In Search of the 24 Best Albums of 2024: August

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Still still on about this!

Once upon a time there was a boy named Chris. Having spent years backfilling on decades gone past, in 2021 he set out on a quest to catch up on newer music. He listened to the critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s, and picked his favorites. He did the same for 2020, picking his top 20 from the critics most highly rated albums. And he listened to new releases monthly in 2021, eventually picking the 21 best albums of 2021. That was so much fun he decided to do it again in 2022 and 2023, listening each month and picking out the 22 best albums of 2022 and the 23 best albums of 2023. He grew up to be me!

There are links to the albums in the posts cited above, but if you’d like a one-stop playlist, I’ve got that set up in YouTube Music:

Here are the previous editions of the 2024 monthly review if you missed them:

( January February March April May June/July )

A quick word on the “yes” and “maybe” categories I’ve sorted things into, before we get going with the latest:

Yes– This isn’t a guarantee, but it represents the albums that, upon first listen, I think could definitely be in the running for best of the year.

Maybe– These albums have something to recommend them, but also something that gives me pause. I’m putting them in their own category, because I have found “maybes” sometimes linger and eventually become “yeses”.

And now, on with my top picks from 114 August 2024 new releases that I listened to!

Amy Rigby, Hang in There With Me– Opens with a genuinely rollicking acoustic number on turning sixty. Then gets a little psychedelic/electronic on a song about being too old to be so crazy, a nineties electric guitar number on being Dubuque’s answer to Bob Dylan. And so on throughout a literate, personality filled, musical inventive and playful whirl. She is a singer-songwriter who has been making sharp indie albums since the nineties, and I am glad to meet her!

Beabadoobee, This Is How Tomorrow Moves– Rick Rubin Produced! Achingly poppy! Nineties guitar rocky and yet dancy!

Charley Crockett, Visions of Dallas– Sequel to his album from earlier in the year, which I loved, and this one is equally as good, and maybe even better with its segues into blues and folk without ever losing that country feeling.

Deerhoof, The Free Triple Live Album– Deerhoof is not only one of my favorite bands of the millennium so far, a great purveyor of challenging but melodic post-rock, they are also a really great live band. So, when I heard they’d put out this live album from a 2024 performance in Berlin, I had high hopes. They were not disappointed!

Doechii, Alligator Bites Never Heal– This mixtape is so full of swagger, disarming honesty, humor, raunch, beautiful liquid flow, and 80s-early 00s elements in the mix. 26-year-old L.A-based Florida native Doechii is now on my watch list!

Hamish Hawk, A Firmer Hand– In subject primarily deals with his relationships with men; not just lovers, but friends, family, and the questionable rogues his career has thrown at him. Literate and emotionally complex lyrics, doleful vocals (in the best way), 80s synth atmospherics, post-punk moodiness.

Heems, Veena– On his new solo album, the Queens rapper tackles his struggles with addiction and intergenerational trauma. His signature mix of smart-dumb humor is still there, but it no longer feels like a security blanket. Playing off his Indian heritage both in terms of lyrical material and aspects of the mix, and with significant nods to the Jay-Z school of hip hop. All around a delight.

Killer Mike, Michael & the Mighty Midnight Revival, Songs for Sinners and Saints– Backed by his live band, the rapper remixes and elaborates the autobiographical themes and gospel uplift of 2023’s Michael. And oh man is it a beautiful thing. There’s old school grooves, gospel, the best of 00s and 10s hip-hop, with an imaginative and variable mix, and engaging flow.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Flight b741– Oh, such a beautiful mid-sixties garage/psyche rock sound, with all the zany range those bands had. Listening to this, it’s almost impossible to believe it isn’t from a Nuggets compilation.

Laurie Anderson, Amelia– Laurie Anderson in high from delivering a spooky and well-delivered concept album based on Amelia Earhart’s final flight? Count me in! No, really. The best albums are often a journey, and this one literally does that.

Meshell Ndegeocello, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin– I knew between the subject matter and the artist that this would be worthy of my attention. But also, some trepidation, because artistic ambition and creative excellence don’t always make for good listening. So, what a pleasant outcome to find that the jazz inspirations, African polyrhythms, acoustic interludes, and more ethereal passages, combined with the poetry and inspiration of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde and Meshell Ndegeocello’s own clarity of vision and plethora of well-deployed production flourishes, is both arresting and a musically engaging listen from start to finish.

MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks– Country feelings, shredding guitar, reverb, tremolo, and songs about trying to pick up on nurse nuns and feeling like a jerk about it. At times here he feels almost like a second coming of Neil Young. I’m not sure there’s anything here not to like!

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Wild God– Power, glory, orchestral flourish, evocative poetic lyrics and an honest to goodness story arc. You can’t shake the feeling that it’s charged with meaning, and it’s a compelling listen. This is a later-day master at work.

Osees, Sorcs 80– A sound palette driven by synths, percussion, and a horn section. In press materials, John Dwyer described the record as “sort of vacuous and maybe a bit sci-fi in sound,” and, more specifically, “sort of a Dexy’s Midnight Runners meets Von LMO meets the Flesh Eaters meets the Screamers kinda punk junk.” I could not tell you what it meant, but I can tell you that on their 28th album this San Francisco indie stalwart is making a discordant, distorted, noisy mélange as interesting and edgy as anything they’ve ever done.

Sabrina Carpenter, Short n’ Sweet– Solid and fun EDM, and her snark and personality, delivered with such melodic perfection, take it to another level. At times she’s Taylor Swift but raunchier, Lana Del Ray but for a dance floor.

