Hello, My Ear Reader: 2024 in Sound
For BWM, on his 42nd birthday
Almost another year of music listening is complete, not that it’s ever really “complete” since this shortlist functions both as a “best of” for a less obsessed listener—a listener who will have to click and drag his or her own playlist into existence—and a way for me to revisit what soundtracked a largely rewarding year, which was comprised of concerts in May seeing two of my all-time favorite bands (The Decemberists and The Stones) but not one in October to see Clairo, her performing three straight nights in Boston while the Yankees concurrently played three World Series games in the borough that birthed hip-hop. Nonetheless, her album Charm is my selection for the peak album released in the last four years. Let's get on down!
Top Eleven
Arooj Aftab, Night Reign (Verve)
Predictable pick for the year's premiere jazz album, but the fact that she topped her last one made it essential. Saw her at the Ridgefield Playhouse during the summer, a powerful show where she sang “Whiskey,” arguably the album’s apex, but sipped from a glass of red wine. Celebrities, they’re drunk like us. As the title indicates, this is music for the day’s final hours guided by a bandleader at the (near) peak of her powers. The parenthetical qualifier is due to my conviction that her next one may somehow be better, not that it’s meaningful now. *affects Roger Daltrey voice*: “Niiight reeeeeign oooo'er meeeeee!”
Camera Obscura, Look to the East, Look to the West (Merge)
Having listened to them in the past and recalling the vocalist, Tracyanne Campbell, was pleasant, this was one that hit me immediately, the dulcet melodies and mesmerizing organ irresistible. Plus, the lyrics! “The loss adjuster came to the door / Accountability wants to know the score / The birds and the bees / They’ve been so sweet to me / Take your report / Shove it right down your throat” is a helluva stanza; I don’t care about any gender politics you may be scouring for within it. It may not have underscored a culturally misappropriated TikTok dance trend, coexisted in upbeat ads promoting vaginal mesh, or been cued up as a network transitioned from a spine-rattling concussion to a commercial break during a football game, but small things deserve small spaces even if what they have on offer is BBL: bold, beautiful, lithesome. Shake yer ass.
Clairo, Charm (Clairo/Good Buddy)
The warmth of this album is proof that recording live to analog tape still matters. Listening to it is like holding a steaming cup of coffee on a sunny Sunday morning with a purring cat in your nude lap (your choice, not mine, weirdo!). While I enjoyed her first and second albums, the second listen of this one, her third, assured me I'd found my Album of the Year in mid-July, various two-second snippets all earwormy and hooky (apologies to the literate fish triggered by the usage of worm and hook in the same sentence). How does one prefer a top track when staring down a list highlighted by “Add Up My Love,” “Sexy to Someone,” “Juna,” “Terrapin,” “Glory of the Snow,” AND “Thank You”?! These lobe fondlers, all home to superbly recorded drums, echo bits of Kacey Musgraves's Golden Hour, an album about falling in love that I adore as much as any from this century's first quarter, but I extend no apologies for cherishing this pseudo-sequel, one focusing on the bittersweetness accompanying faded love, even if it begs the question to me from “you” via me: Why do you listen to hundreds of different microgenres when you just wanna hear cute chicks with sweet voices coo about boys?
