Despite reports about music fans’ changing listening habits, the album currently seems like as solid a format as ever. There’ve been absolutely bajillions of them, to use a statisticians’ technical term, released in 2024, and Buzz caught plenty, but we thought we’d see out the year by rounding up some of our writers’ favourites that they didn’t get a chance to praise on release.
AMY SPEACE
The American Dream (Windbone)
Amy Speace, a former Shakespearian actress, started her singing career in New York, attracting the attention of folk icons Tom Paxton, Janis Ian and Judy Collins. She’s since toured the US and Europe extensively, sharing the stage with Guy Clark and Mary Chapin Carpenter among others. The songs on The American Dream were written in the aftermath of a divorce from her ex-husband, but despite song titles like Already Gone, Glad I’m Gone and Where Did You Go, it’s far from a morose exorcism of the heart. Yes, it’s personal and poignant but there’s levity and honesty too: First United Methodist Day Care Christmas Show is a jovial account of her son’s preschool nativity play, while the title track – set in the mid 1970s – is anthemic and uplifting, capturing its narrator as a young girl with a life of optimism ahead of her.
words COLIN PALMER
BLOODY HEAD
Perpetual Eden (Viral Age)
Noiserock, metal, doom, drone, punk, psych: the blistering seventh release from Bloody Head – so called, presumably, because they’ll leave you concussed – touches pretty much every base that any ardent devotee of underground heavy rock could possibly hope for, and to awesome effect. The Nottingham quartet strike a perfect balance between feral savagery, bitter disillusionment and narcotised vacancy.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
CHICK COREA & BÉLA FLECK
Remembrance (Thirty Tigers)
The final chapter in the extraordinary story of two incredible musicians coming together was finished by Fleck, three years after Corea’s death aged 79, and after a Grammy-winning first collaboration and a live album, this third instalment is truly exceptional. Both players are known for their ability to move seamlessly between genres: at the turn of the century, Fleck’s banjo playing and bandleading (with the Flecktones) had reignited the fusion fuse that Corea lit 30 years earlier. You’ll see it labelled as jazz on Spotify, but this is just fantastic music-making that leaves all labels behind.
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES
HAMISH HAWK
A Firmer Hand (So)
Equally introspective and sardonic, A Firmer Hand sees Hawk exploring his queerness by looking through the eyes of different personalities he’s encountered, be that the despised former lovers or the doting fans. In doing so, each song eloquently captures the shame of being publicly marked out as ‘different’. Complimenting both the satire and the sombreness, the album is musically both menacing and theatrical. Men Like Wire embodies all of these elements, seeing our frontman confess his fury at being made to hide his identity. That raw confessionalism makes this piece starkly relatable and deeply moving.
words ALEX SWIFT
ISOBEL CAMPBELL & MARK LANEGAN
Ballad Of The Broken Seas (Cooking Vinyl reissue)
Following a stellar reissue of the late Mark Lanegan’s Bubblegum album earlier in 2024 came one for Ballad Of The Broken Seas, originally released in 2006 and now affordable on vinyl for the first time in many years. Ex-Belle and Sebastian singer and cellist Isobel Campbell had created these beautiful Paris Texas-like soundscapes, added her vocals, and winged them off to Lanegan who added his dark and growling vocal presence. . From Black Mountain to The Circus Is Leaving Town via Revolver, the end result was a match made in Americana-laced heaven and the first of three collaborative album ventures for Campbell and Lanegan.
words DAVID NOBAKHT
MERMAID CHUNKY
Slif Slaf Slof (DFA)
Freya Tate and Moina Moin, two visual and performance artists from London who found themselves on DFA Records due to James Murphy’s coffee shop addiction, are Mermaid Chunky, via lots of costumes and dicking around. Slif Slaf Slof is a much lusher step forward from 2020’s Vest EP, their looped vocalising and spoken word interludes swathed in vibrant synth and sax, eventually creating this year’s best oddball disco party. Some of the kookiness is frankly annoying, but all hail any misfits prepared to release these grand danceable follies.
words WILL STEEN
SAHRA HALGAN
Hiddo Dhawr (Danaya)
There were two albums among my very favourites of 2024 which each combined a love of Western rock and blues with more trad influences from the protagonists’ region of Africa. One was by Niger’s supreme guitarist Mdou Moctar – I reviewed his Funeral For Justice here – and the other, by Sahra Halgan of Somaliland, was a lower profile release but received plaudits from those who found their way to it. Similarly, when Halgan and her three-piece band played Cardiff’s Wales Millennium Centre in October, the audience was relatively small but the atmosphere was joyous. The 12 songs on Hiddo Dhawr are infectious and uplifting, replete with positivity and (historical) pain; Halgan’s vocals are mellifluous, with a raspy undertone, and the music borrows from the Somalian musical style qaraami and later Afro-pop adaptions as well as the musicians’ grounding in postpunk and funk.
words NOEL GARDNER
SAM LEWIS
Superposition (Loversity)
When the pandemic abruptly halted Sam Lewis’ 2020 world tour and cast uncertainty over the future, he was offered a carpentry job by Chase McGillis, a steel bass player who also owns a Nashville construction company. After building a new recording studio, the pair pooled their musical talents to help refine Sam’s new songs, with Superposition the end result. Lewis has drawn comparisons with Townes Van Zandt and John Prine on previous albums and again there is much lyrical depth to these new songs that bring an emotional complexity to the recordings. The arrangements somehow never draw attention to themselves and are peaceful and contemplative, stylistically there are no desperate declarations of love or fits of anger for it to be remembered by.
words COLIN PALMER
SLATE
Deathless (Brace Yourself)
Their debut EP Deathless is Cardiff band Slate’s gripping collection of song: a body of work that teases beauty out of clamour, where storytelling and musical arrangement coalesce to build a record rich in concept. With influences from French surrealist Rimbaud to the prose of R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas, Slate breathe vivid meaning into their music. In expressive strokes is narrative painted by the voice of frontman Jack Shephard, whose reputation is rapidly developing as an eccentric, must-see performer. Postpunk, folk and noiserock influences are noted throughout this record – with a true standout being the Remoter Heaven, a slow burning ballad with gothic, brooding inflections.
words TERESA DELFINO
WATER DAMAGE
In E (12XU)
The best four songs of 2024 whose runtime reads 21, 20, 21 and 19 minutes, In E finds Water Damage digging their deepest furrows yet. A many-headed ensemble of friends and guests from Austin, Water Damage drone and rock incredibly, various drummers locking a lolloping groove, while guitar and other screeching noises clang endlessly over one note or chord. This one has maddening viola, your brain unspooling, and a Shit & Shine cover that introduces a whole second chord. Absolute fuckers.
words WILL STEEN
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