“Dolby’s Top 50 Albums of 2024”

It’s my pleasure and honor to welcome you back to the Dolby Disaster year-end list, a tradition which I take pride in upholding. This year has been another subsuming adventure in genre, style, emotion, structure, heart and soul, and I’m here to capture it the best I can, in my own little way.

I do a lot of writing, of different types and genres, for what it’s worth. I write poetry, I write short stories, I write novels and I write bit**y essays about football, or politics, or whatever the He** else I feel like ranting about. Music, though, is a different animal entirely. I find music easy to write about because it’s such a strong phenomenological force. The emotion is already expressed, for me. All I have to do is document it, or transcribe it. These musicians are doing the heavy lifting, already, and not even getting paid enough for it, which is the real head-scratcher.

And, then, as usual, the sheer mass of incredible tunes on this list is enough to make anyone stagger, including me, which may be part of why I always take so long to finish it. But DD is still a one-man show, as of this point, and this is certainly a labor love: I want to make sure I get everything right, because I still love rock and roll, believe it or not, and for a lot of these musicians, publicity on one blog might be the most notoriety, and monetary “success,” they ever achieve. Hey, at least they know we’re mutual, in that respect, in such a case.

Honorable Mention:

Winged Wheel – Big Hotel

Tristwch & Fenywod – Tristwch & Fenywod

Prefuse 73 – New Strategies for Modern Crime Volume 1

Hardway Bros – The Laser (EP)

Dabrye – Super-Cassette

Ambrose Akinmusire, Bill Frisell & Herlin Riley – Owl Song

Erick the Architect – I’ve Never Been Here Before

Lee “Scratch” Perry – King Perry

Zvrra – City of Winners

Elephant Stone – Back into the Dream

Mary Halvorson – Cloudward

Kim Krans – MIRRORMIRROR

St. Vincent – All Born Screaming

Why Bother? – Hey, At Least You’re Not Me

Blitzen Trapper – 100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions

Human Trophy – Primary Instinct

Dead Years – Night Thoughts

Vera Sola – Peacemaker

A Taut Line – Restoration

Top 50:

50 Ivanna Cuesta – A Letter to the Earth

A Letter to the Earth is tense, busy, verbose jazz music, and quintessentially American in that, Cuesta a drummer from Boston capable of immensely, amazingly lithe beats and fills, that, what’s more, never seem to hog the mix, but rather linger in back like a distant star to marvel at. Elsewhere, saxophonist Ben Solomon pretty much rules the roost, taking a frantic, free-jazz approach to his improvisational solos, and owning to a gentle restraint on “A Letter to the Earth”; a mournful but tranquil paean in the album’s mid-section.

49 Thee Marloes – Perak

Sounding not galaxies removed from Khruangbin, Thee Marloes, by way of Indonesia, purport a set of “elements of local culture” in their Bandcamp write up. While this is certainly intriguing, by and large, the end result of this music is way cuter and ubiquitously romantic and exciting than any sort of Indonesian museum exhibit or cultural retreat. Opener “I Know” blends an eclectic instrumentation with an expedited, immediately enjoyable song structure, toward great pop music that could play at a party or in Kroger, equally. “Logika” finds Natassya Sianturi crooning in her native language, apparently, and the result is even inviting and sensual: the band dispatch over the universal language of gorgeous, warbly guitars and tense rhythms for a textural masterpiece full of rampant, celestial vibes.

48 La La Lars – La La Lars IV

I’m glad to see my old buddies and repeat offenders La La Lars crash the top-50 party this year: purveyors of the aptly titled La La Lars III and its 2021 top-albums appearance and generally crisp, energetic Swedish jazz quintet that seems to consistently vaporize out this approachable sort of pocket-jazz, supremely pliable and ready to play in any environment. Their song titles are all in Swedish, anyway, and none of their songs have words, hence granting them zero obligation to phony, crowd-pleasing English pandering. Again and again, too, this music comes across as more than the sum of its parts, crafting a celestial, uplifting feel in unison before you can even attempt to spot a phony element.

47 Meth Math – Chupetones

Mexican pop unit Meth Math drop their first full-length on us this year in Chupetones, a wild-genre mixing stew all centered on the crooning, semi-maniacal vocals of Angel Ballesteros. Generally, hip-hop and industrial are two prevalent influences noticeable here, with dubstep informing the percussion outlay of “Mermelhada”; a superb banger which pledges allegiance, de facto, to Ballesteros’ reported weakness for raving [1]. “Cyberia” draws daringly from tradition, muscular techno music, for the type of result Charly XCX probably would have contacted her hit man for, and all from a frontwoman who, according to the same article, “would pay money to live in a tree.” That’s about the only sort of pigeonhole she’ll fall into anytime soon, in other words.

46 divr – Is This Water

At this point, I should probably just move to Stockholm and start wearing turtle necks and glasses and sipping chai tea. Here is yet another jazz addition to this list from Europe, this time incarnated in Switzerland’s divr, a trio given to taking the art form and turning it on its side emphatically with some off-kilter meters, spare instrumentation and warm, stark production. Opener on Is This Water “As of Now” tiptoes in discreetly, almost half-formed, giving way to the equally reticent and tranquil “Upeksha”; a languid dirge which eventually summons up an unprecedented sort of interval tension, rendered in piano runs. “Supreme Sweetness” cements this album as free jazz orchestrated with zero obligation to convention and to form: the sounds and rhythms on this album run free as a bird, hence approaching, ideally, the objective of music’s soothing ability to mimic nature.

