the download Portland's Whisper Hiss similarly mine mutant new wave for the smart set dancefloor with the organ sound that all the best American post-punk bands had.




Florist - This Was A Gift
It's rather unfortunate that Florist's best album to date, 2019's Emily Alone which cracked our end of year top 50, is their only one as the title suggests to be recorded entirely by Emily Sprague. A new album, apparently featuring nineteen tracks *gulps very hard*, is on its way, preceded by a delicate, tender meander on the nature and embrace of love and heartbreak that would very much appeal to fans of solo Adrianne Lenker.



Geordie Greep - Blues
No, but what if Donald Fagen got really into Peter Hamill during a mescaline binge?



The Horrors - The Silence That Remains
Interesting in a way that they've returned to a Primary Colours sound of jazzy motorik drumming, gothic vocals, creepy synth and dark shoegaze-adjacent lengthy outro, having toyed with industrial noise in recent years and with a couple of line-up changes since their last album eight years ago. Night Life is out 21st... March?! We might be dead by then!



Lanny - ur an angel im evil
That'll be Lan McArdle, currently also of Ex-Void, an increasing length of time ago of Joanna Gruesome, well in with the 'if it's Owen Williams and your granny on bongos it's a Gob Nation band' collective, making herself at home with a surging cut that splits the difference between slacker power-pop and melodic jangle. What's more the album, bliss!! bliss! bliss, is out on the 29th.



Man/Woman/Chainsaw - The Boss
The shapeshifting but resolutely Windmillish kids are now on Fat Possum and have turned up the distortion to suit, symphonic violin parts rubbing like sandpaper against a weirdly theatrical thrust with noisy breakdowns. Produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, whose credentials aside from those of his own group are starting to turn up on some very interesting records (Sprints, Lambrini Girls, GENN, Silverbacks)



WILLOW feat. Kamasi Washington - Wanted
Now then. Even if we discount Whip My Hair - she was nine! - Willow Smith has been quite the musical dilletante, playing with alt-R&B, 90s alt-rock singer-songwriters, neo-soul, dreampop, pivoting to pop-punk with Travis fucking Barker, and spiritual jazz on May's empathogen. The deluxe version of that album, ceremonial contrafact - I mean, come on - brings with it a high point, a psych-soul collaboration with the outstanding saxophonist that bridges the gap between the Janelle Monae of ten years ago and the Corinne Bailey Rae of last year.



Windowsill - Lasting
Nine luxuriant, ambitious minutes from the project of LA's Matt Maruskin, shuffling from acoustic lament to something more driven and eventually overdriven with guitar and what sounds like a pump organ. Second album Dwindlesill is out on the 18th.

New sounds: 30/9/24

Black Ends - Pretend 2 Be (Protect Me)
Seattle scene stalwarts, Black Ends describe themselves as "gunk-pop" which does quite well to pigeonhole a sound that pulls the rug out from under post-grunge (hey, Seattle, we were bound to fall into that one) and watches it fall into a menacing, vaguely jointed heap leading into an "anthem for the paranoid and the hopeless".



Dayflower - Florida
Longstanding Leicester dream-pop outfit get washed out in an unexpectedly, almost countrified acoustic-led nostalgic haze with a jangle undertow that takes it into Favourite territory for classic indie earworm potential. Little too late for summer but never mind.



Dogviolet - Violets
"Melodic grunge post-punk from London" says their website, which... well, yeah. Led by the longstanding grunge-folk duo Naz & Ella, their debut single, "a tale of queer awakening and budding young love, drawing on the sapphic symbolism of violets", should appeal to fans of Heartworms' brooding expansionism.



Ex-Vöid - Swansea
With Owen Williams' million other bands it's heartening to find he still has time to rejoin with Lan McArdle and craft more lovelorn jangle-power-pop, cleaner than before but no less crafted to excellence. Second album In Love Again is out January 17th. That's 2025! How did that happen?



Flytrap - Gutted
"The young sound of Penge" says their Insta bio, which doesn't really help. And with the support of the label that released Man/Woman/Chainsaw's debut they're a young band you want to know more about, crackling with the rush of wayward noisy energy led by a vocal and more than likely intensity ringer for Dana Porridge Radio.



Laura Marling - Child Of Mine
If anyone was going to make a good go of a new parent album... Features swirling strings, Buck Meek and meditational profoundness.



Overhead, The Albatross - This Is Like Love
The Dublin post-rock band with a Pink Floyd-derived name released an album in 2016 and have taken until now to follow it up, I Leave You This Out November 15th. Actually we really should also draw your attention to their last single Your Last Breath, an astonishing powerful nine minute string and horn-driven release of personal emotion. This one's great in a different way, built on thrusting, insistent electronic beats, percussion frenzy and cut-up samples.



Perfume Genius - My Place
One of three contemporaneously written new tracks added to the tenth anniversary reissue of Too Bright.



