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Top 50 Albums of 2024

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Top 50 Albums of 2024

Another year begins.. Another list of my favourite albums from the year just ended.

1 Kelly Lee Owens - Dreamstate

A regular in my lists, Kelly’s finest work came in 2024’s Dreamstate - a perfect blend of euphoric, melodic, and ambient sounds. My album of the year. Dark Angel is brilliant.

2 Ride - Interplay

Everything they’ve done since the comeback has been a joy. This is by far my favourite.

3 Another Sky - Beach Day

Songs that get better with each listen. Their previous debut album would have featured much higher given how much I’ve listened to that in the years since.

4 Linn Koch-Emmery - Borderline Iconic

Ebay Armour and the title track. Marvellous.

5 The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World

Worth waiting for!

6 Lauren Mayberry - Vicious Creature

More eclectic than her work with Chvrches and exceptionally good throughout.

7 Madi Diaz - Weird Faith

Madi’s writes gut punching lyrics like nobody else. Incredible. “For Months Now” is my song of the year.

8 Rachel Chinouriri - What a Devastating Turn Of Events

Debut album of the year..

9 Beyoncé - COWBOY CARTER

Country influenced but unmistakably Beyoncé. There really is no-one quite like her.

10 Maggie Rogers - Don’t Forget Me

Just like 2022’s Surrender, this took several plays to sink in. Rewarding songs.

11 Nadine Shah - Filthy Underneath

12 Suki Waterhouse - Memoir of a Sparklemuffin

13 Kasey Musgraves - Deeper Well

14 Chali xcx - brat

For those of us who go back to the True Romance and mixtapes beginnings, her domination in 2024 felt long overdue.

15 Dead Pony - IGNORE THIS

Guitars!

16 NewDad - MADRA

17 Desperate Journalist - No Hero

A consistently excellent band.

18 The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy

They’ve become a bit cringe, but what a record. No doubt about that.

19 Katie Gavin - What a Relief

Golden solo album from 1/3 of MUNA.

20 Torres - What an enormous room

21-30

Bat for Lashes - The Dream of Delphi

Drahla - angeltape

Griff - Vertigo

James - Yummy

Orla Gartland - Everybody Needs a Hero

Misha Chylkova - Dancing the Same Dance

Pillow Queens - Name Your Sorrow

Jazmin Bean - Traumatic Livelihood

Francis of Delirium - Lighthouse

Lola Young - This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway

31-40

Sarah Jarosz - Polaroid Lovers

Thurston Moore - Flow Critical Lucidity

Pale Waves - Smitten

Fontaines D.C. - Romance

Sheryl Crow - Evolution

Florrie - The Lost Ones

Oceanator - Everything Is Love  and Death

Sprints - Letter to Self

Japandroids - Fate & Alcohol

Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Past is Still Alive

41-50

Kim Gordon - The Collective

Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood

English Teacher - This Could Be Texas

BIG SPECIAL - POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES

Nerina Pallot - A Psalm for Emily Salvi

Faye Webster - Underdressed at the Symphony

Bill Ryder-Jones - Iechyd Da

Snow Patrol - The Forest is The Path

Susanna Hoffs - The Lost Record

IDestroy - IDestroy

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Ride Reform

This website was originally intended for my #corporate #portfolio, but for the last few years has been a place where I post Taylor Swift videos. Amongst these though, I've routinely mentioned a desire for Ride, the band responsible for my favourite song, to reunite. 

Today, they did. 

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Top 50 Debut Albums (10-1)

10) dEUS - Worst Case Scenario (1994)

I clearly remember the first time I heard this band, watching the video for Hotellounge on MTV's 120 minutes. I've been hooked ever since. 

9) De La Soul - 3 Feet High And Rising (1989)

Where Public Enemy had their magnificent powerful sound, De La Soul excelled at creating their own little sub-genre. The 'Daisy Age' was as much fun as it was experimental. The indie guitar band press loved this record. So did I.

8) Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (1980)

The first in a run of nigh-on flawless, unique albums. Proper genius that Rowland chap.

7) Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction (1987)

If it only had one from 'Welcome To The Jungle', 'Paradise City' and 'Sweet Child O'Mine' it would still make this list. That it has all three guarantees a top 10 place. 

Much of what would follow was abysmal, making this debut even more remarkable.

6) The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses (1989)

It's become the law to include this in every music list that's ever made, so here it is. 