45 Jasper Hoiby – 3Elements: Like Water

Perhaps to evade oppressive taxes, Denmark’s Jasper Hoiby has, per Bandcamp, fled to London, where he sets up shop as a sort of vanguard, minimalist jazz mind operating on, among other things, an upright bass, on which he doesn’t shy away from the high, percussive registers. Tracks like “Breathless”; anyway, are buoyed by uplifting, gorgeous piano runs which alternate chord and one-note improvisation, a perfect textural complement to the rhythm section, which seeps in subtly through the rhythmic caverns of this music. “Flying” eventually balloons into full-fledged, busy and rhythmic jazz, with Hoiby taking on a Chopin-like persona on piano, authoritatively governing out melodies and grooves as if they were daisy petals he was pulling out of his pocket.

44 Cloud Nothings – Final Summer

It’s so funny to me that the new Cloud Nothings album is called “final” something, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a new pressing by them and thought, for sure, this is DEFINITELY going to be their last one. I mean, they make this style of music that just seems so boys-only, like a treehouse clan, a pledge to No Age and to virile, muscular noise. Somehow, on Final Summer, they manage to keep from sounding stale by just devoting a love to the craft — making time into their friend, instead of a debilitator, with layers and layers of noise which seems to morph and shift within itself like a live animal. Well, the title track opener stars with an electro-mimicking synth riff, almost like a prank to the listeners expecting this to be another selfsame Cloud Nothings album. Both band and audience were both wrong.

43 Kerrie – Machine Alliance

Irish DJ Kerrie chimes in this year with Machine Alliance, an album that’s bizarrely termed an “EP” on Bandcamp, despite its 36-minute length, and that pledges a staunch, kind of endearing allegiance to basic techno, while remaining tight and intense, all the while. The title track opener threatens to collapse under the weight of its own selfsame ominousness, but “Symbiosis”; true to titular form, almost immediately seems like an antidote, coming strapped with enough psychedelic melody to buoy its disciplined, terse grooves, so as to yield an aerated listen. I won’t mention my curiosity as to what “Ode to the D” might signify, rather just assure you of its bouncing, spliced and refractive grooves, which both spell out “centerpiece” and also seem to sonically deconstruct the whole project, at that.

42 Kopy – Heart Fresh

Osaka’s Yuko Kureyama, christened here as Kopy, returns this year with Heart Fresh, a collection of concise techno etudes which do, in their own way, seem to represent both renewal and emotional connection, idealized, of course, by the album’s title. The first two tracks are both excellent and distinct, giving way to “Cross Beam”; which is this awesome kind of buffer track mimicking a gunfire-laden video game, the snares taking on the rhythms and timbres of gun shots, and a bass channel even anchoring the whole thing into, perhaps, an odd sort of techno listenability. The album’s atonal mid-section will prove proudly that this is more an exercise in vanguard ideas than in manifest genre. Still, the hats and snares remain eclectic and pungent enough to sustain this as an ensnaring listen, with just enough, if spare, melody, providing some musical oxygen, when needed.

41 pot-pot – GOING INSANE (EP)

This is warm, textural indie rock as comfort food, to the hilt, with Mykle Oliver Smith’s hazy, astonished vocal repetition of “I feel like I’m goin’ insane / Goin’ insane / Take me out of my brain” registering with the listener as a charming sort of endgame mantra delivered where the sidewalk ends. The energy, focus and fructified guitar sound might call to mind Acid Dad, and in general, this 20-minute EP will leave you wanting much more, and would garner a much higher ranking, given an anatomical swell.

40 Arlid Andersen, Daniel Sommer & Rob Luft – As Time Passes

Would I sound weird if I were to say, like, Scandinavian jazz is really wavy gravy? Short of documenting an official “Scandinavian Invasion” on Dolby Disaster in the mid-2020s, I’ll just give mad shoutouts to this region, which has been incredibly prolific in waves of this new-minded sort of jazz, taking the instrumentation and free-thinking interface of world music and kind of squirting Coltrane/Kamasi Washington vibes into it, whereupon it sees and feels such liberty. Rob Luft’s guitar takes the fore on As Time Passes, but the energy stays tranquil and the song structures stay expansive, safeguarding against any threat that this stuff could play on, ya know, radio, or something intrusive like that.

39 Carlos Bica – 11:11

In probably the upset of the year, the bassist gets nomenclature credit for this group (usually bassists carry about the cultural importance of waterboys, roughly), which is misleading, since, right away on opener “Roots”; Jose Soares’ saxophone gets buck nutty to the point where your brain might start melting, even eschewing the meter and going on its own voluminous, virtuosic tangents. The real accomplishment of 11:11, then, is how light the mood stays, as if no one songwriting tyrant put his hands too deeply into this one, all the band members rather splashing on dollops where they could, toward an album that’s as anatomically robust as it is ambient.

