Best trend in local music for 2024? Short albums! Repeatedly in the list below you'll see I've noted how many songs an artist squeezed into a short run time. Concision is an art, and the world is already full of LPs that shoulda been EPs. Besides, now that anyone can post their music online as soon as it's finished, artists are encouraged to complete their work in short bursts, then move on to the next project.
20. Buio Omega, Diva Moment
Named for a giallo they still haven’t all seen (“our drummer doesn’t really like movies”), this “sleazy slasher hardcore punks” (their words) play things heavy, fast, unpretentious, and catchy, whipping through five songs in nine minutes. Mononymed Greer’s charismatic ranting, guitarists Nikki Derella and Matt Jones’s unfussy shredding, and the no-nonsense rhythm section of drummer Josh Olson and bassist Midge (not big on surnames, this lot) are perfect for titles like “I Wanna Crash My Car (on Purpose),” “Business Man (Loser Life)” (“Loser! Loser! Loser!”), and “Diva Moment,” which features a real live chainsaw. They were both Poised to Pop and Picked to Click in 2024. And the haters say I don’t pay attention to hardcore. (OK, the haters are mostly right.)
19. Vial, Burnout
Three compulsively tuneful punks blaze through 10 songs in 19 minutes, but this ain’t all rip and run. When doubts surface (“Take a walk in my childhood neighborhood/Scare the kids like a ghost in a horror film”) they get slow and crafty without losing their edge. Highlights include “Ur Dad” (about hooking up with him), “Falling Short” (about not measuring up to some loser’s expectations), and “Broth Song” (about how broth is good). Plus the boisterous “Fuck you/And fuck you too” they emit as a group one minute in to set the tone.
18. Humbird, Right On
Siri Undlin, who has often layered her folk with atmospherically experimental textures, has taken a decidedly more country course here. Good call: She’s got the pained yet placid voice for it and the plainspoken writing style required as well. She’s not just an even-tempered writer, but a downright kind one—even the title track, which addresses a lover who kicked her to the curb, tells him “You might be dead wrong/At least you’re trying.” As another lyric puts it, she excels at “finding silver linings threaded through the day,” but she’s not blindly optimistic, and there are moments of musical darkness that suggest why scouring for hope is so important to her.
17. Christy Costello, From the Dark
A real team player, Costello has been fronting high-profile local bands since the ’90s (Ouija Radio or Pink Mink ring a bell?), yet this is somehow her first solo album. I hate to say something dopey like "It was worth the wait!" but… well, it wasn’t not worth the wait. Her band is a reconfiguration of Monica LaPlante’s (Costello and LaPlante swap bass duties) but with a significant shift in sound: Costello's songs crunch with the ballroom stomp of the early U.K. punks, and occasionally feature some postpunk sax, à la the Psychedelic Furs, whose “Pulse” she covers here. How many get to place in a best-new-band poll over 25 years into their career?
16. Craishon, I Thought There’d Be More…
Craishon is a member of Basement Gang—a rap crew, and one that’s overdue for a profile on this website. But Craishon is a singer, and a hell of a singer at that. Though he’s a sensualist and his compositions are fairly open-structured, these are real songs, built up from tracks laid down by the Gang’s Quasi Uno and several others producers. Craishon’s not skating by solely on vibe. As for the promise deferred of the title, please note that he proceeds from “Deadend” and “Disjointed” to end with “Clarity.” That’s progress, right?
Recorded in Chicago last October with the late/great Steve Albini, Scrunchies’ latest is marked by the late producer’s crisp analog style. Laura Larson’s guitar has never sliced with such precision, the occasionally unaccompanied low-end from new bassist Jeremy Walden (ex-Double Grave) repeatedly holds the songs together like a steel cord, and Danielle Cusack drums as though she and Larson are linked telepathically. Cusack’s enthusiastic backup shouts create a dynamic tension with Larson's probing lead vocals, which declaim opaque yet vivid lyrics such as “Pull the brute thorn out and let it run down my leg” or “Your mouth becomes the greenroom/Can’t be held responsible/If it misfires and turns cannibal.”
14. Bad Bad Hats, Bad Bad Hats
Like Genesis and Metallica before them, Bad Bad Hats waited until later in their career to release a self-titled album. And also like Genesis and Metallica before them... OK, that's pretty much where the comparison ends. On their fourth album, Kerry Alexander and Chris Hogue continue to craft precise but unfussy pop while fending off everyday problems and concerns without ever getting too worked up about them. These aren’t all chin-up tunes—“Back to My Body” ponders an almost universal pandemic dilemma. Still, it’s hard to think of a more reassuring local band. You’re in safe hands with Bad Bad Hats.
