JC's 2024 Albums of the Year
- Johnny Chal
- Dec 31, 2024
- 10 min read
My 2024 Albums of the Year has been an evolving and developing list. Whilst I usually post 10 or so albums each year, I feel that 2024 broke the mould and provided an array of “banger” albums that weren’t merely just pop or radio-friendly rock, so look below and find out the who and what to check out … and see why you should give these a listen.
Have a great end to 2024, and welcome in the New Year with some new artists and enjoy these wonderful albums from these beautiful storytellers and musicians!
Side Comment: In 2021, a friend’s wife made a comment that my record collection “had far more male than female artists in it” … I always laughed at this comment, as I’ve always been a grunge and heavy rock fan, moreover, it was a small and growing collection at this point. Nevertheless, I hope that [said person] reads the list below, as I am definitely showing a lot of love to female artists in this list!
JC’s 2024 Albums of the Year, in no particular order are:
Probably a bit of an unknown artist for most, Vollebekk is an acclaimed singer-songwriter from Ottawa, Canada. His first release “twin solitude” was a breakthrough album, gathering over 60 million streams. His followup “new ways” confirmed his undeniable talent.
But for now, the richness of revelations is in its simplicity. Illustrations of everyday experiences are brought to life with a vivid, and emotional heft, showing that sometimes the quietest moments speak the loudest.
A wonderfully balanced experience. This is a nice mix of triumphant, contemplative, melancholic, and then romantic and includes fan faves Angie McMahon and Anaïs Mitchell on background vocals.
I highly recommend that you start or end you to day to this album.
Anyone who cites Beth Gibbons and Mazzy Star as key influences at the start of an album is off to a flying start. The aptly titled small changes, however, also reiterates Kiwanuka’s ability to make timelessly great music. Utilising his friends and usual producers Danger Mouse and Inflo also adds to the hypnotic beats, empathic emotions and first-rate songwriting.
Kiwanuka’s last, self-titled album was an instant classic in 2019, but five years have passed since that album and now for the 37-year-old father of two now living on the English south coast having quit his native London, he has an array tasteful tones and masterful grooves that features throughout.
As personal as all of this album is, there’s a universality to small changes that, as with all Kiwanuka’s records, will emotionally connect with you. Everybody hurts, it seems to say, but this might help you.
Pitchfork really summed this album up quite incredibly:
“Thirty years after stepping into the spotlight, the Portishead singer reintroduces herself with her debut solo album. History weighs heavy on her songs, but she takes pains to avoid her musical past.”
Gibbons’ debut is probably the most emotionally engaging album I have heard so far in 2024. It has that feel of something you'll still enjoy many years from now. We can only hope and pray she tours on the back of this soon to Australia in 2025.
As any Portishead fan will know, she sings songs of mortality, mystery and the extremes of grief and ecstasy all in one.
The Portishead singer's decade-in-the-making solo debut really was worth the wait.
The world has never seen a pop-girl explosion anything like the summer of 2024.
And Sabrina did not disappoint with the “short” part. Clocking in at a mere 36 minutes for a 12 song track list, the brief was met. As for “sweet”? The ex-Disney star entertains with her vocals and covers the hot topics of relationships and sex, as she puts out a mix of synthpop and country-pop. Imagine if Olivia Newton-John and Christina Aguilera made a country disco-pop album, this would be it. So yes, it’s sweet too…
Overall, this is such a fun listen. I mean what more could you ask for from pop music, other than to be moved and feel like you can do whatever the f*ck you want?
Go Carpenter! Go!!!
Possibly my favourite album of year, lust for gold is an ethereal haze of guitar and synths that is a phenomenal listen. From the opening track, Starflyer 59 hits you with force of a wrecking ball, as a wall of beautifully crafted instrumentation feels purposeful in its manoeuvre.
The relatively unknown Starflyer 59 is a band that pioneered, and evolved, but never exploded in “popularity” whilst still having a cult following. They have consistently made good music for over 20 years.
The Songwriting is guttural and simple but with the inflexion that front-man Jason Martin, gives each word with an almost 1980s style to it. Each word feels important and perfectly placed.