PROPERTY - Lazy Boy
Melbourne trio turn up the discordance on their wiry post-punk in a Pylon/Au Pairs sense.



Sassyhiya - Boat Called Predator
Named after an actual boat called Predator, the South Londoners have a bounce in their step and a way with insistent riffs and spiralling choruses. Their debut album Take You Somewhere is being released on 8th November on Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey's Skep Wax label, so score another one up for them.



Trust Fund - The Mirror
A proper return to the album format for Ellis and whoever else, Has It Been A While? out November 1st, is heralded by a melancholic, reticent duet with Radiant Heart's Celia MacDougall.

New sounds (diet version): 23/9/24

Caroline Says - Roses


Fievel Is Glauque - Love Weapon


Fightmilk - That Thing You Did


Lambrini Girls - Company Culture


Mogwai - God Gets You Back


Sophie Jamieson - I don’t know what to save


Tapir! - Nail In A Wooden Trunk


Virginia's Wolves - Issues

New sounds: 16/9/24

Former Champ - Sorry
From Glasgow, so as we well know by now there's a bunch of members of other bands in here too, the recent Martha tour support deliver snappy Replacements-leaning power-pop.



Jeremy Warmsley - Dancing On The Moon
Just as we start thinking about next year's STN twentieth anniversary, one of our hype OGs returns with an almost stately - we say "almost" as there's plenty of effects and touches to throw it enough off-centre - piano lament.



Lilith Ai - Serial Killers Prefer Blondes
Precision targetd bubblegrunge/emo from the Alldayer alumni's tremendous, long gestating new album of the same name.



Memory Of Speke - Wife Once
IT'S A BRIXTON WINDMILL BAND, EVERYBODY! So obviously yes, there's six of them, one of them plays sax, they've clearly heard some klezmer, and their songs going by this debut are theatrical and gradually wrap tightly around themselves. They might end up as The Last Dinner Party's evil twins.



Sasha Adrian – Shell
From Copenhagen and despite the lilting, searching nature of the guitars it's not easy going, lyrically dense and smart in its unflinching rawness as she finds herself silent screaming at unwanted sexual attention.

New sounds: 10/9/24

bigfatbig - Nothing
Apologies, until the release of second EP Rippin' It last week on Du Blonde's label Daemon T.V. we didn't realise the north eastern straight-talking power-pop-punk powerhouses had spent most of this year releasing singles - this came out in July - and they're not a band who sound keen to be left in the corner.



Caribou - Come Find Me
This is basically the same as Dan Snaith's other identity Daphni now, isn't it. Anyway, an album has been announced, Honey out 4th October.



Field Music - The Waitress of St Louis'


Good Sad Happy Bad - Shaded Tree
Mica Levi and the reconstituted Shapes' new album, which appears to be called All Kinds Of Days, is out November 8th.



Johnny Foreigner - Their Shining Path
Three days to go to the new album!



Melin Melyn - Vitamin D
You'd be surprised how many of their caps were in evidence at the sort of festivals we go to over the summer, which bodes very well for next year's album (and next year's festival bookings, I guess)



MJ Lenderman - Wristwatch
We really hope Jake doesn't think the first two lines are a Quiet Riot borrow.



The WAEVE - Broken Boys


Young Scum - Peach Ice Cream
The powerpoppy, Paisley Underground jangle-adjacent, hooks for days sound of young Richmond, Virginia, from just released second album Lighter Blue.

New sounds: 27/8/24

Du Blonde - TV Star
From upcoming fourth album Sniff More Gritty, the former/sometime Beth Jeans Houghton, who does everything except drums on it, does the radio-ready grunge-pop thing with a lot... what? Yeah, Sniff More Gritty, that's what it says here. Anyway, there's more subtlety and genuine cutting angst alike than most in outlining "the story of who somebody was before and after fame".



Hayden Thorpe - He
You know, him from Wild Beasts. Yes, he still sings like that. His third solo record Ness, out September 27th, is inspired by Orford Ness, a ten mile long shingle spit on the coast of Suffolk that used to belong to the Ministry of Defence for top secret military testing, and is essentially adapted from Robert Macfarlane's book on the same. The jittery backing wouldn't sound out of place on his old band's work while the choral backing and non-standard instrumentation - sackbut! - takes it in a more pastoral direction.



Tindersticks - Always A Stranger
Speaking of unique and recognisable voices brings us to Stuart Staples' bruised saloon croon and one of those elusive but evidently tender late night jazzy considerations where they thrive. Soft Tissue is released on September 13th.



Trust Fund - Leaving The Party Early
Ah, so Ellis Jones has decided to stop fannying around with one-off singles and re-embrace the album format. Has It Been A While? is out on November 1st and opens with acoustic soul-baring folk with strings of an almost unavoidably Nick Drake ilk.