Heems & Lapgan, LAFANDAR (Veena Sounds)
I heard a track that prompted me to text a friend, “Doechii definitely can flow, & I feel old saying this, but every female rapper spends most of her bars rapping about her cunt.” Twat-hop along with mumbleceeing are two reasons I've grown to dislike listening to rap over the last eight years, but Heems is an exception, one of two grippers from a prized group (Das Racist) who still spits nonsense I can nod my head to. Any man mocking the LL Cool J designation by discussing Indian food, narcissism, and JFK quotes gets 🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤: "Oh, you the G.O.A.T.? I'm eating goat biryani for dinner / Yo, I'm a winner, I'm more vain now that I'm thinner / My dough nuts, ich bin ein Berliner." My co-worker, Miss Kai, asks a recurring question when I recommend new ear drops: "Is it slay?" Gurrrrl, act like you don't know! [Editor’s Note: Spent far less time with his second 2024 set, a mixtape merely whelming on two listens. LAFANDAR or Veena? A real Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s choice, innit? #HyphenationRepresentation]
Brittany Howard, What Now (Island)
Pure swagger from the get-go, the kind of intensity that made the Alabama Shakes’ sophomore album so slumpless, her second solo album towers over her first. Drop the needle and smoke fills the room, the lights flicker, and your socks try to flee your boogie shoes as they tap. The layered funk and impassioned vocals will come as no surprise to a seasoned listener, but it's once you become a marinated listener that it all fully congeals. [Editor’s Note, Part II: This is why I’ve long argued with myself that I should not write music “criticism”; it’s a win-lose ouroboros.] I love albums debuting early in the Gregorian tracker that hold up through the gauntlet my ears run for the next eleven months. Feels as fresh as it did in February and hopefully will forever. \m/
Sarah Jarosz, Polaroid Lovers (Rounder)
As a man who likes his folk gone pop (Paul Simon’s best song is “Graceland”—*hype man yells, “OH SHIIIIT!!!”*), I admit that her catalog needs my reacquainting but submit this as her peak, the culmination of a move from progressive bluegrass > modern folk > Americana > singer-songwriter > this, a bit of country in the mix, but something that sheds the bluegrass and synthesizes the other three with more expensive production. Purists shudder when the studio heads charge more, but who can clamor with The Pristine (no surprise from Daniel Tashian), like the lucid guitar lines on “Dying Ember”? Album closer “Mezcal and Lime” has a dusty desert nighttime vibe, a stellar representation of the eleven sonorous snapshots within. Choice couplets: “You know mama always said / Water your garden and make your bed … Never turn down cold champagne / Don’t change your plans for a little rain”
Dua Lipa, Live From the Royal Albert Hall (Warner)
I initially placed Radical Optimism on the “Honorable Mentions” list below, my most beloved Mainstream Pop Album of the year (apologies to Sabrina Carpenter’s endearing, feathery voice and funny-on-repeat-listen zingers), but then this was delivered in early December, a time when lists are already finalized, and proved itself to be her finest work yet as the first eleven tracks push her latest, and unnecessarily maligned, long player to a new level. It’s the arrangements: the horn line on “Houdini” is a standout, although the live bass on her preeminent track, “Pretty Please,” lingers, as does the “Love Again” string section along with wisely covering an unknown local in advance of feeding the crowd a known commodity (an Elton John collaboration to leave you chuffed), a confident pro move. Viewing chunks of the concert on CBS last weekend was a reminder that in tandem with being the undisputed most magnificent woman in the world, the lovely lady’s pipes will get your valves racing. Odd cross-promotion for the new Bob Dylan film during that special: a fan screaming “JUDAS!” at DL in the Royal Albert Hall, where artists become apostates. It’s alright, Ma, I’m only levitating.
Raveena, Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain (Moonstone)
This is as refreshing as a spring breeze, which one listen of “Rise” should confirm, the background horn, vulnerable vocal, plinking piano keys, and exquisitely recorded drums adding up to an impeccable song even if "Lose My Focus" shows up later to give you another round of perfection. Anyone who knows me would probably refer to the latin-tinged guitar and trip-hop-lite vibes by pondering, "This is your placeholder until the new Sade album in 2034, huh?" While I won't go that far—"Uh, you're writing this, so you just did!"/Well, fuck—it certainly should appeal to anyone smitten with Ms. Adu and the boys. There's a feature with Ganavya, a woman whose latest albums (yes, a duo this year, the latter a Coltrane tribute/more at eleven) finished right outside the “Honorable Mentions” list—take notes. The "water, water, water" refrain on "Every Color" may summon Tyla's monster hit, or prompt you to wish radio had room for them both. Bonus points to any album with unobtrusive birdsong on multiple tracks.
Rosali, Bite Down (Merge)
The best Aimee Mann album since the Magnolia soundtrack. Album cover of the year too.
Tindersticks, Soft Tissue (City Slang/Lucky Dog)
Kind of like Nick Cave if he muted the theatricality a bit. These tunes have soft, slow pulses generating a humming intimacy. Atmosphere albums aren't a genre, but collections of songs enclosed in some kind of synesthetic sphere tend to linger longer, the rationale for why Tindersticks, a band I'd forgotten about, appear on this list. This pairs well as the second half of a double bill with Clairo, the suppressed emotion hitting harder without the reverb. When Stuart Staples keeps singing “Oh, you shape me, oh, you shape me...” you better not think of throwing clay in Ghost. “Turned My Back” would be on any 2024 Best Songs list if I made one, the backing vocals straight outta synthy Leonard Cohen, one of my watering holes, the catharsis the album promises to deliver as its climax. A masterpiece.
