The 2024 Experience: Top 20 Albums

Most of my favourite music websites have done away with rating and ranking music. I respect the logic
of rejecting comparison, because what is comparison if not the thief of joy? I can’t seem to break this
tradition, because it gives me a lot of satisfaction – plus, music in general is such a healthy distraction,
especially around the yawning void of the holidays

It’s also such a functional way to keep track of dispatches from the massive waterfall of new music that
floods us every day. A music business economist recently told Music Radar that in 2024 more music is
released in a single day than was released in all of 1989, so it takes some time to narrow down my faves.
Happy listmas friends, here’s to setting aside the weird helplessness of 2024 for something more
hopeful and affirming in 2025

20 SQUAREPUSHER : Dostrotime

19 DOECHII : Alligator Bites Never Heal

18 a.s.o. : a.s.o.

17 CLAIRO : Charm

best moment : On the warm and fluttery “Sexy To Someone” when Clairo puts her own murmuring flair
on a vocal that finds its way between folksy Vashti Bunyan and chipper Carole King over sparkling jazz-
pop piano, . “Sexy is something I see in everything,” she admits, pointing to “honey stickin’ to your
hands” and “sugar on the rim.” Never underestimate the power of desire even in small drops.

RIYL : Carole King, Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, Broadcast, soft rock, perfect indie pop

fav songs : “Juna” / “Sexy to Someone”

Companion LP: FIEVEL IS GLAQUE : Rong Weicknes

16 TYLA : Tyla

Best moment : On “Truth or Dare” with its choppy, foregrounded drums, an easy syncopation that
translates on both sides of the Atlantic. The background vocals are exquisite, where on massive hit
“Water” they provide rapture, here they give a sense of foreboding, bolstering Tyla’s lead vocal with a
warning and a plea.

Fav songs : “Truth or Dare” / “Breathe Me”

Companion LP : Tems : Born in the Wild

15 JULIA HOLTER : Something In the Room She Moves

best moment : On “Spinning,” Julia Holter presents love as something frightening and bombastic. It’s the
moment the drums get buoyant and synths take on animalistic qualities: buzzing, mewing, screeching, yelping. When Julia sings, she sounds like she is gasping for air between each word, plainly breathless,
because that’s what this love—unsure, unsteady, dizzying love—will do to you.

RIYL : Jenny Hval, Susanne Sundfor, Eartheater, art pop, synth pop, spoken word, ambient choral

fav songs : “Sun Girl” / “Evening Mood”

Companion LP : FINE : Rocky Top Ballads

14 CHAT PILE : Cool World

best moment : Israel’s brutal and literal holocaust on the Palestinian people tears through the lyrics of
Chat Pile’s “Shame” – is this the cool world that their album title poses? Damn. As caustic guitars thrash
like weapons, Raygun Busch sings of bombs, broken bodies, the illusion of justice, and God remaining
silent. Busch sings with a tired detachment, especially as he utters the memorable line, “There are
myriad ways to destroy human skin,” as if he were talking about something as casual as the weather.

fav songs : “Shame” / “Masc”

companion LP: Blood Incantation : Absolute Elsewhere

13 FOUR TET : Three

best moment : On “Loved” where Kieran Hebden returns to his sampledelic Rounds days with a
textured, threnodic song that’s less “these are the breaks” and more “them’s the breaks.” The beat is
humble, groovy, and mysterious, and it’s elevated by a silvery melody played on Soma TERRA, a “highly
conceptual” microtonal polyphonic synthesizer encased in wood. You could say that’s beside the point,
but that’s literally the Four Tet touch.

fav songs : “Skater” / “Three Drums”

RIYL : DJ Koze, Leon Vynehall, Kornel Kovacs, Anthony Naples, Bella Boo, deep house, downtempo,
Balearic beat, ambient house

Companion LP : FERGUS JONES : Ephemera

12 BETH GIBBONS : Lives Outgrown

best moment : It took 16 years for Beth Gibbons to follow up Portishead’s last album with a work all her
own. On “Floating on a Moment” we’re gifted a shimmering showcase for Gibbons’ voice, craggy as
ever, bummed out, determined. “Honestly, it’s not that I don’t want to return,” she sings. “It just reminds us that all we have… is here and now.” The world she returns to is especially awful this year, but
then she’s always been the pure bard of bleakness.