38 M-zine & Atmospherix – Axis (EP)

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a “drum & bass” track before this offering from upstart London label ThirtyOne Records — M-zine and Atmospherix just seem so much more well-developed, musically, incorporating a systematic entourage of kicks and rims that seem more precociously compiled than the erstwhile electronic wanking typically associated with the style. And, sure, I pretty much have no idea what musical instrument is making that main sound in the title track opener. That certainly doesn’t hurt, from the standpoint of notoriety on this site. “Repost” pretty much unabashedly dissolves into dubstep break-beating, and, as you might imagine, the result is very un-pretentious and gratifying, ballooning this curiously brief LP up into quite the tutorial in electronica swagger.

37 Lilacs & Champagne – Fantasy World

Going from, as Bandcamp puts it, “a realm adjacent to instrumental hip-hop,” Sweden’s Lilacs & Champagne construct grooves on Fantasy World closer to, say, The Avalanches, not shying away from samples and opaque, melody-defining synthesizer gadgetry, all of which is probably more suitable for college dorm parties than back alleys. The piano sound on “Rude Dream” is too celestial, light and gorgeous to even believe, drizzling over an ambient, ephemeral groove of breaks and kick/snare burps that will leave you drifting in and out of consciousness like a true scenester. The only thing stopping Fantasy World from ranking more highly on this list is the tendency these tracks have to seem half-finished, short of anatomically expansive. Hey, maybe they’re still lunging for J Dilla territory after all.

36 Tommy Crane – Dance Music for All Occasions

Tommy Crane, on the cover of his (amazingly) second-to-last album Dance Music for All Occasions, has the look of a Hispanic who’s sort of stumbled upon an accidental strain of musical euphoria, and let it channel him through amazing artistic places, to then offer a pedestal on which he may dispatch a calling of spirit and revival to a large audience. Still, DMFAO (as it’s christened in the later “title track”) creeps in subtly, discreetly, with the midtempo “Early 2000’s” and its stately, string-laden majesty, we tiptoe through a subdued “Italian Wedding”; and, really, this whole album is marked by a lack of ostentatious showmanship. The whole thing moves along methodically, like a spherical ball, letting its grooves seep through the cracks of the room’s tension and variables, for a reliable ride in mellow party music.

35 Ruthers & Jupiter – Ruthers & Jupiter

I’m not sure if I’m just of abnormal psychology or what but I seem to be the only human on the planet who’s paid any attention to this DJ duo from London — not a single article exists, to their name, online, apparently, aside from their inclusion on the Bandcamp monthly write-up (and yes I owe those blokes a gallon or so of aged eggnog, to be sure). Their approach can be a bit percussive, no question, like a grating, solely-rhythmic attempt at catharsis with a lack of overarching melody or musical theme, as is the case on “Andromeda”; in part of its midsection. All of the sounds spring out of the speakers freshly enough, though, and their take on song structure should make for some interesting listens, and some lengthy dance sessions at parties, as well.

34 Ibibio Sound Machine – Pull the Rope

London’s Ibibio Sound Machine have been DD darlings for a while now, with 2017’s Uyai crashing the year-end list party that year, and most of their releases since then exploding with a singular sort of jungle-electro energy. “Pull the Rope” is an auspicious continuation of this tradition, even getting a little more immersive in their lyricism than usual: “Even though we’re eager / To pull the trigger / Let’s pull the rope / Together we hope”. “Got to Be Who U Are” is an ebullient club banger, full of the group’s typically eclectic take on percussion and instrumentation, funneling all the madness, still, through a tight, disciplined groove, that makes this music seem like more than the sum of its parts.

33 Men Seni Suyemin – Believe

The pride and joy of Kazakhstan, Men Seni Suyemin (actually a young woman), splashes onto the party this year with a superb electronica debut which is equally unafraid to construct elaborate, hypnotizing grooves as it is to unleash some ephemeral and beautiful vocals, for a trippy foray into girl-pop (“Believe”). Infectious bass synth on “Dark Waves” makes for a sound-scape which represents just that, allowing for an infectious groove on which the eclectic kick/hat arsenal can find its playful arsenal.

32 LOTHARIO – Hogtied

LOTHARIO’s Bandcamp writeup kind of reminds me of the introduction to that one Nirvana VHS from the ’90s that was something like, “As soon as the first note is struck…” Making punk rock grandiose and glamorous was a faux-pas right from the start, with a band’s ambition toward fame sure to cater to its own demise, so it’s ironic today to find people trying to milk all the last residual “meaning” from this music, as if nobody’s ever moshed to loud, simplistic rock music anymore. Anyway, Hogtied is a solid rock album from Melbourne’s Annaliese Redlich, esoterically christened “LOTHARIO,” and, ya know what, I think I’m going to pridefully withhold further commentary on it, for right now.