Shelby Lynne, Consequences of the Crown– A kind of Dusty in Memphis, Nashville Sound, rambling talk poems with a pop edm shine. It’s impossible to turn it off!

SOPHIE, SOPHIE– final album released posthumously after transgressive artist’s 2021 accidental death, it’s beautifully hyper-poppy and avant garde, sometimes on the same damn song

Spirit of the Beehive, You’ll Have to Lose Something– Impossible melodies meets hyperpop production overdrive and occasional dissonance on an electronic music outing that is consistently interesting and arresting.

Swami & the Bed of Nails, All of this Awaits You– Different people deal with grief in diverse ways. Swami John Reis, the punk firebrand who founded Rocket from the Crypt, was a close friend of guitarist Rick Froberg, one of his musical partners in the band Hot Snakes. Reis was writing material in anticipation of recording a new Hot Snakes album when Froberg died unexpectedly on June 20, 2023. powered by that, and his impeccable sense for no nonsense hard rock/garage/punk, this album roars out of the gate. Plus, there’s a song about ketchup, mustard, and relish. How can you go wrong?

The Bug Club, On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System– Imagine an excellent album had vanished somewhere in-between the late punk of the Jam and Wire, and the early post-punk of Gang of Four and Magazine and had just now re-appeared through a time-space warp as the product of a Welsh indie band formed in 2016. I can’t explain how or why, but that’s what this feels like. And I love it!

X, Smoke and Fiction– Always beware of a golden oldie who says this is their “last album”. (But also, how weird is it that X is now a golden oldie?) That being said, there’s no fat here- 10 songs in 28 minutes, and they sound tight, blistering, and incisive as ever, with just enough of a touch of world weary looking back. If this is the last album, it’s a darn good one!

Maybe

  • Bill Wyman, Drive My Car– Nothing that new here, but it is a relaxed, masterful outing. I’d listen to it again!

  • Charlie Overbey, In Good Company– He’s a Punk Rock Spy in the Halls of Honkytonk Heaven! So says the opening track, and a fair bit of it sounds exactly like that would make you think, with detours into outlaw country and Springsteen territory. It’s a little too slickly produced-feeling, but I appreciate the territory it explores.

  • Duke Robillard, Roll With Me– Back in 2005, Duke Robillard conceived a maximalist studio album based on jump, Chicago blues, and NOLA-styled R&B. Given commitments to appearing alongside Ronnie Earl on The Duke Meets the Earl and to participate in the New Guitar Summit sessions with J. Geils and Gerry Beaudoin, he abandoned work on the date but never forgot about the album. Robillard’s Roll with Me is his 37th album and the program consists of four Robillard originals and eight covers of classic R&B and blues tunes associated with Fats Domino, Gatemouth Brown, Big Joe Turner, Howling Wolf, and Muddy Waters. I’m darn glad he made it!

  • Fontaines D.C., Romance– Their usual excellent, and it even has a through line!

  • Ka, The Thief Next to Jesus– The mix and flow is appropriately dark and heavy, and the sampling unsettling for the sober meditations on the role of religion in inspiring the African American community but also in perpetuating oppression. It may be a little narrow tonally, but it’s worthy, both in and of itself, and as a memorial to the artist for his final album.)

  • Nikka Costa, Dirty Disco– As an 80s Electro fan I am flipping over this. Such an excellent spare EDM funk dance set! By its nature, a little derivative? Sure, but come on, the quality!

  • Pom Poko, Champion– Of all the quirky melodic and yet anarchic Scandinavian post-rock bands that are near and dear to my heart, Pom Poko is one of them. No, but really, there are several in this category! And this Norwegian band named for Japanese anime that reminds me of Deerhoof is a good one.

  • Sarah Kinsley, Escaper– I almost feel like I’m listening to a later-day Kate Bush. As such, it does sound a little derivative, but so well done and such a great derivation. I also think she may have accidentally invented it herself. She herself cites Chopin, Clara Schumann, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, Lorde, Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, Sting, the Eagles, Foreigner and Madonna as influences. Put that in a blender and mix it!

  • The Shivas, Can’t Stop Coming Around– Fuzzy garage rock with a sixties reverb/doo-wop/girl group feeling, and more than occasional flashes of the Velvet Underground. So, by definition, not the newest things, and there are other contemporary bands that mine this same vein (hello Raveonettes!) but my goodness does this Portland band do it well!

  • The Smashing Pumpkins, Aghori Mhori Mei– Musically it’s a kind of flashback, for sure, though a flashback to an era I love. But it doesn’t stop there, there is something spare and bright to many of the arrangements here. And lyrically and vocally, there is a sense here of the passage of time, of elegy. I’m not sure if it adds up, but this is what one might wish for from a Pumpkin become Tribal elder.

  • The Softies, Bed I Made– first new album in over two decades, beloved Pacific Northwest twee pop duo, and it is perfectly done sweet melodic pop rock. It does get a little same-same, but it is so well done I almost don’t mind.

  • Tinashe, Quantum Baby– Really about as pleasing a set of sophisticated enough but fun enough mid-tempo dance music as one could ask for. It’s not profound or groundbreaking, but I’ve been a Tinashe fan for a while now, and I’m going to continue!

  • Why?, The Well I Fell Into– Is this a slower introspective indie rock outing a la Elliot Smith? Or an electronic remix album? Or chilly art rock? I’d accept all of these as an answer. And in fact, Wikipedia subsequently informed me, “Why? (styled as WHY?) is an American alternative hip hop and indie rock band. The band was founded in 2004 by Cincinnati rapper and singer Yoni Wolf, who had been using Why? as his stage name since 1997.” Whatever it is that’s going on here, I kinda like it!

Onward to September/October!

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