Best Of 2024 - Side B
On the conclusion of our two-part year end extravaganza, it has all come down to this.
You have heard us discuss close to a 100 albums in 2024, and all of them are well worth your time. But in the end there is only room for 10 that we think are the best this year had to offer.
Thanks for listening. We’ll see ya next year.
Top 10 Albums Of 2024
10. Invisible Woman - Silvia Machete
The most important thing you need to know about Silvia Machete's Invisible Woman is that you should listen to it. When you do, you'll be struck by the incredible precision of Machete's band, but also by the alluring and mysterious character Rhonda at the center of the album. Is invisibility a super power or a curse? Are you being seduced or taunted? And how does an album filled with such poignant sadness also serve as a reminder of your own vitality and strength? Perhaps we'll find out when Machete completes the third and final installment of this trilogy of albums. In the meantime, our recommendation is simple: you should listen to it.
— Eduardo
9. Dreamers Motel - Joachim Cooder
It's been four years since Joachim Cooder's last release, Over That Road I'm Bound, and it sounds like he's spent that time figuring out how to coax even more sonic gold out of his Array Mbira, a piano/string hybrid instrument that is best watched rather than explained. His relaxed and soothing songwriting shine through on this incredibly warm record, and the message seems clear: we are impermanent, we are vast, we are precious, even if we're just biding time in a motel, dreaming of better days.
— Eduardo
8. Water Still Flows - Rich Ruth
Mikey “Rich” Ruth’s Water Still Flows hits harder than most records. Because water flows but it is also heavy. On Rich Ruth's 5th record, the calming soundscapes of I Survived, It's Over are replaced by a thunderous and driving sound. In forty-three minutes, you'll ride through peaceful valleys only to find a storm suddenly opening up overhead. Sam Que's sax is often the conductor of the storm, but don't be surprised if you hear a harp - or a violin or a pedal steel guitar - playing maestro too. If most of us think of embarking on a spiritual journey as a choice, Water Still Flows is here to remind you that sometimes it's just as rewarding to be forcefully taken on one.
— Eduardo
7. Songs Of A Lost World - The Cure
On their first album in sixteen years, The Cure is certainly looking back sonically to the era that produced albums like Pornography and Disintegration. However, it is Smith’s unrelenting assessment of THE END that positions Songs Of A Lost World as one of the best albums in the band’s catalog. Where 1989’s Disintegration, the album from which Lost World draws most strongly in terms of sound, was about the collapse of personal relationships resulting in nothing more wounding than a broken heart, the collapse in this new batch of songs is existential and permanent — the final heartbreak that ultimately comes for us all. That’s not a new concept by a long shot, but what makes the album a minor miracle is how much joy Smith is able to light the darkness with, even while being crushed by the weight of seemingly endless regret and the finality of, well, everything.
— Kevin
6. Hit Me Hard and Soft - Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish made a splash with her 2019 debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go in no small part due to the sonic innovations that she and her brother Finneas cooked up. It was a loud, youthful statement that pointed to the brightest of futures for the duo. Two albums and one Oscar win later, Hit Me Hard and Soft more than delivers on that promise. Meant to be listened to in one-sitting, the record, a collection of songs that makes stops at every point along the journey of modern love, couldn’t care less about being the “latest thing.” Instead, both in word and in the interplay of the production with Eilish’s generational voice, the intent is clear: Make a great album. And Hit Me Hard and Soft didn’t just clear that bar, it set a new standard for what a modern pop album can, and SHOULD, be.
— Kevin
5. Critterland - Willi Carlisle
Every listen of Critterland is somehow better than the last. Willi Carlisle's incredible songwriting, honed to a fine and unpretentious point on this record, throws us back to a time when the nation turned its lonely eyes to folksingers, and when folksingers in turn took seriously the responsibility to write songs about the forgotten, the unseen, the voiceless. Critterland is alive with wit, weighed down by sadness, clear-eyed about the state of America, and still somehow optimistic about - what, exactly? It's hard to say, but when you hear Willi take a deep breath at the start of Two-Headed Lamb, you're somehow comforted by our sheer humanity. A few minutes later, he asks the higher lonesome to "kill the bitter parts of me." Somehow, I think we'll all find ourselves on the right side when it comes to the battle of Critterland.