31 RiTchie – Triple Digits [112]

This RiTchie dude is pretty cool, and stuff — a Phoenix rapper with these incredibly lush, warm and well-developed beats (continuing in the tradition of really heartfelt music emanating from the desert initiated, perhaps, by the great, mighty Meat Puppets) with a casual, natural flow, and, of course, the fundamental question, “What you tryin’ to do?” The basic concept for the album is that it’s 112 degrees outside, and since you can cook a piece of beef on the sidewalk, we don’t need any excessive, extraneous beef flooding the proceedings. In truth, this dude keeps such a low profile that I almost couldn’t find his stuff online, when I searched for it again. Well, here’s hoping people will at least hear this joint, ’cause the beats are like Kanye on syrup, and this dude is so natural that he reminds me of a substitute teacher turned rapper.

30 The Mechanical Man – Original Vibes (EP)

The moods come gushing down from the heavens like a monsoon on this terse, focused EP from UK’s The Mechanical Man, with opener “Just Dance Tonight” shifting in and out of percussive flair like a dream, and “Liberty Means Responsibility” creeps along with the sort of subtle “cool” that just obviates that this is a pro doing this stuff. Rampant samples, multifarious rhythms and a general acid-house interface is the name of the game, here, ensuring, of course, that the name “Mechanical Man” dissolves as the tongue-in-cheek expedition that it is, and that the party grooves along like a big pile o’ freaks.

29 Andreas Wildhagen’s Spiralis – Beauty No Beauty

Ahem… weird Scandinavian jazz dude is back, unearthing the singular, celestial beauty that is Oslo’s Andreas Wildhagen’s Spiralis. Beauty No Beauty is the rare debut album that seems, down to its tendons, fully complete and realized, as packed with vibes, themes and moods as it is with rhythms, intervals and structures. The saxophone of Kasper Vaernes is the overarching muscle-man, here, sending out continual, incessant chirps of pure virtuosity. The most gorgeous track, though, is “Infant Universe”; on which Anja Lauvdal takes the helm on piano, to give way to saxophone mimicking animal sounds, helping to cement this as a wonderfully exploratory jazz album that errs on the side of whim and experimentation.

28 The Emperor Machine – Remixes (Hardway Bros & Tigerbalm)

This EP is composed of somebody’s songs remixed by somebody, all in the UK… suffice it to say it delivers the dance-club goods, with mellow acid-house grooves providing the rudimentary structure for some undeniably cool crooning. This isn’t music you’d put on at grandma’s house, in other words. TEM culls ’80s pop diva for “S-S-S Single Bed”; but some of the most unforgettable sonic come-ons enter on “Wanna Pop with You”; where the grainy, funky synth knows just the spots to hit, and Hardway Bros’ percussion arsenal imbues a state of cognitive dissonance, all the better for getting down to.

27 Svaneborg Kardyb – Superkilen

This next jazz LP isn’t “from Scandinavia,” per se. I prefer the term “brewed in Transylvania.” Regardless, it’s undeniable at this point that I’ve hit upon a bulbous geographical hotspot for expansive, world-music-leaning instrumental rock, which may often have proclivities for instrumentation unorthodoxies such as trumpet and saxophone. The music is so light and fresh that it’s certainly hard to call it “rock,” despite the fact that there aren’t really instruments at work here you’d find in a high school band. Bandcamp has it that Kardyb “draw(s)… on Danish folk music and Scandinavian jazz influences” (I can’t believe I just saw the phrase “Scandinavian jazz” online), but trust me, the result is anything but academic, with the title track opener creeping in with swagger and sustaining darkness and tension for six minutes, and the album elsewhere owning to this special sort of musical beauty that mixes opaque tranquility and thick stylistic originality.

26 Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O – TRUE STORY

This, on this particular year, is definitely the point on the list where I think, “How the He** is this album not in the top five?” There’s so much purpose, so much natural swagger, to this trombonist and ensemble out of South Africa, that this music, though classified as “jazz,” could play pretty much anywhere, and initiate some open fists, too. After a somber, somewhat awkward intro that sounds like Oasis and Seal getting together to sing Gregorian Chants, “MaBrrrrrrrrrr” (I think I got that amount of “r”’s right) sets the ball rolling with some cool finesse, with “Baby Ngimanzi Wuthando” the beautiful centerpiece, with light, rollicking rhythms undergirding some hypnotic African crooning. This jazz music as ubiquitous and as oblivious, every stylish contour serving the larger whole, which seems to just say, “Let go.”

25 Pearl Jam – Dark Matter

Wow, I’m not even going to lie: that last Pearl Jam album was BAD. I think the band knew this, too, as they gave us a quicker turnaround on Dark Matter, and also imbued an infinitely vaster sense of urgency and overall interface of energy and groove, for this expansive, polymorphous rock album. Their best LP since Pearl Jam (2006), and roughly similar in style, mood and intensity to that release, Dark Matter ebbs and flows with the broad emotional strokes we classically associate with this band, with opener “Scared of Fear” proviso of a prototypically swanky, attitude-filled guitar riff, and a title track filled with whammy bar and noxious, volatile feistiness. “Upper Hand” might be the cream of the crop here, anyway, with an epic, textural guitar intro giving way to a patient, nuanced chorus (even if Vedder’s claim of “never having had the upper hand” might come across as a bit bogus).