Nilüfer Yanya, My Method Actor (Ninja Tune)
At times these songs are on the brink of falling apart, but then they bleed into the next, like the oversaturated “Like I Say (I Runaway),” a song whose propulsive beat suddenly stops as “Method Actor” promptly takes over, serenely plodding along until its imperative overdrive, the slacker indie rock with a hint of R&B verses becoming arena axe assassins anchoring the choruses. Until “Binding” arrives, spare and yearning and devastating, as strong a contender as anything on this album to use when pleading to keep returning to its uncanny well, the year’s ultimate grower (and girther—do NOT ask!). You, like me, may also wind up craving an entire album of overpowering synthesizer bursts like those on “Call It Love.” What a feast. Additionally, I’m convinced she’s wearing a mishmash of old washcloths, sheets, shower curtains, and tablecloths on the album cover. Go ahead! Fucking cancel me, Big Upholstery. It’s a weird outfit is all. Let’s stick to clutching pearls of wisdom. #BumperStickerIdea(r)
Honorable Mentions
Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice, Phantasy & Reality (Moon Glyph)
Bibio, Phantom Brickworks (LP II) (Warp)
Bonny Light Horseman, Keep Me on Your Mind / See You Free (Jagjaguwar)
Loidis, One Day (Incienso)
Mura Masa, Curve 1 (Pond Recordings)
Jasmine Myra, Rising (Gondwana)
Willie Nelson, The Border (Legacy)
NIKI, Buzz (88rising)
Fabiana Palladino, s/t (Paul Institute/XL)
Peter Cat Recording Co., Beta (Muddy Water)
Reyna Tropical, Malegría (Psychic Hotline)
Yasmin Williams, Acadia (Nonesuch)
YĪN YĪN, Mount Matsu (Glitterbeat)
★ ★ ★ ★
It is not lost on me that my main list contains eleven entries, eight of which are female solo artists, plus Camera Obscura, a female-fronted band. Never do I take for granted that I get to listen to a thousand-plus new releases per year, all of which I first stream while doing my job, but I do wonder about how deeply I’ve become immersed in listening to women sing, or sing new songs, a direction I’ve shifted more and more toward as my embrace of damn near any female pop star has occurred—Top 40 Song of the Year: Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love),” a banger (stop it, she’s in a relationship!) lip synced at Target on multiple visits. Yet I also think of a conversation in a record store after Sue had humorously chided me earlier in the day regarding my perpetual hard-on for “craftsmanship and production values” only for the owner to reference those same qualities when praising a high-end audiophile turntable—Sue and I roaring laughing on the inside, controlled lunacy visible in our strained eyes—the descriptive duo, which sounds not unlike a car salesman’s pitch, a necessity for the ineffable auditory bliss supplementing this (and every) year’s favorites. When I told my old record store boss, Uncle Gary, a man who loves female singers paired with sterling sonics, about my slowly morphing into a version of him I’d once mocked, he took the high road and said, “At least you know what you like.”
Nobody should be surprised to read that music factored significantly into my first year living alone (and first year living without The Ambassador of Happiness in my life since 2005) as I bought more records in a calendar year than I ever have, Sue’s perpetual support for retail (now grief) therapy and physical media making fundamental my pursuit of rarities, no-brainers guests might want to hear (I’ll skip the psychological pain I thrust upon myself in the wake of a visitor requesting the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack until I informed her that I’d yet to acquire a copy of one of the ten most popular albums in the annals of hearing), and discographies. An unplanned trip to Permanent Records in Los Angeles on my last day as a forty-year-old landed me at what I believe is the greatest record store I’ve patronized, spending a thousand bucks (or “a band,” per zeitgeist vernacular), which included a signed copy of Dua Lipa’s first album (on pink marbled vinyl) and a mint first pressing of John Coltrane’s Impressions, live sessions starring the title track and “India,” cuts as extra-terrestrial as any other harmonic wonderlands to select when proselytizing that the man’s oeuvre ranks among the most monumental bookends the artistic world has on offer.