— Eduardo
4.Orchestras - Bill Frisell
4.Orchestras - Bill Frisell
Guitar legend Bill Frisell is known for, amongst other things, always pushing the boundaries of what his instrument and fellow players can do with a song. His recent run on Blue Note Records — 2019’s Harmony, 2020’s Valentine, and 2022’s Four — have all subtly demonstrated this forward motion. But on this year’s Orchestras, Frisell leaps light-years past any sonic universe he has inhabited before. The concept of Orchestras is “simple”: Can a jazz trio improvise with a whole ass orchestra? The answer – a collaboration between long-time friend/arranger Michael Gibbs, his fellow trio members Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums), and both the 60-piece Brussels Philharmonic AND the 11-piece Umbria Jazz Orchestra – is a stunning reworking of Frisell standards that responds with a resounding “Yes!” while also making it crystal clear that the only limit to Frisell’s talent at this point is his own imagination.
— Kevin
3. The New Sound - Geordie Greep
If your relationship with black midi skews toward “It’s complicated,” then Geordie Greep’s debut solo album, The New Sound, isn’t likely to move that needle for you one way or the other. That sound in question, while it has evolved towards something that can best be described as “prog salsa,” leans heavily on the more theatrical elements of black midi’s songs, feeling at times like a one-size-too-tight polyester shirt was slipped over whatever coiled beast powered that now-defunct band. And that’s not a bad thing.
Over eleven tracks, Greep gets down in the filth with a series of protagonists who are, at best, pathetically toxic men. Often are something far, far worse. These are the major dudes that Fagen and Becker only ever hinted at (Mr. Lapage, Cousin Dupree). These are the men who take regular trips to Burroughs’ Interzone where they can order their lunch as naked as they like.
Greep never loses sight of his characters’ awfulness, often outright mocking them. But The New Sound is at its best when he suggests that as terrible as these people are, there is still a chance that they have something resembling a heart beating somewhere beneath their their pit-soaked business attire. A legitimately gorgeous record about the corrupting power of ego and self-delusion that doesn’t let anyone off the hook, least of all the listener.
— Kevin
2. Amy Come On Home - Ladybird
The first time you hear Ladybird you might say you hear Uncle Tupelo. The second time, maybe you hear Drive-By Truckers. A third listen may get you to John Prine, and so on. While that’s intentional according to songwriter Pete McDermott, it’s not the sonics that make Amy Come On Home one of the year’s best albums, it’s the songs. Ten tracks absolutely overflowing with wit and emotional wallop take the listener on a journey through a Midwestern South that can only exist in song. And as redneck as it is sophisticated as the whole affair is, the biggest triumph of Amy Come On Home is its kindness to its characters. At the end of the day, the people who inhabit Ladybird’s songs may be down on their luck, but they are still looking for some kind of good life with full knowledge of all the dumb and hilarious mistakes they’re gonna make along the way. That cuts deep in the same way classics like Being There or Decoration Day do, which is, by any measure a remarkable achievement for any band, never mind one that is just getting started.
— Kevin
1. Absolute Elsewhere - Blood Incantation
On their fourth album Absolute Elsewhere, the Denver “death metal” quartet follows up 2022’s synth-forward Timewave Zero with another genre-bending excursion into cosmic/existential horror. The stylistic jumps from guttural yawps to gentle synths to prog, and to what must be the best version of Pink Floyd anyone has heard in years, are admittedly disorienting. But once you catch your bearings, the richness of the worlds Blood Incantation create will set your imagination free to roam a universe where darkness and light exist in equal measure, even if the struggle between the two is eternal.
— Kevin
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