“It was a great year for music and a terrible year for musicians,” I wrote of 2023 last December, and honestly I may as well have said “It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter.” It has been a terrible year for musicians every year since the algorithmic proletarianization of the creative class began. And every year (at least as long as I’ve been on this planet) has been a great year for music. So far. We can only hope that continues to be true, just as we can only hope winter continues to be cold.
But let’s not start things out on a glum note, even if many of my favorite artists in 2024, like a lot of us, understandably ended on one. Follow the links at the bottom of the page and you’ll find a list of 20 local records and 25 from elsewhere that I fully endorse, along with another 20 runners up. And then two playlists of 120 songs apiece. That’s a lot of good music! And that’s just what one guy heard and liked.
Granted, I hear a lot. Locally I take in as much as I can, based on word of mouth, online opinions from pros and fans and other musicians, gigs attended, and artists’ submissions, while also sifting through the “Minnesota” tag on Bandcamp regularly and hoping for a lucky find. Bubbling under my 20 album picks are plenty of other artists who released excellent music this year, and you’ll find them on my final year-end playlist. While nobody is getting rich hustling in the local music scene (and we’ve now got the stats to support that), the creativity is hardly drying up.
As for music from outside Minnesota’s borders? If an album was well-reviewed or popular, figure I’ve heard it, probably several times. I mention this because invariably the first comment on this year-end post is “You forgot [INSERT COMMENTER’S PERSONAL FAVE].” That’s part of the fun of lists, I know, but let me save at least a few of you the effort.
What’s Wrong With My Lists?
Plenty of fine albums just didn’t click with me—again, you’ll find the likes of Fontaines D.C., Tyler the Creator, MJ Lenderman, Mount Eerie, Tyla, Ka, and Mdou Moctar on my year-end playlists. And just to mention a few critical faves that I wrestled with long enough to reject definitively: Still House Plants is the sound of avant guitars battling dreary vocals to a draw; Jessica Pratt is retro pop for people who find the idea of songwriting too forward; Mk.gee occasionally succeeds in extracting the bougie soul of '80s adult contemporary from its vulgar chintz, if you call that success.
That’s not to mention the albums that just didn’t sink in—if someone paid me to, maybe I could articulate my benign indifference to the likes of Nilüfer Yanya, Astrid Sonne, or Magdalena Bay (to pick just a few Pitchfork faves), but pro bono I’d rather just cut my losses and find something I like. Really, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been intrigued by an item on a year-end list, then checked my log to see that I’d listened to it three or four times earlier that year and remembered nothing about it.
Of course, there are whole musical styles that go over my head or I trod under my feet. Most heavy music, to start (I’m a wimp, what can I say), though I get a kick out of plenty of noisy guitar stuff (hey Gramma!). And while I can (and do) get off on electronic dance music (a term I'll use in the broadest sense), I’m not a good judge of merit except when it grabs me by the brain stem like Jlin’s mathematically gorgeous intricacies or it’s catchy enough to qualify as pop.
I could go on—no matter how many neo-New Agers make a name for themselves, I’m just never gonna warm up to harps. (I’ve made exceptions for West African kora players accompanying gifted enough singers or hot enough rhythm sections.) So, sorry, Nala Sinephro. You kept me intrigued longer than Brandee Younger ever has, if that’s any consolation.
What else is wrong with me? Well, I’m woefully out of step with contemporary rap taste, as maybe a white 54-year-old should be, though still curious enough that if someone can spell out what I’m missing in Bladee or Cash Cobain I’d happily give those fellas another shot. I appreciate Future enough that I wish he hadn’t flooded the market with product this year. But while a titan like Kendrick is undeniable, even when he can’t move beyond celebrating his own Kendrickness, I’m not winning any cred by stumping for Heems or Serengeti.
What’s Right With My Lists
But hey, I was hip to Doechii two years ago, that’s something, right? And while I’ve got love for the dirty girls of rap like Sexxy Red and GloRilla and Megan Thee Stallion, I'm rooting for the nerdy girls of rap this year. If I can convince a few Doechii fans, who I’m thrilled have multiplied in the months since Alligator Bites Never Heal dropped, that they should also be Tierra Whack fans, I'll be satisfied.
And then there's pop, whatever that word means a quarter of the way through the 21st century. In a year dominated commercially by Taylor Swift’s dullest record, I can see why so many smart people gravitated toward the coolest album of the year. Just don’t hate me for saying that Brat demonstrates the limits of cool—in fact it's partly about an aging party girl discovering those limits. But it's also about a woman who's always sung like she’s yawning determined to hold on to her fascination with vacuousness (esp. of the NYC variety), and continue with her kneejerk diva posturing as long as she can. I'm old enough to remember when we made fun of Mick Jagger for shit like that.