13. Dizzy Fae, Are We There Yet
She’s a L.A. gal now, like so many musicians hoping to make a go of it, but we won’t hold that against her. On this fizzy R&B treat, Dizzy’s got suggestions for what she can get up to in your “Backseat” and makes communication sound sexy (which it is!) on “Talk About It.” At seven songs in just 15 minutes, this is just long enough to get you warmed up. I’m sure you and some consenting nearby body can take it from there.
12. Bizhiki, Unbound
I’m cheating a little here with this made-in-Wisconsin product from Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, Joe Rainey, and S. Carey. But the trio debuted the music from the full-length, Unbound, at the Parkway, Rainey was raised in Minneapolis, and I reject the concept of borders. So there. Rainey’s breakthrough album, Nineta, was less a blueprint for how to meld traditional Indigenous singing with electronic beatcraft than an open door inviting others to follow. If anything Jennings is more song-oriented, suggesting a respectful fusion between the traditional and the contemporary that’s only just beginning.
11. Riotgrrrldarko, Kiss the Ring
Each December I smugly watch the big pubs rush to get their year end lists out earlier and earlier as I pat myself on the back for waiting as close to the actual end of the year as I can. Then someone (not naming names) goes and drops one of the best albums of 2023 on December 29? Well, I won’t hold it against Riotgrrrldarko (OK, naming names), mostly because I’d be a real dummy to incur the wrath of someone who talks shit so fluently. I mean, she’d fuckin’ end me. Excelling at both bratty put-downs and homemade glow-ups, she treats genres as accessories—you can imagine SoundCloud rap, giddy hyperpop, and Auto-Tuned pop punk all in a heap on her bed as she decides just what look suits her today.
A not-so-unlikely team up, the bottomless font of crafty beats known as MAKR (aka Mark McGee) and the ever-hyped Sophia Eris condense a full party into eight songs and 14 minutes. Car crash beats give way to spare funk, the bass drops then bounds back into the mix, and Eris, boldly favoring attitude over intelligibility, challenges herself to determine what freaky noises she can contort her voice into. Dancefloor anthems, sexy come-ons, minimalist experiments—they’ve got all the bases covered. A quickie? Maybe so, but like lotsa quickies I bet it has more staying power than some belabored masterpieces.
9. Molly Brandt, American Saga
Brandt’s pen takes a turn toward the political here, channeling her frustrations and hopes into a resonant batch of songs rather than rage-tweeting like some of us. She bemoans capital’s erosion of a town’s vitality on “Dollar Stores & Strip Malls” (which rhymes “we’re living in a car society” with “the bottle is cheaper than therapy” and makes it work) and crafts a historical fantasy about a 19th-century class traitor on “Daughter of the Oil Tycoon.” She even takes heart from hearing “voices singing anthems of survival” on “Ashes (Follow That Sound).” Her music strays further from the purer country of last year’s Surrender to the Night, in part due to the input of her musical and life partner, Eric Carranza; his guitar on “Mr. Texas” is pure Lindsey Buckingham, and discofying “Sunup” was his idea. Pulling it all together is Brandt’s voice, which I once called “capacious,” a fancy word for "big" that seems appropriate here. Where some big voices feel forbidding, hers is welcoming, inviting you because it’s got room to spare.
8. Alan Sparhawk, White Roses, My God
On their final albums, Low splintered and reassembled their sound with no patience for their legacy, and Alan Sparhawk's first record since the death of his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker is no less forward-looking. Guitar is scarce, electronic bass lines thrum underneath, beats thud and skitter, and Sparhawk’s voice is consistently processed, often beyond comprehension, like Kid Cudi reborn as the 101st gec, mournful in a way that doesn't feel limited by autobiography. It’s a work about death as how could it not be, and also a work of survival, and its sound demands metaphors—of self-mutilation, willed ego death, or simply transformation. But it might be better to set those aside for a moment and just sit with your response to what you hear.
7. Shrimpnose, The World Pushed Against You
I’d never call him pop, but L.A.-relocated former Minnesotan Riley Smithson’s skeletal acoustic guitar figures, spectral voices, and percussion stutters add up to something lovely and inviting here rather than grim and forbidding. Smithson develops the ideas he scattered through his recent EP Toward Heaven with delicate and deliberately off-centered beats echoing classic dubstep (as in Burial, not Skrillex). Not sure if we’re still calling this stuff “folktronica,” or if we ever should have, but I’ll toss that genre tag in there as a guidepost for the curious.