My self-imposed hiatus from purchasing vinyl will begin after one more stop this year until the pilgrimage to Augusta, Georgia (and Psychotronic), in April. During that hiatus, I plan to refamiliarize myself with my bounty, a sprawling multitude the same aforementioned guest first eyed while blurting out “HOLY FUCK!” It’s a lot, it’s self-indulgent as hell, and it’s an embodiment of the nostalgic lust Sue long held dear about expansive bookshelves, dumbfoundedly ogling their collected elegance and infinite knowledge, traits I find readily available in the who-knows-how-many pounds of cardboard alphabetized from A to Z in my basement. (One friend said, “I could do a blind pull and anything I land on would be a good album,” a sentence I spent twenty-five years digging to earn.) Once the clarity locked in that the Ultimate Discography is indeed Trane’s—and really, combining his output with wife Alice’s would be the Most Ultimate, but also a cheat, I guess—I knew what to commission from my pal Moore as his annual Christmas gift drawing. Above my turntable now resides Trane and the specter of his inimitable tone blowing into a soprano horn as Alice, in a blue top, studies him, a remarkable snapshot of a married couple who took America’s signature art form to some of its farthest reaches, a man and woman who literally transcended their work and whose faces would be etched into the sides of saxophones and harps if, in our brand-groveling Index Stage Capitalism world, makers felt instruments required logos emblazoned with their most vital practitioners.
When conversing with a man whose livelihood is sourced by composing and playing extreme heavy metal on guitar, he said how his music cannot hurt anyone (while kinda sorta joking that he wished it could). “It’s just art, bro,” his motto, crystalized into the simplest, truest logic. And yet, music is also history. It’s connective and emotional and maybe just math at its core, but also a shade beyond our total comprehension. Which is why it’s also hope. I hope each year brings the greatest album I’ve ever heard, a new artist I’ll love for life, a small snippet in a song attached to a minor moment that does that musicky trick of magnifying itself into my mind’s greatest hits, where artifice intersects and incites reality, becomes history. Where art is realer than real life.
Having recently read Herbie Hancock’s memoir, a man who is one of the world’s most esteemed living musicians, it was his commitment to Nichiren Buddhism, particularly the belief in Actual Proof (also the name of one of his indelible tracks), about the disciplined practice of religious worship yielding fortunate outcomes, that stuck with me as much as his Miles Davis anecdotes and dark days smoking crack. Does being a decent person help one enjoy art more? I won’t claim to have the answer, but I have a hunch. Visiting one of the most decent people I know, my ninety-three-year-old grandmother, my father’s mother, a few days ago and discovering she once played Chopin and Liszt with capable skill on the piano, a story enhanced in the wake of a buddy’s impromptu piano lesson detailing how notes, chords, and scales work at a music instrument store in an Albany shopping mall, led to Moore reiterating a previous offer to loan me his keyboard so I could attempt to finally learn how to do it myself. Moral: See your grandparents. Will I own a piano by this time next year? Please, no. Framed Glenn Gould poster? Please, no-brainer.
As for the dedication: I do know that today is Moore’s forty-second birthday, a day on which I remain hopeful that next year, his last full one in prison, will conclude positively so that he can commence producing a rich second half of his life. I also know that he will, throughout the next thirteen months, and despite the circumstances, continue seeking music to improve his mindset, his view of this world, and his knowledge of (not just) art. He shared one of Herbie’s quotes during a group meeting with his peers, men bonded by the commonality that they are outliers except when they’re together, and so I share it now, adhered to the idea that the most important things you can do to engage with the people inhabiting the space around you are very elemental: respect their customs, eat their food, listen to their stories, and dance to their music.
We are not alone. We do not exist alone, and we cannot create alone. What this world needs is a humanistic awakening of the desire to raise one’s life condition to a place where our actions are rooted in altruism and compassion. You cannot hide behind a profession or instrument; you have to be human. Focus your energy on becoming the best human you can be. Focus on developing empathy and compassion. Through the process you’ll tap into a wealth of inspiration rooted in the complexity and curiosity of what it means to simply exist on this planet.
It's just hope, bro. Keep your antennae open. The pearls of wisdom will be waiting.