Friday, December 20, 2024

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!

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