NOTES 2: TOP FOAMITE MUSIC PICKS OF THE YEAR 2024
RE: BANGERS OF THE YEAR, COUNTRY WITH NO JUICE, DRILL SAMPLING INDIE, AND YOUR NEXT FAVORITE SONG
Since I am a professional music critic, I know you have all been on the edge of your seat waiting to hear some of my favorite records of 2024. Many know me as a tastemaker, a forward thinker, a disrupter, and an all-around icon. Strap in, babes: I have more recommendations that you’ll know what to do with.
It may be worth mentioning that I only had about half the minutes I usually do on Spotify Wrapped. This is in part because I tried to make a conscious effort to not use Spotify because it’s evil, and in part because my life was so much in the gutter that there were points when I could only handle listening to one song on repeat1. Which basically means I’m actually less qualified in this moment to give out music advice than I am most years, which is stunning and impressive because I have about zilch qualifications normally.
Whatever. I’m a genius so you should listen to me anyways.
MY FAVORITE INDIE DARLING ALBUM
I know you’re all waiting with bated breath to hear this pick. Geordie Greep? MJ Lenderman? Adrienne Lenker? Yes, Adrienne Lenker made me cry. And yes, I probably spun MJ Lenderman more. But I’m going with the crème de la crème: Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee.
I am a Neutral Milk Hotel fan through and through, and there are few albums which match ITAOTS in terms of creating a sound so melancholic yet magical, so cynical but strung through with dreamlike whimsy. The album is simultaneously grand and intimate — it feels like loneliness in the summertime. It sounds like what might play if you turned on the radio in a rusty, abandoned car in the middle of a field of long grass. I don’t know, I’m just saying shit.
AN ALBUM I RECOMMENDED TO MY FRIEND TO CALM DOWN WHEN SHE WAS HIGH AND HER LEG HURT ON ELECTION NIGHT
I actually started by recommending 2023’s Rat Saw God by Wednesday, and then I figured that might be too stressful given the screaming and all. Instead, I sent her If No One Else Cares, Why Should I Care? by Good Good Blood. I figured this was a nice folk-y indie album that was calming but also upbeat. It features semi-hypnotic guitar riffs and pleasantly layered vocals to soothe an agitated body, soul, and mind.
Let me recognize briefly that this album came out in 2023 and this is a post about music from 2024. But I am in charge of my own newsletter so I can do what I want. Plus, this album came out on December 29, 2023, which is basically 2024 anyway2.
NICE ALBUMS FROM THIS YEAR IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
100% Sahara Guitar - Etran L’Aïr
Night Palace - Mount Eerie
How To Make A Master Peace - Master Peace
Chak Chak Chak Chak - Julián Mayorga
LEAST FAVORITE TREND
Country with no juice. I’m sick of it! This is perhaps best embodied by the uncanny Post Malone album released this year. I find it unnerving how artists with the means to can dive headlong into a whole new genre when they sniff the tide shifting. And of all genres, you choose stadium country? The tracks topping the country charts have begun to feel more tightly engineered than the pop charts in a manner that’s really quite sinister — at least pop doesn’t pretend it has an ideology. Truly, let’s hope that we all got that out of our system in 2024.
The antidote for this is Sierra Ferrell and her new album Trail of Flowers. Check out this live session of hers from Garden & Gun — she has the sauce!
SOUND TO WATCH OUT FOR
Maybe it’s just my bias, but it seems like there’s a lot of buzz around fifth wave emo and skramz right now. Before I talk about this at all, let me put it out there that I have no idea what’s going on. I am stupid, okay? All I want in this world is to put my headstrong misinformed opinions on the internet WITHOUT judgement.
The reason I put that disclaimer is that using a term like ‘fifth wave emo’ is guaranteed to ruffle some feathers when discussing music created by and among guitar savants and rock music volcels. And I have no desire to offend these nerds: they’re creating amazing stuff, specifically the album Death of a Rabbit by Your Arms Are My Cocoon.
Your Arms Are My Cocoon are, TO MY UNDERSTANDING, considered a pioneering act of bedroom skramz. They rose to prominence with their 2020 self-titled EP. Death of a Rabbit is one of those albums you listen to and think, woah, this is different. Like they have these huge blown out drums on ‘city in ashes’, and then they follow that with a Daniel Johnston-esque lullaby type melody, and they pull it all together with a singing saw3. But also a lot of the vocals are screaming. It’s cool.