24 Andrew Bird – Sunday Morning Put-on

Andrew Bird’s gentle baroque pop returns this year with Sunday Morning Put-on, a collection curiously slated under “jazz” on Bandcamp, but really furnishing of a vast quantity of hooks and verses, probably, to masquerade as that genre. Still, this categorical uncertainty plays right into Bird’s hands, who unabashedly touts unorthodox, even bizarre, instrumentation, as a fresh rudimentary set for his “put-ons,” which literally sometimes seems like a complete encapsulation of what his lyrics are. This stuff all hits as fresh and lively, anyway, with the upright bass in “Caravan” booming resonantly in the mix and helping imbue a spooky mood of urgency and romance, in perfect, Chicago-2020s irony.

23 Jonathan Barber & Vision Ahead – In Motion

Infectious, light on its feet and playable in any atmosphere, the new album from New York sextet Vision Ahead is a resounding success and a multi-rhythmic exploration piece for multiple listens. Matt Knoegel’s sax is sinfully gorgeous, all over this thing, effortlessly weaving out complex, verbose riffs and grooves that seem to toggle between purposeful and improvisational to the point of forever blurring the two. All over this LP, as well, it’s a general squabble between “arrangement” and “improvisation,” as the piano solo from Taber Gable on “Radar” takes the baton in orderly fashion and then runs with it in a way that’s almost compulsively original and unique. In Motion is like a jazz LP that’s been landscaped and bestowed a garden of flowers, around which everyone involved tiptoes in gracious gait, out of acknowledgement of the precious jewels at hand.

22 The Libertines – All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade

Never before, I don’t think, have I been so proud of a band for just coming back and sounding like themselves. On All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, The Libertines’ triumphant 2024 return to form, the songs bound out of the speakers as strong, stalwart popular-rock gazelles, with more than a little traditional British folk sense, and some refreshing sense of humor on the part of singer Pete Doherty. I think I made the point on this blog earlier this year that it almost seems appropriate for The Libs to issue such a clamoring success so closely after Blur’s stagnant clunker. Eastern Esplanade is the anti-Ballad of Darren: these songs are distinct, crisp and clear, not only comfortable but proud in their own skin, and sung with the sort of enthusiasm you might find in a little kid doing a show-and-tell contest, or a battle of the bands. And boy would his mum be proud!

21 METZ – Up on Gravity Hill

I have no idea how it happened, but a band issuing an album on Sub Pop actually managed to sound fresh, lively and inspired, and not victims of some sort of cultural coup, in the process. Toronto’s METZ, who kind of sound like No Age with Johnny Rotten singing, summon up some thumping, boisterous noise rock on Up on Gravity Hill, like a sort of underdog, raw answer to the celestial sound and relatively flat emotion of Cloud Nothings — noise rock’s drunk beat poets with less to lose and more to say. The opening track two-phased suite lends itself, too, to the sort of free-thinking, expansive approach to album-making I thought at this point were lost on the Nirvana-rubbing bigwigs at Sub Pop. They must have gone to some kind of seminar or something.

20 The Circulators – Insufficient Fun

In relation to the title of this album, The Circulators sound exactly like a punk band should: frustrated. The emotion doesn’t seem forced or artificial, as can be the case with so many radio denizens within the genre, and the songs stay fresh, packed with crisp fills and guitar stabs, and tense, noxious energy. What’s more, Insufficient Fun even seems like a statement San Francisco album, like the city now staking a long-awaited claim to the “punk” world which had otherwise been skirted, but never really subsumed, by the Dead Kennedys, with their empty, sans-emotion politics, Primus, with their unabashed grunge bent, and other acts which always seemed like cutesy acts like Strung out and No Use for a Name. Insufficient Fun seems like a complete punk album to the extent of …And out Come the Wolves, drawing far more from hardcore and the roots of the style than that albeit spunky gem of catchy crunch.

19 Denzel Curry – King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2

King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 has the sort of intro you like to hear in this enterprise — a little track with a lot of sh**-talking, not unlike the great, mighty Fishscale. Getting to its innards, then, this album is just flowing freely with effortless style, the Miami rapper sounding perfectly comfortable on the mic and seeming to verbally stab us constantly with the reminder that he doesn’t have to try to be anyone he’s not. This stuff just comes naturally to him. Starting right away with “ULTRA SHXT”; the album takes the grimy, dirty-sounding elements of trap and combines them effectively with a sort of fresh, paradigmatic approach to beat, with some dynamite string strokes gracing the beat to “SET IT”; of course occluded for the most part by Curry’s dynamic, invigorating delivery.

18 Collective Soul – Here to Eternity

As if presciently, Here to Eternity features the same band logo they had on the classic 1995 self-titled album, which I had on CD in the ’90s and which I spun copiously, to great satisfaction, for straight-ahead rockers like “Smashing Young Man” (which I just recently found out to be about Billy Corgan) as well as softer numbers like “Bleed.” Similarly, Here to Eternity does an expert, intuitive job of blending roaring rock riffs with uplifting chords, intervals and lyrical messages. “Mother’s Love” is good-ol’ meat-and-potatoes alternative rock, the type of thing that can sell a lot of records, and the type of thing that can make a lot of people mad because, believe it or not, it’s actually harder to do, and do well, than hiding behind style and gimmick. “Bluer Than So Blue”; again, completely kicks a**, a great pop/rock crossover hit to which Eve 6 or Third Eye Blind might have been beholden back in the day, and in general, this album is way amped on the heart and way scaled back on the current fad and pretense. It sounds and feels like a quintessential Collective Soul album, through and through.