This album was a beautiful listen that I am sure to return to again and again, especially when I need some introspective or reflection time.
I encourage you to put this album on without distractions. Throw it on in the car on a late-night drive, or at home as the sun sets with a glass of wine, or on your headphones while you stare out into the stars.
It's slow, it could be lost in distractions, but when you listen, you may feel the beauty of time passing away like sand. As close to the perfect album for me this year as is possible.
Remember three years ago, on Happier Than Ever, when Billie sang, “I’m in love with my future, can’t wait to meet her”? The future Billie turned out to be worth waiting for.
If 2024's pop-girl explosion had a founding figure, it would have to Billie. Cool, calm, witty, fun, soulful, authentic, wispy, experimental and ...the best of the best.
hit me hard and soft is her coming-of-age album as well as her coming-out album, from the synth-pop yearning of “Blue” to the heart-grabbing balladry of “Wildflower” to the queer gastronomy of “Lunch.”
Rather than reflect generational angst (as her first album did, and I should add, I didn’t really love it) or the hell of teenage fame, hit me hard and soft is insular, intimate and like the title suggests, soft (and hard).
Billie’s best album in my opinion, hit after hit, banger after banger. Lunch anyone?
One of the most fascinating things about growth is that you are able to change in all sorts of admirable ways, yet still fundamentally remain the same person you have always been. The passage of time never stops being dizzying, and on older, Lizzy McAlpine grasps at straws to get her bearings in a world that never stops spinning.
While it is certainly a rawer and more reflective output than 2022’s five seconds flat, like she promised, we find her walking through the same doors that have defined her artistic output for the majority of the decade. Lizzy’s musicality and lyrical narratives walk the tightropes of intimate contradictions;
you can be held in the arms of a total stranger, while simultaneously feeling more connected to a person who’s been in the ground for years.
A special favourite is the masterful juxtaposition of “all falls down”, older’s one true banger.
Her lyric speaks of nothing less than pure emptiness and the relentlessness of the hedonic treadmill, while its infectious instrumental showcases everything commendable about McAlpine’s ear for arrangement. She’s accompanied by a breezy and playful wind section on this track, a unique wrinkle that almost adds a sort of absurdist bent to her realization that everything is collapsing and none of it has ever mattered. Truth of the world and life we all participate in.
In its proficient moments, older is heartbreaking, raw, confessional, melodically ethereal, and outright fun in flashes. Solid work from an artist still so young, but as the title suggests, getting older.
16 years between drinks for the cure’s 14th album was worth the wait, even if everybody’s favourite Goths teased us with the title 5 years ago. That’s a lot of numbers, but the key number is that this is a 4.85 out of 5 for me. Full of despair and loss in slow-motion grandeur, proving that fragility can be a magnificent yet beautiful journey.
songs of a lost world turned out to be even grander than I imagined. I read it described as “power-doom” and it sure reaches those lofty heights. Opening with “this is the end of every song I sing,” and signing off with “left alone with nothing at the end of every song.” Is a full-circle triumph for the Robert Smith and friends.
Rumour has it that they are now working on the next Cure album — bring on 2040.
Jack White’s latest effort had a super cool, punk-like release strategy: unmarked vinyl copies were popped into customers’ shopping bags at his Third Man Records stores, then he encouraged the recipients to leak the album online.
These gorilla-tactics matched the music, which is the absolute opposite to careful strategy – it’s a first-thought-best-thought ripper album, full of riffs that could kick the doors off its hinges, whilst kicking ass in any bar, anywhere in the world.
The production values of an amphetamine-charged 1960s teenage garage rock band and White doing a series of outrageously fun takes on the quintessential frontman:
hellfire preacher,
spurned punk rocker,
classic bluesman,
story teller, and
front-man desperate to show the benefits of three piece band rock n’ roll band, with larger than life solos .
Whilst a return to yesteryear, if this had been his solo debut, it would be a gold medal, 5 star debut and likely set his trajectory on a different path. Here’s hoping that the “rock classic” status remains for many, many more years. Bring it on Archbishop Harold Holmes (banger of a track!).