RIYL : Portishead, Talk Talk, Radiohead, Jessica Pratt, Laura Marling, PJ Harvey, ghostly British folk

fav songs : “Floating on a Moment” / “Whispering Love”

companion LP : Adrienne Lenker : Bright Future

11 NICOLAS JAAR : Piedras 1 & 2

best moment : on the centerpiece, “El Río de las tumbas,” over a swooning synthscape, Nicolas Jaar
outlines the history of the Magdalena river. The elliptical prose references everything from Einstein to
Palestine, highlighting the global impact of colonialism and the cyclical nature of life and death. I need to
learn Spanish too.

fav songs : “Aquí ” / “Mi Viejita”

RIYL : Can, Darkside, Floating Points, Jon Hopkins, Helado Negro, Pantha du Prince, space-rock, psych-
rock, space jazz

Companion LP: Floating Points : Cascade

10 GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR : No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead

Best moment : Instead of doom and anti-capitalist dread, the legendary Montreal band conjurs
camaraderie and catharsis on their incredible new record, and you can feel it almost immediately on the
soul-purifying centerpiece “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD,” where Godspeed rally around a guitar fanfare enroute to transforming themselves into the world’s most powerful Velvet Underground cover band, ridinga breakneck locomotive rhythm toward the light on the horizon. 

RIYL : A Silver Mt. Zion, Do Make Say Think, Swans, Mono, Mogwai, pretending you hate capitalism but
becoming a shitty landlord in Montreal anyway

Best songs : “BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD” / “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD”

companion LP : Oranssi Pazuzu : Muuntautuja

09 SOPHIE : Sophie

best moment : On “My Forever” which boasts SOPHIE’s best collaborator, the hugely underrated
Montreal singer and songwriter Cecile Believe, we’re gifted a melancholy midtempo stunner, a bit of
sophisti-pop with phrases that cleverly turn on their political implications. It’s the lines “Everybody wants to be somebody/ Everybody’s got to own their body” that really gets me, because these days,
neither is promised, and both are worth the fight.

RIYL : Charli XCX, BC Kingdom, Cecile Believe, Sega Bodega, Arca, UK bass, future garage, acid
fav songs : “My Forever” (ft. Cecile Believe) / “Do You Wanna Be Alive” (ft. Kid Sister)

Companion EP : Cecile Believe : Tender the Spark

08 NILÜFER YANYA : My Method Actor

best moment : On “Like I Say (I runaway)” the lead single from Nilüfer Yanya’s third album finds her in a
moment of calm at first. But then her voice tips into its higher register just before the chorus, giving up
the gun: “The minute I’m not in control/ I’m tearing up inside,” she admits over a guitar that recalls the
dense haze of Loveless and Mazzy Star. And then, just like the cyclical nature of an anxious spiral, the
song snaps back where it began, a hypnotic swirl that renders it seemingly endless.

RIYL : PJ Harvey, Cate Le Bon, Tricky, Little Dragon, Goldfrapp, “In Rainbows” -era Radiohead, art rock,
trip hop, indie rock

fav songs : “Method Actor” / “Mutations”

companion LP : FABIANA PALLADINO : Fabiana Palladino

07 BROADCAST : Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006-2009

best moment : On first single ‘Follow The Light’, which is completely perfect in its minimal beauty, a near
complete gem with the late, great Trish Keenan singing against herself and a simple synth melody that
evokes another Warp favourite: Boards Of Canada.

RIYL : British folk, hauntology, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Stereolab, Melody’s Echo Chamber, Atlas
Sound, Yo La Tengo, Mazzy Star

fav songs : “March of the Fleas” / “Follow the Light”

Companion LP : Distant Call – Collected Demos 2000-2006

06 MOUNT EERIE : Night Palace

best moment : Phil Elverum’s music has never been explicitly political, although his reverence for nature
and DIY culture has never been difficult to form into a broader worldview. But seeing him confront
socio-economic, historical, and racial issues on Night Palace with the same level of intensity that A CrowLooked At Me addressed death, it’s transformative. It snaps into focus on “Non-Metaphorical
Decolonization” where his principle concern is America’s legacy of genocide and subjugation of
Indigenous Peoples:

“Now we live in the wreckage of a colonizing force/ Whose racist poison still flows
So scared of a moment of discomfort now/ We turn away from the obvious:
All we have is stolen and can’t be owned”

RIYL : The Microphones ; ), Sun Kil Moon, Julie Doiron, Xiu Xiu, Eric’s Trip, Laura Marling, Songs: Ohia,
black metal folk, Twin Peaks

fav songs : “I Walk” / “Huge Fire”

