My Favorite Songs from 2024
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - “Le Risque”
Mary Lattimore & Walt McClements - “The Poppies, the Wild Mustard, the Blue-Eyed Grass”
GUM & Ambrose Kenny-Smith - “Ill Times”
Slomosa - “Battling Guns”
Donato Dozzy - “Santa Cunegonda”
TORRES - “I got the fear”
Vista House - “A Seat Behind the Wing”
Loma - “How It Starts”
illuminati hotties - “Didn’t” (feat. Cavetown)
Blanck Mass - “You”
WHY? - “Marigold”
Fabienne Debarre - “All I Can Do”
A.G. Cook - “Lucifer”
Half Waif - “Dust”
Foxing - “Gratitude”
Sunset Rubdown - “Candles”
RÓIS - “CAOINE”
KNEECAP - “I’m Flush”
Ben Lukas Boysen “Vineta”
36 - “Blue Crown”
Oval Angle - “Kindly Kept Keen”
Charli XCX - “Guess feat. Billie Eilish”
Yin Yin - “The Year of the Rabbit”
Bolis Pupul - “Completely Half”
Lily Seabird “Take It”
Note: This is a long post folks so I've hidden the rest under the fold for easy scrolling.
There’s certainly a distinct vein of defiance and optimism through some of these tracks that speaks to the clear realization from this year that no one’s out to save us. “Le Risque,” the track I’ve probably had on repeat the most, could be reductively boiled down to 2010’s-era YOLO platitudes, but I think it’s more than that. “Adrenaline my dearest friend,” King Gizzard’s Stu Mackenzie sings, but continues to say that we have but “one life [and] one chance,” and so, the implication goes, we better make the most of it. Sunset Rubdown’s stately reunion record featured the standout “Candles” with its call for tender community: “call me if you need me, I’m in the last place you went looking for me” and, interpolating a line from the Gospel of Matthew, describes a scene of lighting one’s own candle in “room[s] already filled with light.” And “Battling Guns,” from Norway’s Slomosa, makes the case for radical action, given this only one life we have to make a difference, in pointing out the absurdity of niceness in the face of oppression: “shake my hand as the whole world burns,” and that while it’s always going to be monstrously unfair going up against those armed with battling guns and who sit inside “four white walls,” sometimes all we can do is work with what we have and throw rocks.
Well, maybe I better strike that “optimism” description from the transcript as it’s more of a steely eyed determinism that defines even the most upbeat of these tunes. Especially the rambunctious offering from the incredible collaboration from Aussie songsmiths GUM and Ambrose Kenny-Smith in which we’re told right off the top “pull the cotton out of your ears, listen here, you ain’t got control of this, no,” and then continues to ask the question of what it is we need to do to shake these “Ill Times.”
But just as many songs on this list encourage restraint, or, at least, acknowledge the true liminal day-to-day state in which we all live between more momentous decisions. Perhaps that’s why tracks like Donato Dozzy’s “Santa Cunegonda,” Ben Lukas Boysen’s “Vineta,” 36’s “Blue Crown,” and especially Mary Lattimore & Wal McClements staggeringly beautiful “The Poppies, the Wild Mustard, the Blue-Eyed Grass,” stood out this year as well. Each song traffics in length and repetition, stretching moments out to remind us of infinity.
And then there’s the feeling of resignation that runs deep in many of these songs. Or maybe, to be less harsh, the direct confrontation with reality. TORRES’s “I got the fear,” in which the anxiety about the stability of a relationship spirals outwards, from immediate needs— “and the dread doesn’t pay any rent money”--to just about everything else–”and our only world is burning.” Fabienne Debarre’s minor-key synth pop jam “All I Can Do” has it all right there in the title. WHY?’s Yoni Wolf takes pains to remind us that “this is not a parable, this is real it’s painful,” in the devastating “Marigold,” in which he rides a late night bus to the end of the line confronting the truth that while his (now ex) wife “gave him her 20’s” all he could muster in return was a gift of a painting of marigolds and he knows it wasn’t an equal trade: “this mess is not repairable, and the aftertaste is terrible.” Then the bus driver puts much too fine a point on it: “Last stop. Yo, bro, time to get off. What? You ain’t got no people?” And Half Waif’s “Dust” is just straight up shattering as it wrestles in microcosm with the themes of the entire record in which she tries to rebuild after a tragic miscarriage. “You were seeing blood dripping onto the earth…it was an almost impossible hurt,” she sings before launching into a Mitski-esque breakdown: “quick cut to the country, standing in the open doorway, where I’m cradling a baby, and I’m stronger for the memory…in the days after you left me, broken heart and broken body.”