Better to turn to Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet and Billie Ellish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, pop albums that couldn’t have existed in their form at an earlier time. In ye olde 1900s, Billie would be finding her way into adulthood on guitar as a singer-songwriter; Sabrina's writer's room pop existed primarily in Nashville, where it of course still persists (give Carly Pearce’s Hummingbird just once listen please).
And while we're talkin' country, let's just note quickly that Beyoncé is hardly the first culture hero whose tunes didn't always keep pace with her concept. But just as an experiment, file away the musicological arguments (including the ones the album explicitly makes) for a moment and bracket the autobiographical branding and you'll hear Cowboy Carter as one helluva singer's record from one helluva singer.
Worlds away from the concerns of Big Pop, I heard a collection of overlapping Twin Cities music scenes more stylistically varied than ever. Returning to my local favorites, I remembered something Picked to Click winner Papa Mbye told me: The musicians he meets in bigger cities are often envious of the freedom that artists in our less media-glutted region have to buck trends. Sure, they may be getting paid less, which explains why several of my local picks have relocated full- or part-time to L.A. (I could make an argument about why they're still "local," but would you really want to read that?) But there's a freedom that comes with that.
You can hear that freedom in Papa's Parcelles 16, an album that's less "genre-fluid" (a term he rightly mocks) than assembled from the more interesting parts of disparate styles. What’s Makr & Eris’s Me 2 got to do with any trends? What do Molly Brandt or Clare Doyle care if Nashville never comes calling? And even though he’s now an L.A.-based ex-Minnesotan, the singer and producer Shrimpnose maintains an idiosyncratic fragility in his tracks, and he gave his album the evocative title The World Pushed Against You, which I shall now steal for my final header.
The World Pushed Against Us
Let's dive in to one last critical favorite that didn't win me over: Cindy Lee’s cherished magnum opus Diamond Jubilee. In the words of one typical and much-upvoted YouTube comment, “Given the state of the world at the moment, this album is a reminder than [sic] humanity is capable of creating something beautiful and meaningful, in spite of all of our flaws.” How could I pull the rug out from under such earnest appreciation? *Rubs hands together with sinister intent and snickers.*
No, really, there’s plenty to enjoy and even love here: chiming and droning and scraping guitars tutored in the history of underground rock, snatches of melody from imaginary A.M. radio pop that occasionally blossom into simulacra of songs, a prevailing mood of wonder and mystery, and even the not-a-gimmick gimmick of feigning obscurity by remaining off streaming services. I've appreciated Cindy Lee's mood-setting qualities as a kind of ambient indie, though, if it’s too not gauche to isolate individual tracks that clings stubborns to its gestalt flow, I’m a particular fan of “Demon Bitch," which sounds a bit like something off Eno’s Another Green World until it doesn’t.
But another YouTuber really captures the appeal of this music in a way that also suggests my reservations: “Sounds like nothing I've ever heard, and everything I've ever loved.” Diamond Jubilee layers a patina of novelty over the comfort of nostalgia. Here is the self-sufficient world apart that indie musicians have always dreamt of, a space of autonomy without resistance, filled with all our favorite stuff. We may struggle to meet our material needs, this music implies, but at least we still have these sounds.
Then again, will we? I don’t begrudge anyone who finds Cindy Lee's music a balm in a year we all needed one. I found something similar in the joyous rhythms of Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola, a dynamite collection of late 20th century Afropop. But Kampire is also a queer DJ who thrown parties in a nation (Uganda) that has made homosexuality a capital crime. As with much of my favorite music this year, Kampire dug in her heels and excepted a dark truth: There is nothing that the powerful cannot take from us unless we defend it.
Does that mean (gulp) I'm calling for protest songs like some kinda cranky old boomer? Not necessarily, though even before the triumph of the oligarchs this fall, songs from Hurray for the Riff Raff, Carsie Blanton, and Willi Carlisle provided some of the uplift I needed. And locally, Guante & Big Cats All Dressed Up, No Funeral is the sort of rap I’d love to hear more of, even if the album was about how hard it is to make good art from good politics. Every movement needs its fight songs, and a good beat helps too—that's why it's called a movement.
And yet, there’s some bleak shit in my top ten this year. Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future is a heartbreak victim’s grueling self-autopsy, Wussy’s Cincinnati Ohio a eulogy for a bandmate where the bereaved sound ready to leap into the grave as well. In this company, Alan Sparhawk’s White Roses, My God, with its beatwise commitment to reinvention in the face of loss, sounds kinda like a party.
Look, I am a fan of pluck, maybe to a fault. I quote Woody Guthrie's “I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose, bound to lose, no good for nothing and no good to nobody” more than I should. But though I endured no loved ones or relationships dying in 2024, I did feel a sense of loss. The world is hardening itself against creativity and basic human comfort. I laid a lot of cherished illusions to rest, many overdue for retirement, and the time will come for me to recalibrate my estimation of what I want the world to be. Until then, in evoking their own loss, Lenker and Wussy helped me mourn some dead promises. And that, truly, is a gift.
The 20 Best Local Albums of 2024