6. Gramma, Eat
Twelve scrappy, lo-fi songs in 23 abrasive minutes, all seemingly reminiscent of your favorite band from before these kids were born. And yet every comparison I’ve heard suggested has me shaking my head no. Guitars glint and bend away from their ideal trajectory, voices are shredded in not quite rage but just defiance, and every so often the music drops to a quiet strum so they can all come rushing back in. I don’t know exactly what they're ranting about, but they seem to know, and that’s what matters.
5. L.A. Buckner & Big Homie, Norfside
Plenty of jazz fusion (to nudge this music beneath a stylistic umbrella where it huddles a bit uncomfortably) is smooth but not slick. Norfside is the opposite. Every note lands with meticulous accuracy, and some cuts are composed of more than 100 tracks. But this is never easy listening, never content to lay back. Buckner allows for moments of simplicity here, but more often the 34-year-old Minneapolis drummer sounds happily unconstrained, filling in each empty space in the mix with a flicker of cymbals, a flurry of toms, some percussive announcement or another that he is here. The guy can play and he wants you to know it. The album is an exuberant exercise, brimming with bright melodies and rhythmic fillips flawlessly executed by his band, Big Homie, but at the core is a steady funk pulse, unwavering, no matter how gloriously Buckner adorns it.
4. Dylan Hicks & Small Screens, Modern Flora
Hicks’s longstanding rep as a lyrics-first guy won’t prepare you for his new five-track album, Modern Flora, which gives the members of his sextet plenty of room to spread out: Two songs stretch past the 10-minute mark, and the title track is a nearly eight-minute instrumental. And these players deserve the space; Hicks, on piano, is joined by cellist Michelle Kinney, guitarist Zacc Harris, saxophonist Christopher Thomson, and the rhythm section of bassist Charlie Lincoln and drummer Peter Hennig. Though the arrangements can be quite elaborate and the solos ingenious, the melodies are often straightforward, as largely improvisational musicians adapt their chops to a pop context without significantly simplifying their styles. As for the lyrics, they’re more impressionistic than usual, but phrases do stick with you—“Montgomery Clift in his cowboy suit, shooting at cans” pops into my head a lot more than you might expect.
3. Guante & Big Cats, All Dressed Up, No Funeral
As Guante, Kyle Tran Myhre has been crafting politically engaged rap for 15 years in collaboration with producer Big Cats (Spencer Wirth-Davis). But some topics, such as police violence, blend more easily with a hip-hop ethos than others. Their new album together tackles climate change, and Guante knows what a hard sell that is—the opening track is called “Whatever You Do, Don’t Put the Words ‘Climate Crisis’ in the Title.” The album addresses the end of the world and our range of emotional responses to impending crises, while searching for ways to avoid despair. It's inspiring in a way even a downtrodden cynic can relate to. As Guante raps, “So it looks like this is the end/But I mean that in a good way.” The album also asks the big question: How do we make art about issues without either offering easy answers or alienating listeners by preaching? And answers it: Well, here’s one way.
Novelist Dan Hornsby makes terrific lyric-drunk indie rock, lo-fi and unrushed, with shaky guitars supporting sturdy melodies. My personal fave is “My Peccadillos,” which sets a shaggy-dog story driven primarily by the cleverness of its rhymes to a Malkmusian melody. It starts "I grew up strong and plucky/On a wolf farm in Kentucky/We shot and skinned and stuffed them/For businessmen and Russians" and leads up to a pretty clear moral lesson: “'It’s a dog-eat-dog world,’ said the dog with a taste for dogs/'Every man for himself,' said the man for himself.”
A Papa Mbye track is an ever-changing thing. Rare is the song on his new EP that finishes where it began, rhythmically or melodically. Which isn’t to say this 25-year-old, Senegal-born, Minneapolis-bred musician rambles—whether his emergent, self-taught guitar follows fluid lines or chonks out the funk, whether electronic noises swell from below or articulate themselves as replicas of fuzzed out thumb-pianos, the sounds progress, evolve, make themselves known. Parcelles 16 (named for his uncle’s address back in Dakar) is experimental and melodic, smooth and craggy, DIY and difficult, recalling at times the instrumental murkiness yet emotional clarity of D’Angelo, at others the liquid effortlessness of West African guitar pop. At the center is Papa’s own voice, serrated and filtered, making demands like “Kiss me where it hurts/You could make it better” and pondering the concept of home on the closing track, “Senegambia.”
