The 2024 Music Thread

[Hobo]

I didn't see a 2024 music thread but this doesn't deserve it's own thread either.
 

I guess Fall Out Boy's cover of We Didn't Start The Fire brought the old man out of retirement.

[RPS]

The Smiles new album is fantastic. Whereas I found their first album still grounded in rock music, Wall of Eyes straight up feels like a jazz album. It has this playful, nebulous, free forming nature to it. It's very unexpected and arresting at times. 

[Hobo]

 not bad, Billy Joel.

 

[Maxx]

I got a new Green Day album and a new Alkaline Trio in back to back weeks, and really love both of them, so I'm very happy with the start of 2024.

[Benji]

Man, Derek Grant makes a hell of a mark in his final Alkaline Trio outing. I love me some Atom Willard, but I'm a bit sad I won't hear Derek himself on the drum kit when I see them later this year because God damn Blood, Hair and Eyeballs is a fantastic album that is absurdly strong in it's drumwork.

[RPS]

I'm so behind on giving my thoughts on the new music 

I liked the new Sleater Kinney but I didn't have on my bingo card that they would become kind of boring post reunion. There is always salvageable stuff on their albums but after Janet left it feels like it is not special. Definitely feels like a band going through the motions to just get stuff out to schedule the next tour. 

The MGMT album was pleasant. Felt like there most interesting since Congratulations. Probably will revisit. 

The Brittany Howard album is A+. Its hard to describe. She's completely deviated away from the Alabama Shakes rock sound, but there are still traces. It's this blissful soup of rock, pop, r&b and jazz. 

The new IDLES album sucked. Just an uninteresting slog.

The Friko album Where We've Been, where we go from here is really interesting. It feels like a grab bag of rock genres from over the last few decades. It feels like an album recorded by a different band each track.

The Hurray for the Riff Raff album was fine. I enjoyed it. 

Phasor by Helado Negro was a wonderful affair. Electronic music that feels like rock music. It's a great Sunday morning album.

Those Vampire Weekend songs are incredibly promising. I need it now. They'll sound lovely live.

Ducks Ltd was a nice jangle pop rock moment. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Felt like REM from the 80s with modern production. 

[GoGo Yubari]

I don't know if I think SK are going through the motions because I think that would have looked like them basically just repeating No Cities to Love over and over again to diminishing returns. Instead I think it's actually kind of more of a bummer because they're more or less trying something new but in a way that doesn't really work and alienated both part of their audience and also the third member of their band. I fully get Carrie and Corin's argument that the band existed pre-Janet but it's a bit like if Nirvana had lasted into the '00s and Kurt and Krist ended up alienating Dave Grohl somehow. Just doesn't feel right.

"Say It Like You Mean It" is probably the closest I've come to really liking a song of theirs since 2015, though, so I guess they're getting closer to something that works for me.

[RPS]

3 hours ago, GoGo Yubari said:

I don't know if I think SK are going through the motions because I think that would have looked like them basically just repeating No Cities to Love over and over again to diminishing returns. Instead I think it's actually kind of more of a bummer because they're more or less trying something new but in a way that doesn't really work and alienated both part of their audience and also the third member of their band. I fully get Carrie and Corin's argument that the band existed pre-Janet but it's a bit like if Nirvana had lasted into the '00s and Kurt and Krist ended up alienating Dave Grohl somehow. Just doesn't feel right.

"Say It Like You Mean It" is probably the closest I've come to really liking a song of theirs since 2015, though, so I guess they're getting closer to something that works for me.

You are right. It doesn't feel like going through the motions. It feels like all of the side projects they did when they were on hiatus. Acceptable, but nothing special.  I always enjoy a handful of albums, but it feels less and less like core Sleater Kinney. 

I know St. Vincent produced The Center Won't Hold, but I have felt that since they've been far more interested in the art pop direction of St. Vincent versus the rock of Sleater Kinney past. I'm a huge St. Vincent fan, but that was by far the worst Sleater Kinney album. It was also the first without Janet, so maybe that was it. But it's felt ever since that album the production, lyrics and melodies have been incredibly weak. 

[GoGo Yubari]

Janet was actually on The Center Won't Hold but left the band almost immediately after they finished recording it. Like, they did one of the songs together on the Tonight Show, tickets went on sale for the tour the next morning, and then she announced she was gone by mid-afternoon. That was still enough time for me to immediately buy a ticket to the Seattle leg, though

(They were okay, the replacement drummer was talented, but it kind of felt like they were blitzing through playing the set as fast as possible. The title track for that album was pretty good live?)