17 1-800-MIKEY – Digital Pet

1-800-MIKEY is the one-man pop-punk operation of Australia’s Michael Barker and has an infectious way of fomenting up as more than the sum of its parts, channeling a Green Day vibe toward guitar sound that’s seedier and more textural. Most of these numbers are terse, concise rockers, with “Welcome Back” then entering as a welcome instrumental track, taking the frenetic, reckless energy of the stock Digital Pet track and easing it down into some systematic reflection. At the end of the day, this is great bar or cookout music sending us on an aural journey back to a time when the X Games ruled the world and “gnarly” was something you’d want to be called at recess.

16 The Ar-Kaics – See the World on Fire

The Ar-Kaics, based in Richmond, Virginia, continue the indie-grunge tradition of The Black Angels, WITCH, Dead Meadow and so many others on See the World on Fire, blending patience and sonic fullness with dark purpose and ominous musical statements. Right away on “Chains”; the two-guitar attack creates a sort of foil like I’ve never heard before, with the lead part issuing tense, careful riffs to keep you hypnotized, and the background player harping out some exquisite delay effect, each axe fully resonant and sonically invigorating. I’m not sure what it is, but it seems like all of these bands can get away with being almost defiantly systematic and methodical by homing in on a sound that’s just so original and “cool,” like adding just the right spice to your soup and then just letting it simmer. “Fools Are Gone” just can’t help but play as more than the sum of its parts, with, again, some ringing, gorgeous guitar sound, and singer Johnny Ward, who kind of sounds like a celestial, psychedelic version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

15 JPEGMAFIA – I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU

JPEGMAFIA has the sort of moniker that seems to exude anonymity, or even complete incredulity, for that matter. Indeed, for my own part, I’ve paid almost no attention to this emcee for his career, until this bombastic nu-metal masterpiece he’s rolled out this year, sounding almost the affective correspondent of the feeling of being on the verge of death, in complete desperation. But don’t get it twisted: he’s having fun here, like on “i scream this in the mirror before I interact with anyone”; and the spliced-voice, wannabe-Jock-Jams bridge that comes three quarters of the way through, and asking on “SIN MIEDO” if other rappers “wanna be a rap snack?” SIN MIEDO” is an unabashedly rock track, like Tom Morello standing in for Wes Borland in Limp Bizkit, roughly, which in turn makes this guy even more intriguing when he complains that other rappers “grew up white and (are) tryin’ to act black”. Still, the more I hear, the less I want to analyze his back story (or even encounter it in any way) and the more I want to just sit back and enjoy these beats and verbal spasms all over this robust, urban LP.

14 Sempra & Dingo Junction – CLOUDS001

In a way, this is an awkward album to feature on this list, since, at 24 minutes, it barely fulfills my time-length requirement, and it’s divided into two parts, each consisting of two songs by separate DJ’s. Rather by virtue of a certain burnout cognitive dissonance, anyway, I decided to indeed invite it to the party, and it surely should contribute robustly to my “Dance Dance 2024” playlist, if that ever gets done. These songs are all trippy, really original and rhythmically enticing, with Dingo Junction’s “Everything’s Coming up Milhouse” endearing for its title and also carrying a sovereign, especial sort of originality and vibe of renewal, to soundtrack any party from ghetto to college dormitory.

13 Ezra Collective – Dance, No One’s Watching

This album is, according to Bandcamp, “an ode to the sacred, yet joyous act of dancing,” a epithet so un-pretentious that you’d think it could have only come from outside of the United States. This collective names London as their home, true to form, and draws in an eclectic wealth of samples and rhythms toward this sort of egalitarian, everyman’s jazz album, a genus of decidedly horn-dominated tunes passed off as a club banger, as a sort of marketing strategy, perhaps. The less you analyze it, anyway, the more you’re able to just sink into these grooves and hooks and let this music uplift you as something as impossible to categorize as it is to avoid funking out to.

12 Elori Saxl – Drifts and Surfaces

Your album has to, at 23 minutes long, pretty much be a freak, of some sort, to rank this highly on the list. Sure enough, “Drifts I” comes in like an otherworldly firebrand of originality, apparently some sort of drone ambient treating texture like a little kid playing with crayons, pitting spliced sounds against languid, broad chord changes on synthesizer, for a trippy sort of album intro. The track “drifts” along, then, seemingly, retaining its stylistic DNA while shifting in mood, perspective and vantage point. “Drifts II”; then, is even more amazing and otherworldly, in terms of sound and production, some stringed instrument like a harp being abused into this startlingly rapid-fire run, which ends up doubling as a percussion mechanism, by way of its very technical force. Amazingly, too, the entire EP seems to hold this “drifting” motif, making for a great, anthropomorphic motif inspiring music that’s completely seminal in its invigorating strangeness.