Summer 2000 released a compilation album this year called Phteve. Their sound ranges from the more traditional emo to, as the artist himself describes it, video game nostalgia music — basically imagine if the soundtrack to your favorite game growing up got waterlogged. It’s the aural equivalent of finding a dusty, cheap toy in your childhood bedroom. Phteve also has a remix by exciting!!excellent!!, an artist on the more chiptune-y side of the fifth wave emo spectrum. Lots of cool stuff coming out of that scene. Uh, keep up the good work.
I SAW THE BAND X LIVE AND THEY ROCKED. THERE WERE A BUNCH OF OLDHEADS THERE IN LEATHER JACKETS AND LIBERTY SPIKES. ONE GUY STARTED SLAPPING THE FLOOR IN THE PIT AND A WOMAN (PRESUMABLY HIS WIFE) YELLED OUT “AARON! REMEMBER THAT YOU’RE A FATHER!”
ALBUMS MY BOYFRIEND WAS RIGHT ABOUT
BLUE LIPS - ScHoolboy Q
Drive Home: Parting Gifts - Portraits of Tracy4
Songs of a Lost World - The Cure
Probably more. He has good taste and frequently recommends albums which I don’t always listen to, a loss for me more than anyone.
OTHER SONGS I LOVED FROM 2024
it’s dark and hell is hot - JPEGMAFIA
M3 N MIN3 - femtanyl, Danny Brown
Fun - Cortisa Star
Cameras - Igwe Aka
Starburster - Fontaines D.C.
Until I Die - Machine Girl
Smearious - Zelooperz
Sixteen - Marnie Stern
Los Narcos - Master Peace
Slimed In - Future & Metro Boomin5
Get Numb To It! - Friko
ANOTHER TREND THAT IS SUBOPTIMAL
Post-ironic Soundcloud-style autotune. I basically did not fuck with the Quadeca album for this reason. Listen, guys. This is purely my opinion. I know there are a lot of Quadeca fans out there, but it is simply not my cup of tea. I struggled with the claire rousay album for the same reason. It’s not so much the sound I mind, but the fact that it’s breached containment and is spilling over into more indie-style tracks like ‘hi grace’ by Dominic Fike. I will say that despite seeing the same trend in ‘Lego Ring’ by Faye Webster ft. Lil Yachty, I actually kind of liked that song, so maybe I’ll come to change my mind. None of this is set in stone. I am fickle and capricious like the gods of old.
BEST ALBUM TO LISTEN TO REALLY LOUD IN THE CAR
Before you go to work or a social event, sometimes you need to collect your normal. Sometimes this involves doing a major car scream before you talk to others so as to purge yourself of your inner freak. For this, I would recommend The Collective by Kim Gordon. This is a great album to listen to if you need something to fortify your capacity for emotional self defense. I would say The Collective is my second favorite album to come out of this year. Many have remarked on this, but it’s truly impressive how Kim Gordon continues to be innovative after all this time. Most artists fall off, or write some mid-career bullshit like ‘Temporary Secretary’ or ‘Kokomo’, but Gordon is still setting the bar for other artists. Another good runner up in the category of “car screaming albums” is MG Ultra by Machine Girl. Both of these I listen to at max volume while going 20 miles over the speed limit, and it fixes me.
BEST ALBUM I HAVEN’T HEARD YET
GNX by Kendrick Lamar. Just guessing!
BEST SONG TO PLAY BEFORE GETTING INAPPROPRIATELY SLIZZARD
Picture this: it’s the first few months of 2024. You’ve just moved in with your boyfriend’s roommates. You’re not an alcoholic per se, but you live a very beer-fueled lifestyle. Most days consist of going to Planet Fitness, working a terrible service job, probably spending several consecutive hours on your Twitter alt, and maybe attending a college hockey game if you’re lucky.
On one of those lucky days, one of your favorite artists drops her first single leading up to her next album. You put the music video on the TV most typically used for Super Smash Brother or Switch Sports. Upon hearing it, you know immediately: it’s Ten Drinks Tuesday, baby. Yep. It’s inarguable that you must get messy drunk to go to a college hockey game with your boyfriend and his roommates. And as a matter of fact, you might as well get embarrassingly trashed five or eight or twelve more times that spring semester. That’s what living that life Von Dutch is all about.
I WOULD HAVE PUT CHAPPELL ROAN SOMEWHERE ON THIS LIST BUT HER ALBUM CAME OUT IN 2023 AND I’M TIRED OF PRETENDING IT DIDN’T!