Blanck Mass released a two track-EP late in the year that stands as another reminder of how tricky it is to lay out a single thesis for work created by diverse artists all over the world in the arbitrary time frame of “a year.” Running a brisk 13 minutes split evenly between two tracks named “Bloodhound” and “You,” each song is the mirror opposite of the other, with the first opening with distorted shrieks and pummeling drums before buzzsaw guitars and icepick synths are layered on top of the din, even spiraling to moment that can only be described as “circus industrial.” But three-quarters of the way through, the song’s harshness recedes, letting in peaks of glorious sunlit rolling arpeggios before fizzing out like so much sea foam and gently transitioning to my selection for this list, the towering “You,” which starts with a boom-bap beat, a day-glo synth and then folds in, of all things, sleigh bells. As it hits its major-key melody, it feels like standing atop a cliff made of shimmering glass; a vocal line burbles to the surface, sounding like the pre-comedown early night club companion to 36’s “Blue Crown’s” downtempo rave reminiscences. But it too also features a hint of its sonic opposite with discordant instrumentation and screaming vocals at around the three quarter mark thus creating something like a musical ying-yang of an EP, each track only functioning because of the contrast to the other.
“But,” you ask, “what about Brat summer?” And, indeed, I can’t not mention the neon-green horse in the room that is the unlikely zeitgeist-capturing project from iconoclastic art-pop icon Charli XCX. I think we’ll be unpacking Brat and all its variations and cultural fallout for a long while and one thing that stands out overall about the entire project is just how incredible a balance the whole enterprise has maintained. Between a run of straight up pop-bangers, experimental detours, unexpectedly heartfelt interludes and an entire album’s worth of metatextual remixes with a king’s ransom of contemporary musicians, there’s not a moment where any of it seems cynically manufactured to “get clicks.” It has, of course, certainly received “clicks” (Brat being by far the most popular thing she's released since maybe her breakout feature in Icona Pop's "I Love It") but I think, instead of chasing popularity, Charli has proven that just being herself and inviting everyone into the club, all the rest will follow. Now, there are certainly more impactful songs that have come from Brat (the collaborative anti-diss track with Lorde probably being one of the most important songs of the year), but for my money, I have the most fun with the remix with Billie Eilish. It’s both campily silly and earnestly sexy and even the line right at the end (“you want to guess if we’re serious about this song”) exemplifies that balance of tone that has made Brat one of the best listens of the year.
And that earnestness is maybe one other thread that can connect a majority of the work I found special this year. From the country-tinged rock of Vista House's "A Seat Behind the Wing" in which we hear a voice break multiple times to the startling realization that with just a little bit of success, KNEECAP's leads "went from rags to riches, now we got a wee machine that be cleaning our dishes," to the pained pleas from Foxing's Conor Murphy, "I want to hear God yelling at me, I want to live my life like a memory," artist after artist this year dropped the pretenses and went right for the heart.
With all that, the era for cynicism truly is over, I think. And maybe it’s naive to believe that media–that music–is something that can bring understanding and healing. But in the face of horrific daily evil perpetuated by the rich, the hateful and the powerful, especially as we move forward into a potentially bleak(er) future, I choose to believe that creating and sharing things we love and fighting for the rights of all others to also be able to do the same, is something that can, in a small way, make things a bit more right in the world.
Thank you to all those who made 2024 bearable, not just all the artists in this list but all my friends and family; especially when we can share the things love with each other.
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