Pssst: 2024 secrets
Records you likely won't find on other lists
It’s that taxonomical time of year! So festive.
For paid subscribers, I’ll leak the list of 40 records I want to talk about to mark this past 11 months (and three I slept on in 2023). I’m not sure I have a favourite that exceeds all the rest — if I did, it might be the acoustic record by an American couple in their mid-50s on a comeback. Coz that’s how I roll.
Here, however, are 10 total treats that will deserve a lot more attention than they’re likely to get amidst the avalanche of lists that largely look all the same.
I’ll be pleasantly be shocked if anyone else is talking about—not the best (well, maybe), but definitely these underdogs:
Baby Rose w/ BadBadNotGood – Slow Burn
(Secretly Canadian)
Reviewed here. “Remember when Shirley Bassey was produced by Isaac Hayes right around the time of Hot Buttered Soul? That didn’t happen, but it should have. This was a collab that was clearly meant to be, with Baby Rose’s torchy voice lining up with BadBadNotGood’s late-night lounge vibes.” This Atlanta singer just announced a Toronto show with BadBadNotGood, the night after that band headlines History on Dec. 17; they play together at Lee’s Palace on Dec. 18.
Big Brave – A Chaos of Flowers
(Thrill Jockey)
Reviewed here. “Guitarist Mathieu Ball manipulates glacial mountains of feedback that lurch and envelope everything Big Brave does. That includes the vocals of second guitarist Robin Wattie, who at times sounds like she’s a ghostly child calling in from another dimension in a supernatural Arctic story. Thunderin’ tundra! One would guess this Quebec band was from Ungava Bay rather than one of Canada’s largest urban centres.”
Corridor – Mimi
(Sub Pop)
Reviewed here. “While this franco Montreal band used to sound a bit like the Velvets meet the Byrds in northern U.K. in the early ’80s, their fourth album has a vaguely eastern European kosmische vibe … It’s not just the new synths that make this trippier, because they’re quite subtle. Instead, it’s the one-chord jams where the trebly guitars crystallize—guitars that sound like they’re constructed from metal trashcan lids—and the rubbery rhythm section burbles and the sunlit harmonies glisten.” This came out in the early spring, but they have yet to touch down in Toronto to perform it.
Cuff the Duke – Breaking Dawn
(Cardinal)
Reviewed here. First album of theirs in 12 years. “A rock-solid return with a rejuvenated band and a set of songs that sound like greatest hits … Right from the debut, their songs have had epic stretches, at times psychedelic, at times cinematic, often intense … Some of the most effective songs here happen when bassist Paul Lowman picks up a fiddle. There’s some nice extended doom-twang at the end of ‘Keep Going Anyway.’ Even at their most ambitious, CTD pack a lot into songs that don’t stretch past the five-minute mark. They also deliver tiny, perfect pop songs in under three minutes. Canadian comeback of the year? Hands down.”
Killer show at Longboat Hall last weekend—even though they only played two of these new songs. WTF, boys?! Celebrate the now!
Ibibio Sound Machine – Pull the Rope
(Merge)
Reviewed here. “Ibibio Sound Machine could be an African disco band with a house gig on the International Space Station, like William Onyeabor meeting the Gap Band after both have been beamed into a fantastical future, one that both tried to conjure in the late ’70s. That future is now. This is very much a London band: albeit one with members from Nigeria, Ghana, Australia and France, with lyrics partially sung in the Ibibio language of southeast Nigeria … Ibibio Sound Machine rock to the rhythms of bowel-rattling synth bass, with tight horn arrangements, new wave keyboards, funk guitar and — obviously — a killer drummer. Singer Eno Williams is a fantastic frontwoman, her voice as colourful as her outfits.”
Abigail Lapell – Anniversary
(Next Door)
Reviewed here. “It’s a fairly direct line from The Basement Tapes to the Cowboy Junkies to Great Lake Swimmers to Abigail Lapell, particularly on the Toronto songwriter’s sixth album, recorded in a Niagara-on-the-Lake church two centuries old by Tony Dekker of GLS. There’s a whole lot to love about the songs, the vocals, the band, and everything else, but first and foremost Anniversary sounds amazing, rich in room sound and rooted in live performance … Lapell writes songs that could be a century old or written by Neil Young a half-century ago or by Sarah Harmer 25 years ago or by… well, not a lot of people are writing melodies this beautiful these days, and not with a voice like Lapell’s.”
