It’s been an excellent year for music. Sometimes I struggle to find 10 albums to put in my list, but this year I had a difficult time narrowing it down from 30+ albums. In the end, no matter how ‘critically acclaimed’ or popular certain albums were, I tried to make a list of the albums that meant the most to me and the ones I found myself going back to over and over.

10. What A Devastating Turn of Events - Rachel Chinouriri

Sometimes I like an artist for their singles more than their albums. I thought that was the case with Rachel Chinouriri, I would hear one song, get obsessed, and play it on repeat until I wear it out. It was only after realising that every new song I heard was equally addicting that I came to realise that she really is consistently that good. The album did not disappoint. There are beautiful moments throughout but I still find myself drawn to certain standouts. “Never Need Me” would have to be a contender for one of my favourite songs of the year. Who knew that a break-up song could sound so confident, resolute and anthemic? From perfectly executed verses to the rolling snare build-up of the super satisfying chorus “Maybe I’ll regret not sticking around / but how can I swim if you’re pulling me down / Just promise you’ll take it easy / I hope that you never need me”.

There’s so much variety in this album. From the distorted guitar rock of The Hills, to the sugar sweet pop of All I Ever Asked and the minimalist swagger of the title track. This album has a little bit of everything and it all works together.

9. Love Heart Cheat Code - Hiatus Kaiyote

From the opening notes of the first track Dreamboat, I knew I was in for a wild ride with this album. Stunning chord progressions flow and weave like rolling waves over Nai Palm’s soulful and dexterous vocals. Hiatus Kaiyote’s albums always make it on my year-end lists. Their arrangements - rich, dense and complicated - feel like a puzzle to solve on first listen sometimes but when it clicks, it really clicks.

I still remember hearing the opening of the title track Love Heart Cheat Code with a full ‘stank face’ at the loose but somehow super tight groove with rollicking drum fills and a razor sharp percussive stab at the end of each phrase that I still can’t listen to without moving. Hiatus are one of those bands that could be in danger of making music just for the kids that go to music college, except that their songs are just so tasteful. Take for example the chorus of Make Friends - “What is it for? Who we like, who we ignore? You don’t make friends, you recognise them”. Yes the drums are syncopated, yes it’s one of most ridiculous bass runs that in any other band might feel ‘too much’, yes it modulates more times than perhaps necessary, yes it ends in a percussive jam session with vocal acrobatics that feels an entirely different genre from where the songs started, but it all just works. This album feels less like a chin-stroking exercise in musical theory and more like a crazy talented band having fun.

8. SMILE! :D - Porter Robinson

Known for his melodic, emotionally-charged EDM, Porter Robinson explores a more indie rock territory in this album, but still through the lens of an electronic producer. Since hearing “Get Your Wish” on 2021’s Nurture, I could hear a little glimpse of some emo / rock influences, and in this album those are even more pronounced. Supposedly Porter hadn’t heard much “guitar music” before this album and went digging through some of the big guitar-rock anthems while working on this project - and it shows. The album is exuberant, joyful, anthemic. The dance music production choices lend themselves well to the electric guitar driven songs, and some of the best moments come from the blend of both where rock arrangements explode with lead synths and pulsing electronic bass, like on the scream-your-heart-out chorus of the lead single “Cheerleader”.

Other highlights include the more chilled out Kitsune Maison Freestyle with its musings on modern culture “Everybody’s just trying to look good, trying not to feel bad”, and the anthemic reflection on nostalgia that feels like a song straight out of the late 90s “When it’s over and done / Is there really no happiness without this feeling?”

7. Endlessness - Nala Sinephro

Belgian experimental jazz artist Nala Sinephro’s new album arrived right on time this year. After 2021’s dazzling Space 1.8, she releases another spectacular ambient album full of harp, modular synth and percussive elements. Like her previous album, Endlessness is full of songs with the same title just numbered consecutively - it flows as a whole piece, although Continuum 3 and Continuum 8 were particular highlights along the journey for me. Nala returns to familiar motifs throughout the project but the explorations along the way are a delight to listen to. Saxaphone floats freely over regimented synth arpeggios, string sections seemingly appear out of nowhere transforming stark arrangements into wonderfully orchestral moment, but disappearing back into the mist. The album feels like sitting in a gallery taking in a beautiful painting, the longer you sit with it, the more details and textures emerge.