11 Color Green – Fool’s Parade

Wow, a So. Cal. band on Dolby Disaster seems so strange! It hasn’t been raining or pouring, from this region, lately, but sometimes we do get a trickle, with Color Green kind of an emotive-enough dedicator to full-bodied alternative rock that somewhat harks to the lo-fi days of the garage-rock revival early this decade (The Strokes/The White Stripes/The Thrills/Kings of Leon). The songs have a way of moving along with methodical poignancy, too, and not embellishing anything, which is another sort of antiquated skill, in my opinion. On “Coronado”; singer Corey Madden expresses that he’s been “Hangin’ with the low lifes / Throwin’ bows… Now I’m leavin’ Coronado”. We’re left to wonder what exactly is happening here but this mystery is kind of the point: the music is left with an exciting, cinematic sort of quality that emphasizes sovereignty of verse and chorus, and song structure, in general, over attempted semantic statement or posturing.

10 Reggie Quinerly – The Thousandth Scholar

The Bandcamp page for The Thousandth Scholar depicts drummer Reggie Quinerly standing in what appears to be the downtown area of LA, his current locale. Anyway, so tall are the buildings, and, maybe, the thick smog effect in the air, that the landscape appeared cloudy, to me, prompting me to think it was New York in which he was standing. The reason I mention this is that I find it ironic that LA has, of late, become such a jazz epicenter, housing Kamasi Washington, as it does, as well, because this is the EPITOME of my weekday, cloudy evening music. As of this point, they’re all pretty esoteric, in classic Cali form, but this music is anything but, with The Thousandth Scholar fitting the bill with Fearless Movement in terms of creating vast, roomy musical spaces in which potent musical chops can be showcased and an opaque, substantial musical canvas can be painted, in the true, pioneering spirit of the genre.

9 Blue Zero – colder shade blue

As if in an answering touchdown to San Francisco’s The Circulators, Blue Zero chime in from Oakland with a rock album that comes across light, breezy and purposeful but also just so steeped in genre that it’s like the miracle work of pretense. However they pulled this off, Blue Zero have delivered the exact twee pop album I needed this fall, steeped in just enough Jesus-and-Mary-Chain sound-fuzz to seem real and even a little cathartic. “Blue Zero”; like its kinfolk, has apparently got every right to “sound really cheap,” as in the deliberate attempt to give the impression of DIY, but the rough edges here, in classic form, give way to some sanguine, confident and clear vocals from Chris Nativdad, delivered over what sounds like a non-affected hollow-body of some sort. Even twee pop messiahs can be given to subterfuge and deception, and I guess, and the result makes it even more fun, like a party that one extra person turned out for, for no other reason that that it was fun.

8 Khruangbin – A La Sala

As always, it’s a rush to have Khruangbin back this year, and A La Sala did anything but disappoint: a concise, crystal-clear and delicious series of instrumental funk-rock grooves that could play in a five-star oyster joint on 5th Avenue and a seedy uptown cabaret, alike. Let’s be honest, though: the vibe is pure Southwest, and this stuff is better fit for one of those dirt-surface gas stations in the motorcycle commercials, albeit, maybe, one where a romantic encounter is inevitable. Right away, on “Fifteen Fifty-Three”; Mark Speer’s guitar sounds more iridescent and DJ Johnson’s drums sound more potent and immediate, bespeaking a certain evolution in the band’s production techniques, and, hence, imbuing the album with a certain freshness, which is hardly surprising, given the subject at hand. The vibe of come-ons continues, let’s face it, in “Ada Jean” and what sound like its sampled female breath exhalations, a gorgeous, two-minute guitar-only track ensues, operating on a celestial level of beauty, and, in general, A La Sala will be a gift that keeps on giving with its attention to detail and its signature Khruangbin groove.

7 Qetsy – Espiral

Paraguay’s Qetsy seems to represent a classic “Puck,” or prankster of the techno world, listing his Bandcamp blurb all in Spanish and littering his album with these weird, spoken-word sound bites that can’t help but come across as satirical. “Cuatrocientos” certainly helps this album to come across as weird video game music, with a dizzying litany of sounds, channels, blips and blaps informing the larger, apparently guided whole, with the samples even seeming subservient to Qetsy’s mad, twisted artistic mind. So scattered, this album certainly is, but this helps to add to its level of fun, unquestionably, with the tense, uneasy “Pipasos” bleeding serenely into “Volveran” and all its professional, showroom-ready jungle glory. For an album as danceable as this, Espiral is singularly guilty of also, simultaneously, keeping the listener on his heels.

6 Skylar Gudasz – COUNTRY

In COUNTRY, we have what appears to be the third full-length from Durham, North Carolina’s Skylar Gudasz. The album opens placidly and beautifully with “Fire Country”; a song like the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine” that seems to have so much spirit and intrinsic energy that you don’t even notice the almost complete lack of percussion presence. By the beautiful mellotron presence in “Mother’s Daughter”; you know this album will be a continuing exercise in freshness and a broad, sweeping snapshot of the American condition. All along the way, Gudasz’ canary-like vocals steal the show, placing her somewhere near Sharon Van Etten in the department of new, timeless songwriting divas pitting warm, inviting vocals next to songwriting interfaces that indicate sacrifice and undeniable genuineness.

