For the first part of this year, writing about music got away from me.
I’m not exactly sure why, but the easiest answer is probably just the general decline in us writing consistent reviews of anything on this blog. Additionally, my general mood about online music writing also hasn’t been helped by the announcement that Pitchfork, the one critical voice that was always dependable, was being folded into GQ, not to mention the other online pop culture sites that have been gutted the past few years.
But really, the more optimistic reason for why I haven’t been posting music reviews on here is that there’s been a fairly overwhelming amount of good music to listen to this year. So much so that every time I’ve found a new favorite album of the moment, a new one gets released the next week. And even when there hasn’t always been a new album out there to mesmerize me, there have also been plenty of high-profile pop albums this year that despite their varying quality, at the very least felt like necessary listening. Perhaps this doesn’t all excuse my laziness, but either way, there have been a lot of albums worth diving into, and it’s made it hard to know where to start. Well, let’s start here.
The Smile – Wall of Eyes
The first album of 2024 that I got excited about was in some ways not all that exciting, but nonetheless satisfying. Wall of Eyes doesn’t quite have the freshness of The Smile’s first album, which gave our Radiohead-deprived ears a comforting sense of jazzy melancholy in a world where Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood’s former band might not ever release another album. But it still encapsulates why these two restlessly inventive musicians have been such good foils to each other over the years and why their shared history and love of unconventional sounds will also make it so they continue to find their way back to each other.
Yorke and Greenwood’s new project with drummer Tom Skinner sees them continuing much in the same atmospheric vein as that first album, though maybe in a little more polished way. You still get the sense that these songs came out of modest jam sessions between these musicians, but there’s plenty of sweep and grandeur to them as well. And much like its predecessor, because it doesn’t end up having the same hype as a new Radiohead album, Wall of Eyes ends up being another pleasant surprise with just enough knotty detours to feel like a band pushing themselves in strange new directions while also playing to their strengths.
Pouty – Forgot About Me
There isn’t much I like more than a nice juicy power pop song fused with over-distorted guitar riffs. Yet, I just haven’t had much luck finding music in this buoyant indie rock vein that has dug its claws into me the past couple of years. That said, I haven’t gone looking that hard for these bands lately, though I’m sure they’re out there. So when I stumbled onto Pouty’s debut album early this year, it was a nice, buzzy surprise that also had me wondering where singer/songwriter/bandleader Rachel Gagliardi had come from.
Well, apparently she had been the drummer in a band charmingly named Slutever, and started writing solo songs under the Pouty moniker over the years. The result is a quick-and-zippy debut album filled with odes to the rush of being a teenager combined with the type of sugary melodies that aptly compliment that kind of emotional abandon. Yet for all of the immediacy you get from thrilling rockers like the opener “Salty”, there’s also a slight wistfulness that comes from an artist in their 30s who’s a little too jaded to always take these songs’ ‘90s nostalgia at face value.
Brittany Howard – What Now
What Now is the kind of album that does make me think there have been a number of great albums to come out this year that were easy to take for granted, because I haven’t spent nearly enough time with it. I probably didn’t appreciate Alabama Shakes as much as I should’ve when they were around, which is why I was a bit surprised by how taken I was with Howard’s 2019 debut solo LP, Jaime. I’m not sure that it was a record that solidified her in the eyes of those looking for a continuation of Alabama Shakes, but it definitely felt welcome for fans of slightly off-kilter R&B like myself.
Perhaps the biggest reason I’ve undervalued this album so far is because it is such a “vibe” album. Howard leans even further into jazz and psychedelic soul influences, while occasionally reviving the kind of dirgey funk that personified her former band. Yet for the album’s moments of lush production, it also occasionally features a tasty jam that plays up Howard’s innate vocal talents and ability to harmonize with herself, seemingly the only person up for the challenge.
Hurray For The Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive
It seems like the recurring theme of a lot of my favorite albums of the year was artists I already loved sounding very comfortably themselves. In the case of Hurray For The Riff, this came after a pair of albums of Alynda Segarra trying to push her alt-country/Americana sound into more indie pop and conceptual directions. Here though, she returns more to the simple troubadour songs of her early records, yet it still doesn’t feel like an artist merely doing what comes easy.
These songs still contain a certain strength and unpredictability, but there’s also a reflective breeziness that makes the album really easy to keep spinning over and over again. The Past Is Still Alive appears to be inspired by the death of Segarra’s father, and the album has a feeling of making peace with a death that was easy to foresee but still hard to accept. It also sees these feelings of grief intersecting with the will to keep on truckin’, by recognizing all your mistakes and bad decisions while not regretting a thing.
Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven
I sometimes struggle with the orneriness of these Philly punks, but overall they’re capable of some of the most thrilling indie rock around. The reason I struggle is because their sound is often rooted in hardcore punk, which is just a genre I never connected with and at this point am like 20 years too old to start connecting with. Still, Mannequin Pussy leans even more into their more melodic side on I Got Heaven, like on the lead-off title track that ping-pongs between gnarly screams and melodic “oohs” in a way that hits just the right amount of angst and tenderness.
And for the most part, this album nails that vibe swimmingly. The songs here are both pretty catchy but also a little too rough around the edges to sound like they’re overtly trying to be catchy. Singer Marise Dabice is the kind of uninhibited presence on the mic that you just have to marvel at, even if she occasionally sounds like she’ll rip your fucking head off. Yes, there are a few straight-up hardcore-sounding songs that I tend to want to skip, but if that fury wasn’t there underneath everything, I’m not sure their more melodic songs would burn with the same mesmerizing intensity.