Stop the press! It’s time to remember the year you drink to forget!
Ummed and erred about declaring so, but hey: 2024 has been the best year for music. Whatever your metric for quantifying such a pointless idea: amount of good songs, amount of good notes played per capita, I can’t speak to it other than to declare that every album mentioned on this webpage right now could have been my own number one album the year before last, the year before that, the year before that.
Like, the Tyler album doesn’t even get referenced anywhere in this article, beyond this current sentence and the next one. And I really liked that Tyler album! Christ though, without further ado and whining, here are the casualties of this arbitrary top 10 format we have imposed on ourselves here at SPITVALVE, my alphabetised honourable mentions:
Honourable Mentions
- Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future
- cumgirl8 – the 8th cumming
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”
- Hiatus Kaiyote – Love Heart Cheat Code
- Hinds – VIVA HINDS
- The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstacy
- Ka – The Thief Next to Jesus
- Nemahsis – Verbathim
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God
- NxWorries – Why Lawd?
- The Smile – Wall of Eyes
- Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us
- Vince Staples – Dark Times
That hurt. Onto the list!
10. glass beach – plastic death
Pick your metaphor for the genre combination in this album: it’s either a nice and spicy genre soup, or it’s a genre Frankenstein’s monster who has come to throw you against a wall, very lovingly all the same. You can read far more of my thoughts here, but know that it’s the trans-experience prog rock album you may have been waiting your whole life for.
9. JPEGMAFIA – I Lay Down My Life For You
For years on years, if you were a rap producer painting your beats towards the abrasive end of the spectrum, you took your inspirations from the latest JPEGMAFIA, or from clipping., those demonstrably seem to be your two options. Against his own fault, this led me to actually dread having to check in on this one; yes he reinvents the wheel on most albums, so of course he won’t this time. Well shocker, he reinvented the wheel again.
A real rock throughline to the production across this brings about a new way for his punches to land, cold and biting. Just how I hope that demonic, over-caffeinated lemonade which killed those yanks would feel.
8. Mount Eerie – Night Palace
To risk reading into a person by their art, which has never done anyone any good ever, indie legend Phil Elvrum has a whole lot of love in his heart. The often abrupt little tracks on Night Palace pull from the terrifying bigger picture of life, to the minutiae of cleaning. From the political, to the whimsical. It’s overwhelming to pull your heart in so many directions, to make the necessary handbrake turns in your attention to respect the universe the same as the sweeping, and Night Palace is sincere in its eclecticism.
A lull or two in connection across the album is going to be pretty inevitable for anyone at 83 minutes long, but do remember that is also the runtime of The Cat in the Hat (2003). Party at mine next week where we see what happens when they play at the same time.
7. MGMT – Loss of Life
To follow up on the killer Little Dark Age is no small feat, and MGMT act casual about it. There is no attempt to overscale themselves; though more instrumentally dense this time around, Loss of Life strikes a far more blissful tone, tapping the harsher synths just a little under the rug.
To be succinct: dreamy is the key word, lyrically, structurally, musically. And it’s one of those real purgatory dreams where you can’t tell if you’re just sitting happily with your loved ones, or if it’s all about to go wrong, their masks are going to fall down any second now, and you’ve been breaking bread with ten foot tall praying mantises the whole time. So yeah, dreamy, and tilted on that uncertainty. You don’t know if all of your friends and families are insects, and truly, you never really will know.
6. Xiu Xiu – 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips
Xiu Xiu never have their name spoken without the phrase “they can be a bit of a challenging listen” tacked on at the end. Though the name of this new release doesn’t exactly promise user-friendly, 13FBISwBHG (as its known to friends) is the experimental rock fuckers most accessible, trading on a slight bit of their usual edge, but retaining all their excitement.
As horny and violent, as a redacted choice of comparison.
5. Kendrick Lamar – GNX
We all stopped talking about this within like three days didn’t we? In this year, of course the only person who has been capable of over-shadowing a Kendrick release has been Kendrick himself.
Taking a break from haunting a canadian into submission, the beats here are sparse and stabbing, and Kendrick has all the room he likes to redemonstrate himself for the thousandth time. It’s listenable in the truest sense, each bop flowing into each other so well, and through you.
Kendrick will be here long after we are dead, hiding under your bed, the greatest bogeyman we will ever know.
4. Death’s Dynamic Shroud & Galen Tipton – You Like Music
The NHS’ latest policy on the dosage strength prescribed for all ADHD medications is that it will be determined by how high this album is placed on the patient’s end of year list. So go fuck yourself Kendrick, I want to learn how to sustain eye contact this year.
Galen Tipton joins the Death’s Dynamic Shroud trio here to form some sort of four-person trio, which some believe might be called a fouro, to exact upon the world a pulsing onslaught of audio caffeine. All the way glitchy, all the way entrancing. In this marriage of styles you will be leaving before the reception, due to head-bobbing-related spinal injuries.
3. Geordie Greep – The New Sound
And following on from marriage is, as always, divorce. Geordie Greep left the supernova ride of black midi for the pursuit of his own solo work, which turned out to be Andrew Tate the musical. To unsimplify that, The New Sound is a showy, bossanova-infused exploration of the modern trappings of masculinity, where the masculinely-trapped sing with jubilation to you about how much they love their cages. That incredibly smart analysis is only half of the story of how much this album just slaps raw.
Throughout this album, so much of it feels like it just shouldn’t work. But, it just does. And you can read my review on this one if you fancy knowing a little more.
2. Charli XCX – BRAT
SURPRISE BITCH! This reviewer didn’t put BRAT number 1! Controversial!
Music genres were never really a concept which could be solved, until one day, dance pop kind of just was solved. Charli XCX, alongside hyperpop veteran A.G Cook at the production helm made this project which rotates around the skulls of many as they try to sleep.
What’s more to say that hasn’t already been said, discoursed, denigrated, reinstated? It’s so finely tuned to do exactly what it is trying, and track after track achieve their own goals with flying shades of lime green. The beats, they beat.
I haven’t been checking the news recently, but this album being tied to Kamala Harris’ campaign even won her the presidency! As we leave the year, and are thus forced kicking and screaming away from our collective, mandatory BRAT summer, BRAT year, I give you this:
“So, we brat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Bratsby
1. Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk
In a word: Shiny. In 161 words: Imaginal Disk makes an odyssey out of synth pop, and it’s one of the most rewarding albums I’ve dripped into my little ears.
It works as a real shut-your-brains off record if that’s what you’re needing. On the other end of things, holding a magnifying glass to each element of the song-structure, the lyrics, the production, the dynamics, it rides some alien line between feeling so simple, and self-evidently just so meticulous. If you listen hard enough, you should even be able to hear that the Magdalena Bay duo use a pleasantly-scented and gently moisturising hand soap.
Poptimism has never been more poptimistic, whenever bits and bobs throughout the track push to distortion, it somehow doesn’t feel dirty, it feels like a new level of clean has been scrubbed away. I will do anything for the crackle of the chord hits on the chorus of Death and Romance, DM me.
It just works. It’s as simple, and as complex as that.
Well there we are. Welcome into 2025, and keep listening to music. If you listen to music, you might find the music enjoyable.