10 great albums from 2024

The Cure | Alcest | J Mascis | Speed | Ride

The tinsel’s down and the Christmas tree long ago folded up and returned to the loft, but this newsletter’s extended holiday hibernation is only just coming to an end.

First a side note for new subscribers (and welcome to you all!), now that I’m finally shaking the newsletter fully awake it does mean there’ll be another issue tomorrow (the usual weekly digest of curated punk rock, alt rock and indie music writing), but back-to-back issues are very much the exception.

So, with one eye still looking backwards to last year it’s time to play catch-up and run down 10 great albums from 2024.

Thanks to my monthly Fighting with the Undertow playlists I listened to more music from 2024 than any other year over the last 12 months according to Last.fm, probably the first time my listening habits have ever trended in that direction.

Last.fm’s view, by decade, of my listening in 2024

Indeed, every single one of my 10 great albums was featured in Fighting with the Undertow, as were so many other great albums that narrowing it down to just 10 albums was even more challenging than usual.

Consequently, there’s no room below for Nigerian guitar hero Mdou Moctar’s Funeral for Justice, the post-hardcore jazz from the Fugazi rhythm section of The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis or Chelsea Wolfe’s bewitching She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She.

Last.fm’s view, by genre, of how my listening shifted during 2024

Also sitting just outside my top ten were the frantic hardcore from Buffalo’s Spaced, the cosmic death metal of Blood Incantation, and the hipster techno marching band Meute, the latter of which regularly soundtrack my writing.

Here’s what did make the final grade.

10. Touché Amoré - Spiral in a Straight Line

The post-hardcore band’s sixth album and their first release since 2020’s Lament, Spiral in a Straight Line continues their slow drift towards the mainstream, under the guidance of producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot, Glassjaw, At The Drive-In etc), without losing their attack as deft, gravel-throated lyricism is once again paired with crashing guitars. The self-help pep talk of ‘Nobody’s’ is followed by the suitably urgent ‘Disasters’, while single ‘Hal Ashby’ - named after the acclaimed American counterculture director - explores misunderstandings and the need for a course correction. It’s further enlivened by guest spots from Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr/Sebadoh), though he feels somewhat lost in the mix, and Julien Baker (Boygenius), who truly rises to the occasion.

• Buy: Touché Amoré - Spiral in a Straight Line (Bandcamp)

9. Speed - Only One Mode

When a hardcore band says, via the title of their debut album, that they’ve only got one mode your thoughts may well to the KEN (kill everyone now) touring ethos of Rollins-era Black Flag as well as a certain monosyllabic bludgeoning that could very quickly turn generically dull. Australia’s Speed are very happy to do bludgeoning, but they’ve got too much to say - and musical imagination backing it up - to be either monosyllabic or generically dull. Across its 23 minutes, Only One Mode offers several standout tracks, including ‘The First Test’, which must also be one of the more aggressive songs to feature the line “Life is beautiful” as its breakdown wanders all over the place (flutes?!?).

• Buy: Speed - Only One Mode (Bandcamp)

8. Ride - Interplay

In his book Creation Stories: Riots, Raves and Running a Label, record boss Alan McGee is convinced Ride had another five or six great shoegazing albums in them to follow Nowhere and Leave Them All Behind in the early 1990s, had their heads not been turned by Britpop and the massive success of label mates Oasis, who guitarist and singer Andy Bell would later join on bass. Ride reformed in 2014 and 2024’s Interplay is one of those great shoegaze records that should have followed Leave Them All Behind. It’s customary to damn the latest output from certain reformed indie/alternative/punk darlings with the faint praise of it being their best since their last, least worst album (looking at you, Pixies), but Interplay is just a great album, an old fashioned disc that rewards repeated listens while updating their sound with a modern take on shoegaze, Krautrock and post-punk that loses none of their early tunefulness.

• Buy: Ride - Interplay (Bandcamp)

7. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Mannequin Pussy are one of several bands here that popped up on multiple publication’s best of lists, as the Philadelphia band continue to build on the critical acclaim accrued by their 2019 album ‘Patience’. It’s well deserved, as their fourth long-playing outing I Got Heaven is a beguiling mix of searing punk and swooping indie-pop, with an undercurrent of shoegaze.