Richard Laviolette – All Wild Things Are Shy
(You’ve Changed)
Reviewed here. “Richard Laviolette made this record while he knew he was dying. It was released one year to the day after he chose a medically assisted death at 41, while ravaged by Huntington’s disease. That inescapable fact looms over this record. It does not, however, overshadow it … Laviolette was more than aware his body and mind were failing him, that he was on his way out. He wanted every note to be perfect. Mission accomplished. Few artists get to write a final chapter as successful as this.” It’s like a more positive flip on Purple Mountains.
And I really, really, really needed this song this year, maybe you did too:
We are going to get through. We sing in stormy weather
Man Man – Carrot on Strings
(Sub Pop)
Reviewed here. “The kind of rock band you’d half-expect to find in the basement of a Balkan bar off the beaten path, the kind of band that makes your own precarious mental health make a lot more sense … This is a slinkier band now that they’re middle-aged, more likely to groove like Hall & Oates instead of getting angular like Zappa. There are fist-pumping, propulsive rock songs and Tom Waits-meets-Tame-Impala and country and balladry and an Oneida-ish noise jam and some late-period Who, while the single ‘Cryptoad’ has timely lyrics about: ‘Two tech bros on the lawn / talking about their elongated Lambos / hell, no.’ ” This video features footage of incoming Republican caucus meeting:
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis — s/t
(Anti-)
Reviewed here. “Supergroup of the year? James Brandon Lewis is a Buffalo jazz saxophonist who’s having a moment, releasing four acclaimed albums in the last 12 months … Now there’s this full-on collaboration with the Messthetics, a D.C. band best known for featuring Fugazi’s rhythm section, but which should be known primarily for the work of guitar wizard Anthony Pirog, who should be on the radar of any fan of Marc Ribot and Nels Cline … This could be a stunt collaboration, but it’s not. It’s perfect. Sure, the groove of ‘Emergence’ definitely sounds like the same rhythm section responsible for ‘Waiting Room,’ but this album travels through various territories, and does so very well.”
Tindersticks – Soft Tissue
(City Slang)
Reviewed here. Highly recommended for your midlife-crisis, which “sounds even better coming from a buttery-voiced British man in his late 50s, a late-night crooner with a deep love of Hot Buttered Soul and Scott 4, leading a group he’s helmed for more than 30 years. I don’t claim to follow Tindersticks closely, so I’m not going to tell you this is one of their best records, but I’ll bet it is. The Bontempi-ish rhythms, seductive bass lines, gorgeously tasteful string and brass arrangements, and the vulnerability in the vocals of Stuart A. Staples: it’s the sexiest music this side of Sade.”
Below, for paid subscribers, the other best-of-2024 records I’ll be talking about over the course of this month. Playlists coming shortly.
10 more of the best, write-ups to come:
1. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings – Woodland
Les Amazones d’Afrique - Musow Danse
Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee
Ducks Ltd. – Harm’s Way
Amaro Freitas – Y’Y
Michael Kiwanuka – Small Changes
Corb Lund – El Viejo
Orkestar Kriminal – Originali
Pet Shop Boys – Nonetheless
Kim Richey – Every New Beginning
20 more rock-solid releases of 2024, write-ups to come:
Allie X – Girl With No Face
Bibi Club – Feu de garde
The Body – The Crying Out of Things
Four Tet – Three
Myriam Gendron – Mayday
Hermanos Gutierrez – Sonido Cósmico
Christian Lee Hutson – Paradise Pop. 10
Jlin – Akoma
Amythyst Kiah – Still + Bright
Lemon Bucket Orchestra – Cuckoo
LL Cool J – The Force
Willie Nelson – Last Leaf on the Tree
Nyssa – Shake Me Where I’m Foolish
Sleater-Kinney – Little Rope
The The – Ensoulment
Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us
Morgan Wade – Obsessed
Rick White & Sadies – s/t
Wussy – Cincinatti, Ohio
Best 2024 songs that aren’t on those albums:
1. “Guilty” by Hugh Christopher Brown and Kate Fenner. For all the reasons.
“U Should Not Be Doing That” by Amyl & the Sniffers
“Lucky #8” by Jennifer Castle
“Casual” by Chappel Roan
“Turn the Card Slowly” by the Gossip
“Birthday in Rehab” by Hot Mud
“Mood Swings” by Little Simz
“Dreamer” by Kelly McMichael
“Coloured Concrete” by Nemahsis
“Better Days” by Nicolette & the Nobodies
“Back for the Funeral” by Donovan Woods
2023 mind-blowers that I slept on
1. Jaimie Branch – Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (World War)
Frankie & the Witch Fingers – Data Doom
Moonriivr – Vol. 1
Now: go listen to something here that you haven’t heard before! Playlists to come.