6. Here In The Pitch - Jessica Pratt

This album sounds like a gem you dig out of a vintage record store, rather than a 2024 release. It’s not just the soft reverb and retro tone of the album but the timelessness of the songwriting that makes it feel instantly nostalgic. Jessica is one of those artists that you could happily listen to for hours with just her voice and her guitar, but on this album she is joined by more instrumentation - soft rolling drums, bass and even brass.

These kind of gentle acoustic albums can often get a bit downbeat and moody, but Here In The Pitch shimmers with a hopeful glow throughout. “I want to be the sunlight of the century, I want to be a vestige of our senses free” Jessica sings sweetly on World On A String. Light and shadow play together throughout the project. “Out of luck and out of time” is the sombre opening line of The Last Year, before settling into the beautiful chorus “I think it’s gonna be fine / I think we’re gonna be together / and the storyline goes forever”.

5. Two Star & The Dream Police - Mk.gee

An album that wears its influences on its sleeves. There are obvious parallels to The Police and Phil Collins. But through a lens that feels perfectly 2024. The songs feel very much like they’re just happening in the room around you, in a similar way to frequent collaborator Dijon’s work. It caught my ear as a producer just for sounding so unlike anything else this year. With a guitar tone that has had the YouTube guitar community scratching their head for months and attempting to re-create the tone. There are so many moments that sound like somebody who really doesn’t want their guitar to sound like a guitar, shapeshifting into a synth, a saxophone or an aggressive drum hit at times. Vocals seem to be yelled from the back of a room, jumping between barely audible whispered lyrics and sudden, heart-felt yelps of melody. It’s hard to make out the lyrics of the album. In fact, it was only after hearing kids on TikTok covering these songs on acoustic guitar that I realised they were actually beautifully written songs buried beneath the sheen of quirky production, warbling effects and smashing noises. It’s an audio nerd’s dream, but it only really works because the songs themselves carry enough weight and heart to be felt through all of the audio trickery. To be honest, I was surprised to see so many songs from this album in my top songs list this year on Spotify but I guess it must have intrigued me enough to keep coming back to it.

4. Any Light - Loving

This album had my heart from the opening chord, a lovely, open sounding 5th that builds and swoons with all the ache and romance of a love story for a whole 20 seconds before landing on the root note of the song and grounding it. In fact, it’s a whole minute and 45 seconds before any vocals enter at all. With a short but beautiful verse of light and love - like seeing somebody for the first time all over again. “Never have I seen you / with open eyes” .. “Now that I see you / I can renew / My love”.

The album continues at a pleasant pace and became one of my staples this year, in large part for being the perfect balance of instrumentation and melodic sensibility to soundtrack my walks to the grocery store, my drives to visit my family, and my quiet mornings at home. I first approached Loving through their instrumentals and it’s really the instrumental sections that still stand out to me. The vocal melodies are just right too but often act as a set up for beautiful guitar works or piano lines. “Chill” music can often feel quite forgettable but the best of this style manages to hit just right and be so wonderfully enjoyable. As one YouTube commenter put it: “this sounds like sitting down after standing your whole life”. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

3. My Light, My Destroyer - Cassandra Jenkins

My Light, My Destroyer holds a special place in my heart. It’s beautiful, spacious, poetic and quietly powerful. This became one of those albums that soundtracked some of the most meaningful moments of my year, and having the chance to hear the songs live just added to that experience. “Don’t mistake my breaking open, for broken” Cassandra sings in a near whisper on the opening track, Devotion - a short statement that captures the beauty of vulnerability and bearing our weakness, it is not always a sad and hopeless thing but something cathartic, beautiful, necessary. “I thought I knew how to listen” she confesses “Until the hair on my skin / Rose in tongues / Ancient, unspoken”, shortly before the song opens up with the slow glow of a sunrise and strings, fluttering guitars and brass melodies carry the song into it’s final flourish.