• Buy: Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (Bandcamp)

6. Laura Jane Grace - Hole in My Head

The Against Me! singer’s third solo album is a collection of catchy punk songs that wear their hearts of their sleeves. The pop-punk of ‘Hole in My Head’, ‘I’m Not a Cop’ and its chugging rock ‘n roll groove, and solo acoustic ‘Dysphoria Hoodie’ are all standouts, and that’s just its first three tracks. The album’s title was inspired by Laura Jane Grace’s head tattoo by Gakkin, the master Japanese tattoo artist who further galvanised Grace to write its track ‘Birds Talk Too’ when - post-inking - he gave her a hand-painted black hollow-body Gretsch guitar.

• Buy: Laura Jane Grace - Hole in My Head (Bandcamp)

5. Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To

I don’t listen to much metalcore, but damn this is impressive. A wall of heavy hardcore from the Kentucky band who have been busy hitting - and scaring - the mainstream (see Weekly Digest 14). Certainly the heaviest album in this year’s top 10, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To retains the merciless intensity and unflinching honesty of their previous two albums to blend anguish and redemption from its turmoil.

• Buy: Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (Bandcamp)

4. Alcest - Les Chants De l’Aurore

I’ve been a fan of the ‘blackgaze’ combination of black metal and shoegaze since discovering Deafheaven’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love and When I Die, Will I Get Better? By Svalbard, so it was probably inevitable that I’d find my way to genre pioneers Alcest. I saw the French band at Electric Brixton in London last month, where they made their atmospheric music seem effortless, powerful without losing its intricacies and Les Chants De l’Aurore (the songs of dawn) feels like the perfect place to start working my way through their back catalogue.

• Buy: Alcest - Les Chants De l’Aurore (Bandcamp)

3. J Mascis - What Do We Do Now

Dinosaur Jr leader J Mascis came close to being a solo recording artist on his band’s 1991 album Green Mind, on which he played almost all the instruments, but he only started to fully release records under his own name with 2011’s acoustic Several Shades of Why. That album set the tone for a series of lovely, low key records that stood apart from the face-melting fuzz and distortion that underpin Dinosaur Jr releases and concerts even as they became increasingly intricate. What Do We Do Now is the first Mascis solo effort to blur the line with his band’s output. It won’t melt your face, but does offer tunes galore.

• Buy: J Mascis - What Do We Do Now (Bandcamp)

2. Public Service Broadcasting - The Last Flight

UK indie band Public Service Broadcasting’s combination of historic newsreels and other vocal samples with instrumentation that ranges from indie rock to Krautrock to dance punk has been applied to subjects that range from the space race to the Welsh mining industry. “Teaching the lessons of the past through the music of the future” is how they describe it on Bandcamp, which might well sound exceedingly po-faced and overly worthy to you, but that would be to overlook the audio-visual spectacular they create in service of their chosen topics. On The Last Flight they chronicle Amelia Earhart's 1937 round-the-world expedition, in which she and her navigator disappeared, creating an album that ranks among their best work. Its interplay between the past and present is best exemplified by ‘Electra’, named after the the twin-engine monoplane that Earhart dubbed her "flying laboratory", and the song’s line “machines will do the heavy work, men will supervise the machines” calls to mind certain of today’s technology cheerleaders.

• Buy: Public Service Broadcasting - The Last Flight (Bandcamp)

1. The Cure - Songs of a Lost World

The Cure’s 14th album, and first in 16 years, was the easiest choice to make for this year. Robert Smith’s band have several incarnations they can call on and for Songs of a Lost World it’s a doomy sound, somewhere between Disintegration and Wish, if the latter’s pop songs were removed - there’s certainly no ‘Friday I’m in Love’ here. Instead there is, as promised, one of their bleakest albums to date - quite something after more than 45 years redefining bleak music - but it’s a bleak blanket of comforting sound in which to wrap yourself up. Washes of keyboards and guitars are carried along by melodic bass and drums that often take centre stage. If, as Robert Smith claims (see Weekly Digest #16), he has a companion album “ready to go” and a third new LP of “random stuff” coming soon then Songs of a Lost World heralds another exciting stage for the band.

• Buy: The Cure - Songs of a Lost World (various links)

What made your best of 2024 list? Let me know your favourites from last year in the comments (or drop a link there if you’ve published your list on Substack or elsewhere online).