Sometimes, to go forward, we need to go backwards. This is clearly one of those years. The conservative bias taking hold in America has had a pervasive effect on those on the left. It feels like we’re turning the clock back about a century.
The ten albums on my list are in alphabetical order. They represent some of my favourite music of the year: songs and artists who follow their own muses wherever they may lead. The directions are stunning; the music underscores the breadth of sound available today.
While this is meant to be a Top 10, I have to mention my winter album of choice: The Unthanks – In Winter – Winter has a power all of its own: the short days, the cheer and fear. In the hands of The Unthanks, winter becomes a time of reflection and reimagining. All the elements are still there, they just ring a little differently. Never ceasing to amaze, they find new frameworks and a few new reflections to warm the cold nights ahead. In Winter is a soundtrack for what was, combined with a sense of gratitude for what is today. More than a gift for the holiday season, it is a salve for the aching and weary, combined with a reflection of what the season can still be. It is The Unthanks at their best.
Click on the title to read the original review.
My Top 10 Albums of 2024
Amy Aileen Wood – The Heartening
While she has rarely been in the spotlight, Amy Aileen Wood’s The Heartening takes chances at every turn, merging jazz sounds and styles at the drop of a hat. By turns frenetic and tranquil, her sonic palette features everything from balafon to kalimba, octobans, synths, gamelan strips, gong strips, and Linn drums, in addition to the standard drum kit. Finally stepping into the spotlight, The Heartening creates music that lives on the improvisational edge while still maintaining a sense of the mainstream.
Bonny Light Horseman – Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free
Large parts of this album were recorded live in Ballydehob, West Cork, yet what emerges is a testament to the sense of commitment to the journey rather than the destination. Combining the sense of tradition that filled their first album with the free focus of their second, this set merges both, creating a sound and sensibility where form and function go hand in hand. It is a serendipitous set, blending energies and sounds to develop music all their own. Between the traditional and the modern, Bonny Light Horseman create music far outside the ordinary.
David Berkeley – A Pail Full of Fire
Existing outside his alter ego, Sons of Town Hall’s Josiah Chester Jones, Berkeley’s songs can break your heart, while others will put the pieces back together again. He knows how moments matter, singing about the passage of time and shape of love. A musical magician, he finds ways to sing the words that matter and get to the heart of what life is all about. Rather than just cherishing the moments of ecstasy, he finds ways to revel in the everyday occurrences that make life worth living.
Jake Xerxes Fussell – When I’m Called
This album uses such a breadth of sources, including a Benjamin Britten composition and a song written by Gerald “The Maestro” Gaxiola, who, before becoming a singing cowboy, had a long list of occupations that included bodybuilder and aircraft mechanic. That Fussell is able to make sense of all this and gather them together into a cohesive album illustrates an artist at the height of his game. He and producer James Elkington have used a palette that illustrates Fussell’s prowess as a guitarist and as an interpreter of a vast range of song forms. He understands and reinterprets them in ways that make these songs come alive for new generations.
Lankum – Live in Dublin
That the audience is screaming when Lankum walks on stage tells you everything you need to know. They reinterpret folk music in ways never dreamed of before, incorporating everything from the quietest songs and harmonies to charging out on the ledge, taking music to a volume and fury beyond anything seen before. Out of the depths of darkness, their sounds illustrate a profound sense of alchemy, while precision and clarity in their timing and music ensure that no matter how they may seem to teeter on the edge, they always manage to keep that balance.
Linda Thompson – Proxy Music
While spasmodic dysphonia may have robbed Linda Thompson of her singing voice, Proxy Music is all the proof one needs that her family and friends will carry the torch for her. The who’s who of artists she consorts with includes various Thompsons, along with Martha Wainwright, The Proclaimers, The Unthanks, Eliza Carthy and John Grant. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this album is not the amazing amount of talent on hand to perform the works of this extraordinary woman but the vast array of contexts that illustrate the musical depths of her heart.
Msaki x Tubatsi – Synthetic Hearts Part II
A tribute to the creation of music that underscores their belief in what music is and what it can do, Synthetic Hearts Part II expands on the vocabulary of their first instalment, navigating between folk, pop, and electro. Msaki joins forces with Tubatsi Mpho Moloi, a multi-instrumentalist and singer, and producer and cellist Clément Petit. A plucked, strummed and bowed cello, combine with synths, flute, mbira and voices, to create a balancing act of unimaginable tone and colour.
Northern Resonance – Vision of Three
The Scandinavian trio of Anna Ekborg on Viola d’amore, Jerker Hans-Ers on Hardanger fiddle and Petrus Dillner on nyckelharpa take these historic instruments and create music that sounds like it was designed for today; it knows no boundaries. A song like F*ck That Car dispenses anger, becoming a dance for a broken-down vehicle; they create music that sounds like joy unbound.
Rezo – The Age of Self Help
The Irish duo of Colm O’Connell and Rory McDaid have found a way to incorporate vaguely odd angles and twisted melodies to create music that merges and surges in the most unexpected ways. They find odd intersections where instruments come together and songs emerge. Tunes are more significant than the sum of their parts. Melodies that begin floating on air find an energy, transforming them into larger and bolder contexts. These sonic journeys involve subtle shifts, making the final destination frequently, and pleasantly, surprising.
Sean R. McLaughlin & The Wind-Up Crows – Goodnight, Lad
A line from their song The Lightning Tree sums up Sean R. McLaughlin & The Wind-Up Crows, “There’s a beautiful chaos in all that we do.” They don’t really fit into a particular box; folk but rock with intensity. They blend found sounds and use Indian classical violinist Ragini Shankar, and their fiddler, Vicky Gray, is no slouch either. They portray the humanity that affects us all, especially as they sing, “In 2007, running into the waves/ We were freezing our balls off and singing in caves/ Your father had died and work was a joke/So we ran to the coast before something else broke.” Not a word is wasted, not a sound is out of place.
Read all the Top 10 lists of 2024
The Editors Top 100 Albums of 2024 to follow.