We’re already one calendar week into 2025 and that means it’s time to look back on what an excellent year 2024 was for music. I found it to be an absolutely titanic year for incredible releases. The hits just kept hitting and they wouldn’t let up. Here are my ten favourite albums of 2024:
10. In Waves – Jamie xx
In Waves managed to crack into my top 10 at the very last second. I first listened to this album the day it came out and found it to be underwhelming. I liked some of the tracks but wanted a little more substance from it. I decided before writing this list I would revisit some albums just to see if I felt absolutely sure about each placement. A voice inside of me told me to give this album one last try. I don’t know what happened but I was floored by it all of a sudden. I have since gone back and listened to this record like ten times in the last couple weeks. Tracks like “Baddy on The Floor” and “Life” have the classic dance party Jamie xx vibes that you would expect. But then you get floored by the more nuanced and relaxed ‘Breather’ which transitions perfectly into the intoxicating grooves on “All You Children.” There seems to be a lot more intention when it comes to the pacing on this album when compared to previous Jamie xx records. In Waves is an album that is filled with optimistic, uplifting bangers. It’s almost impossible to not bounce around when listening to this record.
Favourite tracks: “Life,” “All You Children”
9. Cool World – Chat Pile
This album is absolutely nuts. From the first track all the way to the end it feels like the album is grabbing you by the throat and slamming you into the floor. It’s sludgy, it’s heavy, it’s visceral, it’s scary and in your face. It’s every single descriptive sentence that Fox News used to describe Pokémon back in the 90s. Cool World doesn’t let up for one single second, and that is what’s so great about it. The lead single for the album “I Am Dog Now” is a great touchstone for what the album is. Their previous album God’s Country had a laser focus on America’s homelessness epidemic and the less fortunate. It was about wanting more and doing what you could to get more. In Cool World those dreams are dead. The album is essentially about how right wing rhetoric killed the American dream and how that rhetoric is born. Don’t go into this thinking you’re going to be hanging out with Brad Pitt in a cartoon/real life mashup movie, because that’s a totally different Cool World.
Favourite tracks: “I Am Dog Now,” “Shame,” “Masc”
8. Only God Was Above Us – Vampire Weekend
I wasn’t expecting to like a Vampire Weekend album after their last record, Father of the Bride. I had assumed that maybe they had lost their step wouldn’t be able to find what made them special in the past again. Boy, was I wrong! Only God Was Above Us reaches the heights of their previous work and excels in ways I could have never imagined. Ezra brings some of his most creative and exciting writing since the band’s Contra and Modern Vampire days. Songs like “Classical”, “Capricorn” and “Gen-X Cops” feel like an evolution of the band’s best material. It’s actually insane to me that this album turned out as great as it did, because I would have bet money that I would have hated this album back when it was announced. I truly didn’t expect to love this album, and this goes to show why 2024 was such an exciting year for the music sphere.
Favourite tracks: “Mary Boone,” “Gen-X Cops,” “Classical”
7. 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips – Xiu Xiu
Xiu Xiu has been widely unapproachable for the longest time. Anybody who has heard of the band in passing thinks that they make frightening music for weird people who write poetry about death. While that definitely is true, what people don’t realize is that sometimes the band makes extremely exciting and approachable noise pop and industrial rock. Not since 2017’s FORGET has Xiu Xiu made such an accessible and exciting record. While I have been a fan of most of their output since, nothing has quite lived up to FORGET for me until this record came along. Its name is too long to ever properly memorize or say out loud, but you’ll want to after you hear it. Tracks like “Common Loon” and “Veneficium” are… dare I say it… ANTHEMIC. “Maestro One Chord” and “T.D.F.T.W.” are scary bangers with pounding percussion and crazy loud chugging guitars. Jamie Stewart’s wild and warbly delivery shines on this album as well. But that’s no surprise, as his vocal chops are always highlights of any Xiu Xiu release. In a discography of nearly 20 studio albums, this stands out as one of their best.
Favourite tracks: “Veneficium,” “Common Loon,” “Maestro One Chord“
6. I Lay Down My Life For You – JPEGMAFIA
JPEGMAFIA has been one of the most exciting names in hip hop for nearly a decade now. In 2013 his debut album Black Ben Carson was released to mixed reactions. Listeners could see something was there, but whatever that thing was, wasn’t fully fleshed out. It wasn’t until 2016’s Veteran that people realized Peggy would be fierce competition. Now all these and several records later – including Scaring The Hoes with Danny Brown – Peggy delivers an album that sits proudly amongst his best even in his stacked catalogue. Peggy goes crazy on this album with some of his most absurd rantings and ravings yet. The production is also completely bonkers – as expected- but it goes far beyond anything you could possibly imagine. The track “SIN MIEDO” sounds like an agitated animal trying to break out of its cage. It’s also got a “big booty hoes” sample that somehow comes off as ominous and threatening. That is the power of JPEGMAFIA. Whether it’s lyricism, nasty beats, or overall vibe creation, JPEGAMAFIA shows his genius.