When pop music starts to blast on the radio, and people talk about the move from guitar to synth, the rocker inside me begs God for more electric guitar. And if not more, just something new?
So just when I think the electric guitar might be dead, someone like Mk.gee comes along. A young American guitarist with a technical yet casual manner of playing, and a tone that’s half Delta blues, half every breath you take.
In an interview with Dazed, Mike Gordon proclaimed that “making sense is overrated”.
I already love this kid!
Gordon’s mangled mix of pop, rock, and soul sounds like it’s made of scrap metal and polished with sandpaper. Across two star & the dream police, his magnificent debut album as Mk.gee. This kid is 26 and he shows so much depth and growth, displaying ’80s R&B ballads, Phil Collins-inspired anthems, Michael Jackson like pop-rock grooves and an array of unusual tones, tempos, and textures. His distinctive guitar playing and Prince-indebted singing are placed in murky, twitchy mixes that refuse to stand still.
Ultimately Gordon is a master of melody, showing off gorgeous, richly detailed pop songs.
Timeless, uncanny and super duper unique. Well done Mike. Well done!
the smile are not Radiohead. However, 2024 turned out to be their equivalent of the 2000 era that brought us both Kid A and Amnesiac. Sessions again produced two LPs, January’s wall of eyes and October’s cutouts.
Hard to remember now that the smile were initially presumed to be a post-punk side product.
They offer up orchestral art rock, dread-inducing electronics, and dystopian grooves so good it'll have you thinking heretical thoughts like: What if Radiohead never came back?
God forbid! However, if that ever was the case, I would be partially happy with this as a new project, but Lord, please hear my prayers… and let the Oxford boys come back together, very very soon!
Just like the Gallaghers, a rapprochement between Chris and Rich Robinson resulted in the first Black Crowes album since 2009 – and in my opinion the best, perhaps, in nearly three decades. happiness bastards charged through like early stones, Southern soul and country honk with a punch reminiscent of their earliest records.
Rich put it best when he said “In order to do this properly, we had to not be dicks.”
And they were not dicks, instead they were bloody fantastic.
Listen to the album, all the way, super loud with an ice cold beer or three.
Ok, ok, ok … Whilst everyone will be harping on about brat and Beyoncé but …
cowboy carter, Beyoncé reclaims space for Black artists and highlights the often-overlooked contributions of Black musicians to country music. Its political, cultural and historical notations are fused within a kaleidoscope of genres.
I get it’s important, but alas, this album just WASN’T for me…
Charli XCX has done an amazing job with brat, and it’s a cracking album but again, it’s just not my cup of tea or vibe. END OF.
However, I will say this… Charli XCX transcends cool and vulnerable, and makes a poppier banger of an album, I just wanted a little more from her sixth album. Don’t hate me!!!
Special mention to artists that I’ve just not listened to enough to make the list, but by February, they’ll probably make the list. They are a treat, so check them out too:
nick cave – “wild god”
it’s like a a symphony orchestra and pub band combined, while Nick is inspiringly resolute in his lust for life.
vampire weekend – “only god was above us”
it was unusual and even contradictory in moods, and ideas.
Ultra-bright jazz piano and synths? Drum grooves and a classical choir? Enjoy!
kaytranada – “timeless”
the nerve of this bloke calling his album Timeless.
the nerve of this bloke making a brilliant hip hop/R&B record that truly feels like it's both from the future and the past.
some would say that is is a timeless album.
mj lenderman - “Manning Fireworks”
this is short story.
Jokes, wisdom and irreverence.
It makes you feel compelled to sing every guitar riff, or rip off every melody, to quote lyrics like “goin’ on vacation brings the worst out of everyone
This is the new “modern classic for our generation”
jamie xx – “in waves”
simple: One of the most beautifully curated, dance-ready records of the year. A blend of sound, personality and attitude makes this the record you want to soundtrack long summer days and even longer nights with friends, enjoying life.
clairo – “charm”
Claire Cottrill’s fun, lighthearted album where you can hear her audibly giggling in the background of “Second Nature.” charm is an actual ray of sunshine, when we REALLY need it.
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