Cassandra’s lyrics are beautifully abstract in places, allowing us to map our own meaning to the words. In particular I found language for my relationship with God in the show-stopping masterpiece of a song in Omakase - “my lover, my light, my destroyer, my meteorite”. If one song could sum up my spiritual walk it would be this one. “Pull me apart, put me back together again”.

2. Imaginal Disk - Magdalena Bay

Arguably the best sounding album of the year. The production on this album always delights me and I find new things to enjoy in each listen. I often found myself so drawn in to moments on this album that made me wonder “how did they make this sound so good??”. It’s a concept album filled with weird and wonderful imagery - a character called ‘true blue’, angels on satellites, a doctor who seems to want to put a CD into people’s heads to turn them into an even “better” version of themselves. “Say hello, it’s you, the purest you!” a narrator says, over an informercial-sounding interlude early in the album, before blasting straight into some of the best pop songs of this year, focussing on themes of self image, and self discovery. Ultimately, through a long and theatrical tale, it’s an album that acknowledges our issues are not just surface level, but if we truly want to find “the purest you”, we must learn to face our inner monsters.

Fun little details such as the countdown in “Image” repeating lines of “22 more minutes”, which starts off a countdown through the album that culminates in an absolutely absurd breakdown section in one of the album’s strongest songs “Tunnel Vision”. For me, the final 3 songs were my go-to if I didn’t have time for anything else. The Abba-inspired “Cry For Me”, the beautifully airy piano ballad “Angel on a Satellite” and the autobiographical curtain call with one of my favourite pop hooks all year “The Ballad of Matt & Mica”, emerging out of an absolutely delightful tempo change through wild, ascending vocal lines. This album is truly a delight for the ears.

1. Bright Future - Adrianne Lenker

Few artists have captured my heart in recent years as Adrianne Lenker. Not only is she a killer guitarist and seems to find delightfully textured and beautiful melodies but her lyrics hit me like no other. I had the chance to take her songwriting class in January and her advice has stuck with me all year. I found myself on long flights and rainy days picking through her lyrics and wondering how she landed on something so profound and wonderfully simple all at once. Her lyrics overflow with love, pain, longing, beauty and the tender appreciation for all of it. “You and I could see into the same eternity / every second brimming with a majesty / oh, kiss so sweet, so fine / you could hear the music inside my mind”.

Even though I’m still struggling to forgive her for opening the album with the most devastating song possible, if you can recover from that, there’s a beautiful journey in this album. In line with the album’s title, this one is actually more hopeful and bright than her previous albums and has such a sweet tenderness throughout. Once again I found myself repurposing song lyrics for my own spiritual journey and thoughts of God. “You show me understanding, patience and pleasure, time and attention, love without measure”, Adrianne sings on the aptly titled Free Treasure, which fitting describes this album to me. Full of moments which feel so precious and valuable, and yet feel like the unearthing of something that’s been there all along.

Honourable Mentions

These albums I also loved but didn’t ultimately land a place in my top 10, for various reasons. Some of it is just that I haven’t had so much time to dig into them yet.

Honey - Caribou
In Waves - Jamie xx
Dance, No One’s Watching - Ezra Collective
Requiem - Keshi
The Alexander Technique - Rex Orange County
AAA - HYUKOH, Sunset Rollercoaster
Submarine - The Marias
Keeper of the Shepherd - Hannah Frances
HIT ME HARD AND SOFT - Billie Eilish
COWBOY CARTER - Beyonce

eternal sunshine - Ariana Grande
Drop 7 - Little Simz
Only God Was Above Us - Vampire Weekend
Older - Lizzy McAlpine
Charm - Clairo
Patterns In Repeat - Laura Marling
This Could Be Texas - English Teacher
BRAT - Charli xcx
Evergreen - Soccer Mommy
Sable, - Bon Iver

Playlist

Want to hear a couple of songs from each album, plus one from the honourable mentions list? I gotchu.

Top 10 Albums of 2024