05 JESSICA PRATT : Here in the Pitch

best moment : On “Life Is,” Jessica Pratt makes it sound simply effortlessness, like a song you’ve known
forever even if you’re hearing it for the first time. For me it’s that splash of Wurlizter organ, a
Christmassy bell – as though each element were competing to be quieter than the rest. No matter how
many times you’ve listened to the song, you find yourself hearing new details, discovering new
dimensions in her music’s luminous time capsule.

fav songs : “Life Is” / “World on a String”

RIYL : Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, folk, psych folk, singer/songwriter, chamber folk

companion LP: FINE : Rocky Top Ballads

04 MAGDALENA BAY : Imaginal Disk

best moment: On “Tunnel Vision,” the album’s five-minute centerpiece, sums up what Magdalena Bay
does so well. They practice relative restraint for the song’s first half, beginning with a lulling keyboard
arpeggio that slowly nestles into your mind. But as the track gains momentum, the bottom falls out,
giving way to wooshes of static and loose, uneasy drum fills. And just when it feels like it might break
apart, the track dives headfirst into a pounding synth rock epic with layers of swelling synths, chugging
guitars, and incessant bass and drums. Most pop girlies could never.

RIYL : synth pop, dance-pop, prog pop, ethereal wave, Grimes, Carly Rae Jepsen, Genesis, PC Music,
Caroline Polachek, M83

fav songs : “Tunnel Vision” / “Image”

03 SKEE MASK : Resort

best moment : “BB Care,” thanks to its ramshackle drums, dreamy synth pads, and barely there vocal
samples, feels like a forgotten bonus track from Music Has the Right to Children. It was also my most
streamed album by far, it’s just gorgeous.

RIYL : Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Autechre, arctic breakbeat, ambient dub techno, IDM,
atmospheric, drum’n’bass

fav songs : “Reminiscrmx” / “Hölzl Was a Dancer”

Companion LP: DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ : Hex / Sorcery

02 CHARLI XCX : brat

best moment : On “So I”, an homage to her frequent collaborator SOPHIE, she doesn’t settle for easy
recollections of good times, instead honing in on the regrets she feels for not taking the late producer
up on dinner plans when she still had the chance. “Would you like this one?” she wonders before “So I”
dissolves into gossamer synths aimed towards the afterlife, interpolating the melody of SOPHIE’s own
“It’s Okay To Cry”. There’s something inherently humanizing about Charli XCX’s career, the story of someone who -urposely returned to the underground after years aiming for the spotlight. Fame might still make you cry, but on Brat, Charli has SOPHIE in her ear, telling her it’s okay to cry.

RIYL : SOPHIE, PC Music, A.G. Cook, Caroline Polachek, Ariana Grande, electropop, bubblegum bass,
dance-pop, synthpop

fav songs : “Sympathy is a knife” / “360”

Companion EP : Kassie Krut : Kassie Krut EP

Companion LP: A.G. Cook : Britpop

01 CINDY LEE : Diamond Jubilee

best moment : If you were to take one song off of Diamond Jubilee and play it out at a haze-filled
lounge, it would have to be the phenomenal “All I Want is You” where the backing vocals of Steve Lind
lend a sense of community in isolation, the tracks suddenly burst into one of Patrick Flegel’s sublimely
expressive and haunting solos before reunifying into that haunting chorus that feels like a sonic tap on
the shoulder, Felgel and Lind’s voices coming together to sway the listener like a carer’s hands on a
weeping child. This gentleness is what marks out Diamond Jubilee among the rest of the Cindy Lee
catalogue, there is a sense of real tenderness and empathy to her ballads but never a desire to fully
linger in melancholy.

RIYL : Women, Deerhunter, the Shangri-Las, David Lynch, Yves Tumor, Suicide, Glenn Branca,
Patsy Cline

fav songs : “Baby Blue” / “If You Hear Me Crying”

Companion EP : DEAN BLUNT & JOANNE ROBERTSON : Backstage Raver

15 more GEMS :
BAT FOR LASHES : The Dream of Delphi
BURIAL : Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above
THE CURE : Songs Of a Lost World
BILLIE EILISH : Hit Me Hard and Soft
MYRIAM GENDRON : Mayday
KIM GORDON : The Collective
JAMIE xx : In Waves
JLIN : Akoma
ADRIENNE LENKER : Bright Future
KALI MALONE : All Life Long
MK.GEE : Two Star & the Dream Police
THE SMILE : Wall of Eyes / Cutouts
TINASHE : Quantum Baby
TR/ST : Performance
XIU XIU : 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips