I like music — my artists of choice are rarely high art, and often either super-mainstream or trivially niche, but I think it’s the most efficient form of storytelling, and for that I’ll forever treasure the medium. As a sailor man who’s going into public domain next year once said, I yam what I yam! With that in mind, here’s my top ten albums and singles of 2024:
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2024
10) Daggers, Dreamkid
This year, I started writing my first fantasy novel, Neon Bonfire. The story takes place in a world akin to 1980s America but completely uncoupled from our reality, like how typical fantasy occupies medieval-era trappings—think Game of Thrones, but with tape decks and blocky phones alongside the magic and monsters. As with all creative projects, I made a semi-official playlist, the predominant genre being synthwave—and the main theme being the propulsive, defiant title track from Dreamkid’s latest LP. As in their debut, the artist’s palette paints in familiar tones of Day-Glo, static, and melancholy, but once you’ve heard wistful, glittering numbers like “Take Me on Tonight” or “Hometown Memories,” driving home while the sun sets will never quite hit the same again.
9) Birdwatching, CLIFFDIVER
Art is both contagion and medium: Without spreading, it can’t thrive. It’s in that spirit that I have a friend to thank for knowing about CLIFFDIVER, as hearing them belt out “New Vegas Bomb” at a karaoke night in 2023 put the goofy group on my radar. While the rest of their last record, Exercise Your Demons, was just serviceable for this critic, 2024’s Birdwatching won me over with its high spirits, irreverent song titles (see “black lodge breakfast burrito (limited time only)”), and ever-more identifiable passages about being a dork in your mid-thirties. “Team fight tactics” in particular is relationship goals—and I don’t even watch football!
8) American Motor Sports, Bilmuri
Speaking of musicians introduced to me by a loopy single at karaoke! Even after knowing about them for at least a year—and seeing a live performance at The Showbox in Seattle—I still don’t know how to describe this tongue-in-cheek lunk’s punk-meets-Nashville-meets-comedy niche. “Y’allternative”? “Divorced dad rock”? “Memecore”? Whatever the subgenre, the result is cuts like “EMPTYHANDED,” where our singer bemoans a one-sided relationship before agitated guitars pause en route to the breakdown for a Kevin James sample. If the Hot Topic crowd are to age into country fans the same as our forefathers, I could think of no better entry point than the beer-chugging, lawnmowing stylings of Bilmuri.
7) Haven, Marianas Trench
The rules are simple: A new Marianas Trench record comes out, I put it on this list in a second and make it my personality for a month. Once more game for a concept album befitting their roof-raising sound, Haven sees the Canuck quartet soar across thirteen tracks inspired by The Hero’s Journey, the duality of man, and—as their “Force of Nature Tour” (a proud attendee!) foregrounded—the elements themselves. “Lightning and Thunder,” “Now or Never,” “Stand and Fight,” “Turn and Run”… one could get déjà vu scrolling down the track list, but as ever, the band bounces between new wave, funk, and suites befitting a Broadway stage with a verve which flaunts the influences worn on their bedazzled sleeves yet nevertheless drowns out most contemporaries. In a year where I finally made peace with my place in the world, lithe and loud lead Josh Ramsay shouted it best: “In the end, I don’t belong inside a normal life!”
6) From Zero, Linkin Park
Chester Bennington. The name hovered over another Linkin Park project ever since the iconic singer tragically passed in 2017. Initial reactions to the appointment of Emily Armstrong were thus mixed: A woman! Scientology-adjacent! Who asked the family!? But the show must go on, and From Zero is an album which, while perhaps slight, still taps into the group’s trademark ire with a relish not seen in years. Gone are the club-friendly compositions of preceding records, replaced with returns to form like “The Emptiness Machine,” in which Mike Shinoda spits fire which continues to burn for nine more tracks, and “Two Faced,” where Armstrong scorns a deceitful opponent with eardrum-splitting intensity. Maybe I’m just an easy mark for rocker chicks, but while my sympathies go out to the Benningtons, I can’t wait to see what LP L.P. puts out next
5) A Dream Through Open Eyes, The Strike
Rock outfits founded on ‘80s appreciation are a booming business, but there’s a fine line between those who paint a new picture with the era’s vibes and those content to just, say, paraphrase Huey Lewis & The News. It’s my pleasure to report that The Strike plants a flag in the former category, and I got outta some serious funks this year for it. From the jubilant “American Dream” to plaintive closer “Until the Lights Go Out,” and reckless ballad “The Getaway” in-between, A Dream Through Open Eyes is just that: the sound of days gone by, yes, but in service of aspiration and love. Headed into 2025, we could use a whole lot of both.
4) Neck Deep, Neck Deep
As it was with The Maine in 2023, so shall it be with Neck Deep in 2024: a belated self-titled which confirms that, oh yeah, this is what this band is about and why I dig them. The Welsh pop-punkers allow for zero skips, to the point that it’s a struggle to not just go full Fantano and break down every track. Self-deprecating opener “Dumbstruck Dumbfuck,” political call to action “We Need More Bricks,” post-dumping paen “Heartbreak of the Century,” even Mulder-mode “Take Me with You” from last year’s Top Singles list—it’s all good, it’s all fun, it’s all a mood. It’s been a long, lonely December, but with Neck Deep on the aux and in my soul, I’m never really alone.
3) POST HUMAN: NeX GEn, Bring Me the Horizon
If music can be a form of therapy for the musician, then Bring Me The Horizon has been controversial frontman Olli Sykes’ appointment for some time now—the stage his couch, the audience his doctor. Fortunately, BMTH go big yet go dorky, so while tracks like “Kool-Aid” are kinda just a retread of the cult commentary from 2019’s “MANTRA,” we also get the irreverently titled screed “Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd,” despondent tantrum “n/A,” and a home at last for the most a song has ever sounded like a 1-800-273-8255 call, “LosT.” Here’s hoping Sykes keeps it together enough to finish off this gaming-influenced chapter of the band’s saga, but while I sympathize with folks who see “POST HUMAN” as a glorified mixtape series, I know no better way to encapsulate the fevered dissonance of mental unwellness than an hour of screaming, snark, and asides about wanting to make love to a chainsaw.
2) THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, Taylor Swift
Look what she made me do. For four album cycles in a row now, Taylor Swift has entered my Top Five—but for the first time, I have no reservations. I identify as a writer, and having penned poems since I was at least six years old, a poet in turn. As such, framing her first bona fide double LP as an assemblage of intimate, long-winded verses is the closest I’ve come to seeing America’s sweetheart validate my own approach to the medium. Yes, some anecdotes are cringe (“you take my ring off my middle finger and put on the one people put wedding rings on”— hey Taylor, you mean… the ring finger?), but I can only envy the clout it takes to trauma-dump for 30+ tracks to a fanbase larger than some countries and walk away all the bigger for it. The title track paints a searing portrait of a fractured relationship, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” embraces the starlet’s drama-queen history with scream-queen zeal, and “I Can Do it with a Broken Heart” makes radio-ready pep of weathering industry pressure. Pending how things pan out with Travis, it’s anyone’s guess what the next phase of Ms. Swift’s career will be… but if she’s ever in town, I’m happy to become a liner note.
1) Glass Half Empty, VOILÀ
I don’t make music. I’ve always wanted to, I can, and I should, but I don’t. Even if I never do, though, I’ll rest easy knowing the music I’d want to make was already made by VOILÀ. Fashioning themselves not as singers or even artists but rather “magicians,” Gus Ross and Luke Eisner blend the dissonant sounds of my coming-of-age—emo and sensual electro-pop—into a package that made me kick myself for not clocking them upon their 2019 emergence. A feature by The Ready Set led me to the first act of Glass Half Empty, upon which I relished their back catalogue full of bangers like scene girl ode “My Type” and the flagrantly erotic “So Hot That it Hurts,” but it was the belated joinder of this album’s back half that made me decide my recency bias was justified. I like clever, I like cacophonous, and I like knowing that someone else feels as deeply as I do about the heart and hereafter. “Hope That I Go First” says the quiet part oh-so loud in treasuring an aging partner, “WAR.” unapologetically equates infatuation with the masculine urge to do battle, and when “The Treasure (6 Feet Under)” caps a career fixation on memento mori with a reprise of lyrics past, I knew I was in the hands of connoisseurs of the craft. In enjoying this debonair duo, my glass is not just half full—it runneth over.
Top 10 Singles of 2024
10) “Classical,” Vampire Weekend
Yep, these guys are still around… but so am I, here to treasure wry, baroque ruminations on culture and the human condition the same as I did in high school!
9) “NO FUN,” blink-182
While One More Time was too nostalgia-mongering and, well, mixed like crap to earn space on my 2023 list, the industry-standard second wind of tracks dropped this year made for a pleasant surprise—this B-side in particular. Tom’s autumnal laments may ring like inside baseball, but as an outsider, the sentiment remains relatable: so hey, fuck me, and fuck you too.
8) “TRENDSETTER,” Glorb
I’m serious as a stroke when I say that this anonymous YouTuber doing obscene gangsta rap in the AI-enabled voices of SpongeBob characters is my favorite new find of the year.
7) “Aim for the Bushes,” Silhouettes
Personally, I’d never have chosen to combine dialogue from The Other Guys with emo grievances, but whoever’s behind this Washington-based project with only two singles to their name still has me among their dozens-strong IG followers as a result.
6) “You’re So Ugly When You Cry,” The Funeral Portrait
Do you want to get mean, dark, and a little theatrical? If so, The Funeral Portrait is for you, this collab with The Used frontman Bert McCracken in particular.
5) “Lithonia,” Childish Gambino
After his latest album—a premature soundtrack to sci-fi comedy Bando Stone and the New World—Donald Glover said he’s done playing Childish Gambino. Fair enough if so—after Atlanta, “This is America,” and Lando Calrissian, where does one even go but back behind the curtain? Hell if I know who Codi LeRae is, but were the artist to bow out with this single, I’d take its wailing about the futility of love as a suitable swan song.
4) “JOYRIDE,” Kesha
I like when Kesha does that thing with her voice. Which thing? Oh, all of them.
3) “Girls,” The Dare
I won’t pretend I’m unique in stumbling upon a new favorite song after seeing an inordinately high stream count and going “hmm.” Even still, The Dare’s “Girls” supplanted comparably named tracks by Mayday Parade and The 1975 for me this year with its breathless, lascivious lines that read like the diary of a dude three weeks into a fraying vow of celibacy. Arctic Monkeys may’ve moved on to piano noodling, but “indie sleaze” is back in action!
2) “Cold as Hell,” Dance with the Dead
When I said earlier that Dreamkid’s “Daggers” inspired my novel Neon Bonfire, I lied by omission a little. This track, part of a soft comeback from dark synth collective Dance with the Dead, was the real impetus, infusing me as it did with such badass energy (if only upon mishearing the chorus as “it’s cold as hell under us”) that I was helpless to not imagine my own cool fight scene set to its icy strains… stay tuned!
1) “Russian Roulette,” Porter Robinson
It’s easy to contemplate self-harm—we all have a reliable “off” switch, in the form of the nearest sharp or blunt object propelled inward at sufficient speed. It’s more rewarding, however, to recognize that the flicker of nihilism occasioned by a spate of self-doubt or a stranger’s snide remark is nothing compared to the buoyant, shining promise which the future still holds. From Porter Robinson, such observations might come off as first-world problems, but the acclaimed musician’s delivery is one for the ages, as bemoaning imposter syndrome gives way to a recognition of all that life still has to offer, followed by a triumphant EDM breakdown and, finally, words of wisdom from a Stephen Hawking-alike which conclude with a curt but essential mandate: “Don’t kill yourself, you idiot!”
–
Notes&Sketches 