LEAST FAVORITE ALBUM. P.U.!
I really should endeavor to put less negativity into the universe. HOWEVER, I could not stomach that Jacob Collier album.
Here is a list of people I would recommend this album to:
Guy who just found out about music
Elon Musk
14 year old trumpet player
An archetype I would refer to as ‘High Redditor’
Maybe like a missionary or pastor who’s trying to connect with “youth culture”
ANOTHER TREND I LIKE
One time I was at a game night with my boyfriend and his cousins who I’d only met like once before, which is already a volatile situation, when one of his cousins put on ‘All Things Go’ by Chiddy Bang, this song where a guy raps over a remix of ‘Chicago’ by Sufjan Stevens. That really threw me for a loop. I had a similar vertiginous sensation when I heard the first track off A Dog’s Chance by POLO PERKS <3<3<3, AyooLii, and FearDorian, a drill song which samples Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s cover of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’.
I’ve been following POLO PERKS <3<3<3 since listening through his 2021 mixtape which features tracks built on samples from ‘Mr. Brightside’ and ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol. A Dog’s Chance did not disappoint: you might be like, hey, I didn’t put ‘New Flesh’ by Current Joys on this playlist, and then you find out it’s actually a drill song. This album samples Carissa’s Wierd! And then POLO PERKS <3<3<3 put out another batch of songs later this year, one of which has this crazy skramz sample (callback to earlier in this post) which Soundcloud comments say is the artist cicadahead. Diligent listeners, please weigh in with your thoughts.
You might be like, well, one random producer doesn’t make a trend. But one of my other favorite albums from this year was It’s Us Vol. 1 by Lil Yachty’s collective Concrete Boys. The opening track samples Pinegrove…and Perks sampled Alex G last year. You could call it gimmicky, but I think drill that samples random depressing indie songs is fun and should happen more.
MORE SONGS I LOVED IN 2024
SPANK! - HiTech
#RICHAXXHAITIAN - Mach-Hommy
Placeholder - Parsnip
She Looked Like Me! - Magdalena Bay
Sexy to Someone - Clairo
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Pack Your Bags. - The Dallas Cowboys6
Sleeping With The TV On - Siichaq
2k24 - Mike & Tony Seltzer ft. Niontay
Old Dog, New Tricks - Pascale
Imouha - Etran L’Aïr
She’s Leaving You - MJ Lenderman
off with his head! - aldrch
SONGS I HATED WITH A PASSION + SOME GENERAL COMPLAINTS:
Food service may teach you many things, but one thing I learned during my tenure is that ‘Bennie and the Jets’ is one of those songs that goes on for a startlingly long time. I spent about 11 months working as a whipped cream girl at a fast casual restaurant. I am generally predisposed to dislike charting pop songs, but this is exacerbated by having to hear, say, your fourth Adele song of the day while openly crying in front of customers. There is a list of songs which I otherwise would not have disliked so – in fact, I might even like them – had I not been overexposed to them at work. These include:
‘Too Sweet’ by Hozier. ‘Kill Bill’ by SZA
‘Diet Pepsi’ by Addison Rae
‘End of the Beginning’ by DJO
That one song by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars that I’m too lazy to look up the name of
‘Dance the Night’ by Dua Lipa
‘Birds of a Feather’ by Billie Eilish
The human mind was not built to endure the sheer volume of soft pop hits I’ve heard in my lifetime. The situation gets even more dire when you hit the holidays. So: while this song was not released this year, let me take a moment to express my distaste for the song ‘Snowman’ by Sia.
Along those lines, I feel like it’s time to talk about the whole Sia/Maddie Ziegler thing. People love to assume the worst, so let me be clear: I’m not suggesting anything untoward. But what I remember from watching Dance Moms in middle school is that everyone acted like it was perfectly normal for Sia to want a child to serve as her avatar in all her music videos. I don’t remember anyone questioning why a pop star would want a tween sidekick dressed exactly like her — it was like, ‘Girl, you better be the top of the pyramid this week or you’ll never cut it as the younger version of Sia in the Sia music video.’
Maybe some Sia stans can pop into the comments and explain the lore to me.
Anyways, now that I’m ancient and washed (23) I feel like I’m always having to learn about some guy. Like now there’s a guy named Benson Boone. Or a guy named Teddy Swims. That one was especially confusing because somewhere down the line I got it into my head that Teddy Swims and Ed Sheeran were the same person, and it was kind of a Robert Galbraith/JK Rowling kind of situation. So they’re not! If you were wondering.