Heaton Park, Manchester in 2012 was very special. 

5) Ride - Nowhere (1990)

Massive cavernous reverb. Big old floppy haircuts. What a record. Five years ago I said it was my favourite debut. This top 10 is pretty interchangeable then.

4) Cyndi Lauper - She’s So Unusual (1983)

Seriously, just listen to Time After Time. 

3) Juliana Hatfield - Hey Babe (1992)

My favourite songwriter, bar none. This, her debut after the break-up of Blake Babies was something that until recently, she didn't seem to care much for, yet it's one of her finest. This exceptional essay by Laura Fisher says more than I could ever manage.
   
Many albums in this list have changed my life and how I relate to music, but none more than this.

I wanted to use the video for 'Everybody Loves Me But You' here because it's fab, but it's not embeddable. Watch it on YouTube.

2) Sugar - Copper Blue (1992)

As demonstrated by 2012's Silver Age, Bob Mould is still making astonishing music. Four decades ago Hüsker Dü were remarkable too, but it is the work he recorded as Sugar I find his best. Over 20 years on, Copper Blue still excites.

1) Poliça - Give You The Ghost (2012)

This will come as no surprise to anyone who's had to put with me banging on about this band.

An album which, 2 and a half years on is still growing on me, and I continue to play it (together with their magnificent 2nd LP) an inordinate amount.  

I connect with Channy's vocals, lyrics and emotion, Ryan's music, Chris's bass and the two drummers (Drew and Ben) in ways that continue to surprise me. 

The best music I've ever heard.

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Mark Gardener Highlight Media Interview (Oct 2014)

One of the world's most terrible bands split today.

So what next for Andy Bell?

An Oasis reformation will happen one day but with Noel releasing another High Flying Birds album next year, it probably isn't on the cards just yet.

In January I celebrated the Slowdive comeback by adding my wish that Ride would follow.

It's even closer now I think.

Mark Gardener talks about the possibility in the last couple of minutes of this interview.

He's distanced himself from it before but clearly not now.

I think the success of Slowdive in 2014 has changed everything.

 

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A Quietus Interview | There Seems To Be A Lot Of Love Out There: A Slowdive Interview

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Joe Clay, for The Quietus:

The last time I saw Neil Halstead, back in October last year after his solo gig at Cecil Sharp House in Camden, I had just written a glowing review of his album as one-third of Black Hearted Brother for tQ, the gist of which was, "Hey losers, stop hankering after a Slowdive reunion and dig what’s going on now!"; a not unreasonable stance to take, seeing as the BHB album was brilliant, with Halstead busting out the effects pedals for the first time in almost two decades and making a “splendid freeform racket”. I joked with Halstead about this, and the fallacy of any imminent Slowdive reunion, sharing the story of how Steve Queralt [shoegaze namedrop clunk] once told me, apropos of a Ride reunion, that he hadn’t even picked up a bass guitar since the band split and it wasn’t as if he was just sat by the phone waiting for Andy and Mark to call. We laughed. Well, I laughed, but looking back, I can see that Halstead just grinned nervously and took a shifty pull on his roll-up. The sneaky bugger knew then what we all know now – Slowdive, the band at the vanguard of the shoegaze movement of the 1990s, the shoegazer’s shoegazers, the dreampop pioneers, have reformed.

In the early nineties the 'shoegaze' term was often used negatively. For the music press, grunge, the Manics, and latterly Suede and into Britpop were all more exciting and interesting to write about. Shoegaze bands, and Slowdive in particular, were always joked about, often contemptuously.

Two decades on and the longevity of the sound has been proven. It started with Kevin Shields but it was Slowdive that defined it, and which I continue to hear in a lot of dreampop music today from I Break Horses to Tamaryn. 

As the Quietus article says, Slowdive are the shoegazer's shoegazers.

I've tried, but never really got into Mojave 3, so today's news about the reformation, a move back to the electric guitars and effects, with the possibility of new music is terrific. I've always enjoyed this sound. 

I love that fact that there are now plenty of fans of the band who weren't even born when the band split, and who thought they would never get a chance to see them.

23 years ago (!) I did. Slowdive supported Ride at what was the Town & Country Club in London's Kentish Town. It was marvellous.

Halstead, Goswell, Gardener and Bell sharing a bill again remains a dream but today it became a little bit closer.

 

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