5 Kamasi Washington – Fearless Movement

Fearless Movement is full of “terrestrial rhythms,” per the Bandcamp writeup, whereas it would sure be hard to hear “extraterrestrial rhythms,” you’ve gotta admit. To my ears, it’s an expansive showcase of Washington’s chops, with the vast song structures making for ample opportunity in wailing, gettin’ down, and all that non-scientific stuff we know and love and have come to associate with this beleaguered but ultimately extant genre of music. In terms of “rhythms” and collections of influences informing this music, I don’t hear worlds of difference between “Lesanu” and the average Kamasi Washington track. Everything, however, does feel faster and more urgent and full of energy here, with “Asha the First” then coming in as a kind of breather that seems to hark back to that 2015 vibe that put Washington on while also giving Thundercat and a pedestal for his virile rapping, proviso of the line “The only way to predict the future is to create it”. “Computer Love” is actually rather bizarre, a narrative from a computer requesting and staking a claim to a supreme sort of “love,” but it makes supreme musical headway in genre and semantics, and in general lends itself to the type of album that, artistically, leaves no cultural stones unturned.

4 REMOTEWORKER – Interregnum

The hardest-working man in electronica is back this year with another manic splattering of busy, psychotic techno music, as if he were in a competition against a robot for the opportunity to escape from a desert well in New Mexico. Refreshingly not just putting out a bunch of EP’s like the average douche bag DJ might (I’m hoping that trend is finally slowing), REMOTEWORKER lets his oeuvre balloon up to 51 minutes before issuing this LP, giving a solid platform for “Armagosa” to saunter in all drunk and half-in-motion, like a dream presaging a nightmare. From there, Interregnum is a dark, tense voyage into a dubstep underworld, more sonically multifarious than its predecessor and more expansive than the rash of DJ’s with a monochromatic, club-only mentality.

3 The Black Keys – Ohio Players

It feels a little strange to say that this is The Black Keys’ “best album,” given the band’s incredible overall body of work (and given the incredibly lewd implications of the album’s cover, of course). This is what I did, anyway, implicitly, on some mad, thunderstruck night in May, when I ranked this album first (at the time the other two albums ahead of it weren’t out yet) over my mind-altering draught at my desk. Anyway, in what probably won’t make it as the official state anthem of Ohio anytime soon, “This is Nowhere” gives us a splash of cold reality over booming bass, with “Don’t Let Me Go” more soul/Motown-influenced, and equally radio-minded, but stylistically fresh and cutting-edge. Yes, the veritable jungle of hand claps on this stuff does smack of Dan the Automator, who is credited with production on this album. I guess I hadn’t expected another foray into Delta Blues, as “Beautiful People (Stay High)” more than affirms the band’s newfound devotion to pop, as originated, perhaps, on El Camino (2011). But this stuff is more than infectious enough to float on its own, adhering to an incredible amount of artistic and sonic energy, with the emotional range typified nicely by melancholic hopeless (“On the Game”) and maniacal hornball [“Please Me (Till I’m Satisfied)”].

2 Stetsasonic – Here We Go again

Like with The Circulators, I was sure I’d blown it and had actually listened to a re-release from the 1980s — so freshly and unpretentiously did this classic LP adhere to its proper genre (that actually did happen one time in recent years with a reggae artist Tchiss Lopez… I’m not sure if the technical error ever got ironed out, actually). But we’re full steam ahead, anyway: Here We Go again is actually a 2024 creation. Well, they were on a 33-year break, according to Bandcamp. That might be part of what threw me off. Anyway, purportedly the “world’s first hip-hop band,” Stetsasonic lay down a set of grooves, rhymes and bangers that seem to seep from the genre’s origins, while buoyed by enough rhythmic and textural flare to be able to soundtrack any occasion even in this current time, today. Is this music actually going to spawn any social change in America? Well, the power’s in your hands, isn’t it?

1 Factor Chandelier – Cold, Cold World

Calling to mind the classic bangers by Tricky, Z-Trip or DJ Logic, “Don’t Leave Too Soon” is an absolute beast of a track for radio, workplaces or clubs, a “beat” with the grittiness of hip-hop and the melodic and paradigmatic musicality of Pink Floyd, for a supreme convergence of the uplifting and the grounding. Factor Chandelier calls home Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a Canadian town about 1,000 miles straight north of Denver. Somehow, though, everything about this music seems so approachable and ubiquitous — less Eskimo and more that track that quiet chick next to you at work has had on repeat for like a month straight. The hip-hop collabo “Without a Trace” with the Codefendants gives way to the lilting, dubstep-leaning “Dancing on My Neck”; which prances with the ephemeral lightness of trap, before exploding into opaque, jazzy sonic beauty in the chorus, where a sea of high hats helps undergird the track with some soothing percussive swagger. I mocked this artist’s name at first, but in reality, every track on this album plays as something composed of crystals and refracting light in infinite, psychedelic ways, reshaping the listener’s understanding of the beauty potentially delivered by music, and, maybe, even warming us a little bit, when the hot cocoa and hands by the fire are starting to wear off.

[1] them.us/story/meth-math-chupetones-angel-ballestero-interview.

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