Favourite tracks: “SIN MIEDO,” “JPEGULTRA,” “I’ll Be Right There,” “Exmilitary”
5. No Hands – Joey Valence and Brae
No Hands is without a doubt the funniest and most ridiculous album of the year. JVB is doing an incredible homage to Beastie Boys and genuinely flexing their rapping chops all over this record. I remember my first listen to this album was filled with pausing and rewinding to make sure I heard them right. The greatest Nickelodeon bars ever are all on this album “How much swag I got? Millions/You ain’t fancy son. Squilliam” is one of the funniest bars I’ve ever heard and I will not hear anything negative about it. There are some really stellar boom bap sections on here that are akin to some MM FOOD era MF DOOM. There’s also a ton of really over the top East Coast hip hop influence all over this thing. No Hands is a very stupid album, just look at its cover. Its stupidity is one of its best features and it truly shines because of it. Whether they’re rapping about Ben 10, Spongebob, or eating ass, JVB make it exciting.
Favourite tracks: “Packapunch,” “OK,” “The Baddest,” “Doughboy“
4. Imaginal Disk – Magdalena Bay
The best way to explain Imaginal Disk to somebody who hasn’t heard it is that it sounds like it’s from the future. Magdalena Bay caught lightning in a bottle on this one. The production on this record is so stellar and sublime that it’s hard to believe it actually exists. Some of the year’s most uplifting and stunningly arranged synthpop lives on this record. Tracks like “Image” and “Vampire in the Corner” showcase the duo flexing their production and vocal skills. The intoxicating chorus of “Image” repeats a series of “ooooooh my gooooood” that just floats over the soaring synth leads, while “Vampire in the Corner” sounds sweet and curious until it explodes in euphoria. “Death and Romance” sounds like the greatest piano rock song you’ve never heard, and “Tunnel Vision” has a prog rock outro. This album is crazy good and it blows my mind that it lands at number four.
Favourite tracks: “Image,” “Tunnel Vision,” “That’s My Floor,” “Cry For Me”
3. Diamond Jubilee – Cindy Lee
Diamond Jubilee is a truly gargantuan effort from Toronto’s own Patrick Flegel. The album is a staggering 122 minutes and I swear to you, not a single second is wasted. This is pure lo-fi genius and a real achievement that any musician would be happy to have under their belt. Each song lives perfectly on this album amongst the rest of the tracks, like a living and breathing ecosystem. Somehow each track is more beautiful than the last and you can never nail down what awaits you. Songs like “Stone Faces” and “Flesh and Blood” feel like I’ve known them forever. Diamond Jubilee sits down with you and asks to reminisce. It’s one of those rare albums that makes you feel like it’s put aside the time for you and not the other way around. While two hours of nonstop music can sound like a daunting thing, I implore you to listen to this on a day where you’ve got absolutely nothing going on. This is a really special album.
2. The New Sound – Geordie Greep
How is an album about a disgusting and depraved man falling love with a prostitute so beautiful and so devastating? That’s the question on everyone’s lips after they’ve listened to this album for the first time. Geordie Greep has given us his first solo effort after his legendary band Black Midi broke up late last year. The record is aptly called The New Sound, and I can assure you, you have never heard an album like this one. One part jazz rock, one part prog rock, one part Brazilian samba, one part orchestral, one part mutant disco. This album has everything you could possibly want. It’s fucking insane from top to bottom, it’s beautiful, it’s danceable, it’s gross, it sounds sticky and slimy – it’s just pure personality. You’ll find yourself dancing while a man brags about sleeping with the barmaids in “Holy, Holy” and you’ll find yourself crying to the sad warblings of a sleezy man in the 12 minute opus “The Magician.” This album is utterly spectacular.
Favourite tracks: “Holy, Holy,” “Walk Up,” “As If Waltz,” “Through a War”
- BRAT – Charli xcx
Whether you have been apart of the music zeitgeist or not, there is no chance you haven’t had a scrape with BRAT in any way. Its branding has punched holes through the metaphorical walls of every walk of life, and it’s been inescapable. This would be annoying if the album was terrible, but thankfully, it’s one of the greatest pop album ever conceived. BRAT is more than just having fun and dancing around while snorting a key of coke in the bathroom at a party. BRAT is about living life and finding who you are and introspectively asking yourself “what the fuck am I doing?” It’s the conversation you have with yourself in that bathroom mirror.
It starts with “360” which is all about having fun and bumping the dopest music. We eventually hear “Sympathy is a Knife” where Charli begins to question her fame and success, all while denying sympathy people give her because she’s embarrassed and doesn’t feel it’s right. Then we get tracks like “I Think About it All The Time” which focuses on Charli thinking about motherhood and “So I” which is a devastatingly sad song about mourning the death of collaborator and friend SOPHIE. “So I” is a really poignant track because it’s about realizing that she wasn’t a great friend to SOPHIE and sings about regretting their time together as she could have been a better person to her. It’s songs like this that make landing on the closing track “365” hit so right. After all the loathing and self reflecting, we find our way back to the dance floor, we do some drugs, and we shake our ass in the club all over again, as though nothing happened. BRAT is an experience we’ve all felt while partying too hard, and it’s an incredible concept for an album that just works flawlessly. Charli xcx is a generational talent, and BRAT cements itself as one of the greatest pop albums of all time.
Favourite tracks: every single song