Lastly: I do not care for Ariana Grande. I do not like the song ‘yes, and?’. I do not like the song ‘we can’t be friends’. I know I’m about to incur the wrath of the Arianators with this, but just know that given the amount of shit I’ve gone through this year, it’s safe to assume there’s already a curse on my bloodline and you should take that hateful energy, double it, and pass it to the next person.7
HAS ANYONE NOTICED THAT SABRINA CARPENTER RELEASED A SONG CALLED JUNO BUT CLAIRO ALSO RELEASED A SONG CALLED JUNO8? UMMMMM CLAIRO SHADE…
MUSIC RELATED LIGHT FLEXES OF THE YEAR
I simply have to get this off my chest. Been listening to ‘Girls’ by The Dare since it was released. And now it’s popping off, probably because The Dare did some production for Charli XCX. You can call him ‘DUI Soundsystem’ or whatever. But I’m just putting it on the record that I was early on The Dare. If you like his sound or that song, you should check out his earlier group Turtlenecked, and specifically the track ‘Friends, Romans, Countryboyz’.
Proof, because I know everyone cared so much A few years ago, my friend was like, “I know the guy who did the [mixing? production?] on this mixtape, you should check it out!” and sent me a link to a 2022 release called ALLIGATOR. This was a project by Tommy Richman, now of ‘Million Dollar Baby’ fame. So yeah. I know a guy who knows a guy who maybe worked on a Tommy Richman album or something? Whatever, I was early on Tommy Richman, too. So now you HAVE to listen to me.
ALBUMS FOR YOUR FRIEND WHO LIKES NOAH KAHAN
If your friend “really listens to everything” but by “everything” they mean ‘Stick Season’ and ‘See You Again’ by Tyler, The Creator, I would recommend Mahashmashana by Father John Misty. I most recently listened to the title track while in stop and go traffic to pick up Indian food with my mother and sister. They are both very aggressive drivers and both started raging at a truck for not letting us pass on the right via the breakdown lane. But all was well with me in the backseat as I listened to Father John Misty’s epic divorce track ‘Mahashmashana.’ A good runner up would be Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee.
They’d probably like that song ‘Nothing Matters’ by The Last Dinner Party, too. Or maybe with that recommendation I’m conflating Noah Kahan with Hozier — I don’t know, they look the same, which is to say they both look like Nick Mullen. And IRL I look like Nick Mullen but a girl. So that’s a compliment.
ENDING ON A NICE NOTE: <3 MY PERSONAL AOTY <3
I am a huge Vampire Weekend fan. So what comes next is probably obvious. The first time I listened to ‘Mary Boone’ was more or less a religious experience. There’s just nothing that scratches the same itch that Vampire Weekend does, and this is them performing at their prime. I listened to all the singles when they dropped, I streamed it in full at midnight when it came out, and I just got Only God Was Above Us on vinyl for Christmas. I know I sound biased, and I am, but trust: this album is Banger City, USA.
MORAL OF THE STORY: MUSIC ROCKS…!
e.g. Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath, La Valse à Mille Temps by Jacques Brel, etc
Good Good Blood also has an album that came out this year, but I haven't listened to it yet. Maybe that's good too!
I think it's a singing saw, at least — it could be a theremin. Don't come for me!
2 quick notes here. 1) Drive Home, the original album, came out in 2023, but the extended edition came out in 2024 and I only just listened to it recently so I'm counting it.
2) Portraits of Tracy is what they call 'the real deal'. If I were inclined to predict the future, I might even say 'the next big thing.'
Maybe "loved" is the wrong term for this track, but I have been so captivated/repulsed by the line "All my hoes get slimed in" that it manifests in my mind organically at least once a week.
I LOVE THE DALLAS COWBOYS!
I wouldn’t otherwise care about her personal life, except I do not like her songs very much and people are always chirping about her on Twitter. From what I can ascertain, Ariana Grande likes to go to Hollywood Boulevard and scrape the crustiest looking man off the street. I tried to explain the Ethan Slater drama to my boyfriend after that story dropped in The Cut, and he said: “hot famous gf you pulled by being goofy AND you’re human Spongebob? That’s the dream.” He didn’t get it.
The way I wrote this and then realized the song was called Juna. Oh well. Maybe the Clairo Shade was inside us all along...
temporary secretary mentioned
GILL AND I WERE SO BUSY READING THIS WE MISSED THE FUCKING BALL DROP