But then yeah, the weirder part is that rather than continue down that path and try to make it work they've sort of just moved on to glossier-sounding indie rock.

[Skummy]

I land in pretty much the same place on most of those - the new Idles is incredibly dull; the song with LCD Soundsystem is better than anything else on there, but it's still boring. I'm a little higher on the new Sleater-Kinney, but it doesn't hold up to how good they used to be. 

I was disappointed by the new Hurray For The Riff Raff - they kind of came out of nowhere for me and I loved what I first heard from them, but there was nothing that jumped out to me here.

There's not many albums I've listened to this year that I've flagged as good, let alone great or potential album of the year, and there's been a fair few disappointments. I enjoyed the new The Smile album, and the new Dead South is good for what it is, but mostly it's been things that I was looking forward to and didn't quite land for me, like the new Laetitia Sadler, which is nice, but nothing special, or the new Pylon Reenactment Society, which has some high points but is mostly a bit patchy.

On the heavier side of things, the new Obsessed has one or two decent tracks but nothing that holds up to their best work, and Ihsahn's newest is good but nothing I can see myself going back to.

[DFF]

My current top 10. Mostly quite heavy stuff, though #1 is quite the exception. 

EDIT: 

Top 10 EPs/Short Albums so far: 

 

[Chris2K]

More news than opinion, but Bruno Mars is reportedly $50 million in debt to the MGM Grand due to his gambling addiction. He works as an artist-in-residence there and is paying off the debt with the money he would be earning for doing so.

Firstly - shame on anyone associated with him who didn't stop him from getting to this point, granted I am the son of a gambling addict and am fully aware that it can be impossible to stop even a normal person let alone a megastar, but surely someone could have done something more.

Secondly, shame on the casino for not showing just the slightest bit of humanity for their artist-in-residence and not protecting him from himself, instead just allowing him to build up an insurmountable debt that they can use as leverage against him.

[LittleDaniel]

Friday was a really good day for indie folk albums.

[RPS]

Okay huge dump alert

The Julia Holter album is A+. Album of the year for me so far. Endlessly curious, surprisingly and arresting. To categorize the album would be difficult - it falls somewhere between pop, jazz, and electronic music, but the best parts of each. It commands the body to move like a great electronic music, it is free flowing and unexpected like jazz, and it is pleasing on the years. But it experiments and iterates. It feels purposefully constructed to sound familiar but in a way that takes that familiarity and pushes it. 

The Yard Act album was entertaining. It feels like the type of album Damon Albarn could record in 2024 if he wanted to sound fresh. 

Beyonce was okay. Too long. I imagine if I had the time I could shed it down to a tight 7-8 stellar tracks. Instead it's lost in the shuffle.

Kacey Musgraves Deeper Well is really extraordinary. I think most people want Kacey Musgraves to go full velvet Elvis again. I understand why. But I love Kacey in her singer song writer phase. I think the entire theme of the album is normal. How do you feel normal in the wake of a destructive force like divorce? I find it interesting. The best track on the album is Anime Eyes. The moment the tracks breaks into pure euphoria takes you back to Golden Hour.

Vampire Weekends Only God Was Above Us has been living in my head ever since I heard Capricorn. To be reductive, it is simultaneously the most Vampire Weekend sounding album, but it feels so anti Vampire Weekend. They take the familiar sounds of a Vampire Weekend album but subvert your expectations. What if everything was free flowing, slightly odd, not pop. In many ways I think Vampire Weekend has borrowed the idea of a drop from electronic music - giving you this big rush to an explosive moment. Only God Was Above Us has no explosive moments. At times it feels like a jam session between the band. 

Ariana's album was a good solid album. Better than her last album, which was bad.

Four Tets album Three was a great chill out album. 

Kim Gordon's album The Collective is extremely my shit but lord knows my family won't let me play this one in the car. 

[Skummy]

I really liked the new Yard Act too, having been fairly indifferent to them before; they feel like a much better version of Sleaford Mods in places, but I can get the Damon Albarn comparison for sure. I've had "We Make Hits" stuck in my head since I heard it.

Completely agreed on Beyonce, it was just way too long and in too many places feels like a gimmick. It's a shame, because if you could trim the fat there's some really great stuff in there, but there's so much surrounding it that I've no real desire to go back to it. It doesn't help that Lemonade is one of my favourite albums of the last decade, so everything she does has that to live up to, and "Beyonce does country" was already done better in "Daddy Lessons" on that album.

I didn't really get into the new Vampire Weekend - loved "Pravda", but nothing else grabbed me, so that might be worth a relisten, as it feels like it could be one that grows on you; like you said, there's not those obvious big poppy moments.

I've added Kacey Musgraves and Julia Holter to my list, you've made them sound great.

The two new releases this month that I've really loved so far are the new Bob Vylan and Caleb Landry Jones. Bob Vylan are less outwardly angry than their previous work, but a lot more musically and lyrically mature, and I think it makes for a more interesting listen, and more depth to the lyrics that used to veer a little bit more towards big brash slogans. Landry Jones' album is just superb, a little bit art-pop, a little bit glam, and a lot of offbeat weirdness in there - it might just be because it's an album by an actor with a sideline in music, but it reminds me a little in places of the stuff Crispin Glover was doing in his music career, but far more commercial and listenable. 

On the heavier side of things, the new Iron Monkey has some really meaty heavy-duty riffs - it's not a great album, but there's enough there to make it really work for me.

[Colly]

Yard Act translating (almost literally) to a North American listener actually amazes me, I struggled at first to "get it" and I'm only 80 miles ish from Leeds...

Also very much enjoying Bob Vylan, and regretting the fact I've missed them twice (not my fault) at local festivals.

[RPS]

3 hours ago, Skummy said:

I didn't really get into the new Vampire Weekend - loved "Pravda", but nothing else grabbed me, so that might be worth a relisten, as it feels like it could be one that grows on you; like you said, there's not those obvious big poppy moments.

Mileage may vary based upon your love of past Vampire Weekend. It definitely feels like they deliberately revisit past ideas, sounds, vibes to remix and shuffle them around. But it's loose in a way that is very un-VW. 

I'll check out Bob Vylan and Landry. 

3 hours ago, Colly said:

Yard Act translating (almost literally) to a North American listener actually amazes me, I struggled at first to "get it" and I'm only 80 miles ish from Leeds...

It definitely did give me that 90s vibe where you'd listen to some English music as a Canadian and realize a whole lot of context is missing. But with Yard Act, I don't think your enjoyment of the music is dependant on context, but probably makes it a lot better. The music is also great - British post-punk but make it poppier. 

[livid]

Yeah I've gotten some people that don't even know what post-punk is bopping along to them. 

[RPS]

After the Emmys this year, I was having a discussion about Taylor Swift with my students before class. I did not particularly care about her. Seemed fine enough. But this one student was going on and on about how fantastic she was and how I was missing out. I had passively listened to Taylor Swift, but I had never really given her a shot. 

I listened to each Taylor Swift album, front to back. It took me about a week. I do this often - I think for artists with a large discography it can be fun to really find out what the peaks and valleys of an artist was. So I sat there for a week and tried to become a swiftie. 

Sometimes in pop culture, you miss things and watch from the outside. I was that way with Harry Potter. I never read the books. An ex was obsessed and took me to one of the movies in 2007, but I was 21 and stoned and it never impacted me. However, my daughter became interested in it years ago. So I read a few of the books and watched the movies. For years people told me that Harry Potter was not just for children. It was mature. It was deep. I listened for years. And when I sat down and consumed Harry Potter, the only thing I could wonder is how could an adult call this deep or mature? It was clearly aimed at 11 year old kids. That's not denigrating it. Doctor Seuss has few wordplay and interesting world building but I'm not going to sit down and read a book for a 5 year old in my own behalf. 

Nostalgia and brands are an interesting thing. We huff the fumes of days passed to keep chugging along. I do it in the days after going to a concert. I relisten to the bands discography remembering - she sung this song SO much better 2 days ago live. Getting through the days just thinking about how much better it was yesterday. But it's the feeling; it's not the quality. You forget about the poor vocal mix at the live show. You forget about the brutal wait of waiting to get into the concert. 

When I listened to Taylor Swift while discography, all I thought was this is music made for preteen and teenagers. There is nothing wrong with that. I love Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, etc. Some of Taylor Swift's albums were okay. A few were very good. Overall, she was an okay pop star who seemed able to cultivate her brand with average and uninteresting pop songs. She is this generations mega star, but it's kind of tragic because there is not a whole lot interesting about her. The only thing pulling people to Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift. She really has nothing interesting to say about the world. She's lived an abnormal life that is in no way similiar to any of the lives of her listener. Many other song writers could in one song provide more interesting perspectives than Taylor Swift exhibits in an entire album or a discography. 

Her new album is pretty bad. I could not imagine an adult listening to this album and thinking - wow interesting stuff. It felt like someone singing bad poetry from their Tumblr page. 

[GhostMachine]

The only song I've heard off the new album is Fortnight, and I only listened because Post Malone is on it.