Tom Burrows: Bashy – Being Poor is Expensive
Bashy’s first album in 15 years wasn’t at all on my radar until I heard the sombre ‘The London Borough of Brent’ on Benji B’s Radio 1 show earlier this year. But even then, wasn’t Bashy just a kind of grime also-ran? Someone you’d only really know if you were immersed in the genre?
One play of Being Poor is Expensive sent those thoughts packing. Functioning as a memoir of sorts from an artist who had stepped away from the UK rap scene into a successful acting career, this album is the sound of a wizened head returning to the environment that birthed him and truly seeing things for what they are. The album’s sense of place is established in great detail; there’s the echo of tube announcements, tales of hyper-local street politics and name drops of local neighbourhoods, but it’s to Bashy and producer Toddla T’s great credit that the album is so compelling throughout for someone not versed in the intricacies of these ends.
Bashy is a likeable narrator, and it is so clear how much he cares about this record. It’s always great to hear someone so locked in when they’re rapping, whether it’s on his hushed voice note-recorded verses of ‘On The Rise’ or how his reflections on petty rivalries glide along with the dancehall-inflected instrumental of ‘Blessed’. And speaking of the sound of this record, it is impressive how even the very famous samples used just feel like a natural part of an intricately weaved narrative.
There are familiar themes on Being Poor is Expensive about the crabs-in-a-barrel nature of improverished communities and societal prejudice towards black people in the UK – and it might feel like we’ve heard this before. But I don’t think there’s a limit to how often we can be reminded about stories like these, especially when they’re as vividly rendered as the ones on this album.
James Spearing: Rosie Lowe – Lover, Other
When songs from an album come into your head at almost any mundane moment, from turning over in bed at 3am, to waiting for the bus, to taking the bins out, it’s clear that it’s got under your skin. And thanks to everyone’s favourite end of year streaming app summary, it’s clear that I’ve listened to Lover, Other more than an enough for this to happen…and that’s not even counting how many times I’ve listened to the LP on top. And when the same album has the song of the year on it too (‘Something’), then there’s little more to be said about why this is unquestionably the album of the year. And, well I’ve started enough sentences with ‘and’ in this paragraph, if you want to read more of me saying how great it is, read my review from back in September. In short it’s yet another modern classic from Rosie.
Will Collins: Gatecreeper – Dark Superstition
There have been lots of records I’ve loved this year that could have qualified as my favourite – Waxahatchee, Ex-Easter Island Head and Bill Ryder-Jones were just three of the artists who put out blinding releases that I returned to again and again. But, in a year in which I have rediscovered my love of heavy music, the record that I have opted for the most (and probably was this catalyst for this shift) was Gatecreeper’s Dark Superstition. The huge opening riff of ‘Dead Star’ sets out the record’s stall: pummeling melodic death metal with a taste for the dramatic rather than the drily technical. Throat-shredding vocals abound throughout, as you’d expect, but the guitars have a melodic and anthemic sheen to them and the Kurt Ballot (of Converge fame)’s production is imbued with a healthy dose of gothic melodrama to go with the raw power on display.
The music seems as much in thrall to classic heavy metal in some ways as it does to its death metal forefathers, eschewing the trap of technically impressive but emotionless displays of prowess that some contemporary death metal can fall into. The band know their way around a riff or six and seems to have remembered that music shouldn’t just be an opportunity for musicians to show off their chops. On the record’s ten tracks they do an amazing job of combining crafting a compelling and coherent atmosphere with dishing up hefty slabs of death metal riffing for getting the head banging and the fist pumping. This might not be the record that finally persuades you to like metal, but it would give it a good go!
Sam Atkins: Billie Eilish – HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
HIT ME HARD AND SOFT isn’t just a best album of 2024, in so many ways it feels like a record that will define the next decade of pop music. In a year where the likes of Charli xcx, Chappell Roan, JADE and Ariana Grande made it clear that pop genuinely was the best genre of 2024, the peak is this tremendous album. Billie Eilish and FINNEAS have always delivered great music together, but the confidence and freedom they showcase in every aspect of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is inspiring and incredible to witness. This album floors me in its creativity, daring instrumentation, vocal production and confidence.
The run of songs ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER’, ‘WILDFLOWER’ and ‘THE GREATEST’ make me emotional whenever I hear them, I’m so overwhelmed by the way they use music, lyrics and vocals to evoke such an emotion. The moment where Billie says ‘I Loved you, and I still do’ during ‘THE GREATEST’ genuinely breaks me every time it happens and there’s moments like that throughout the album. The change of tempo at the end of ‘L’AMOUR DE MA VIE’, or the way ‘BLUE’ interpolates an almost legendary Billie Eilish song from a decade ago that never saw a release. Everything about this album is special and it’s the most daring, enjoyable and powerful album I heard all year. I am lost to HIT ME HARD AND SOFT and front to end it’s hard to think of a pop record I’ve loved more in years.
Rick Larson: Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven
Some years choosing the best album is a struggle. You can pick one and then, days later, think it maybe should have been another. This is not one of those years. My album of the year is Mannequin Pussy’s I Got Heaven and it was not a close race.
The album blasts through thirty minutes in what feels like half the time, from the opening ripper of a title track to the yearning, aching closer ‘Split Me Open’ with its repeated lament “Nothin’s gonna change,’ the official lyric of 2024. I believe this is the best band going right now and the band appears to share that opinion. They swagger through this album.
The album is universe of emotions condensed to a Big Bang particle that explodes across the ten songs, a swirl of love, regret, desire, rage, pride. The music is perfectly tuned to the lyrics. These are both pretty loud and pretty, loud songs. And sometimes the band just completely lets it rip. ‘OK?OK!OK?OK!’ makes some modern “hardcore” bands sound like Imagine Dragons.
Mannequin Pussy also delivered the best concert I saw this year. Frontwoman Marisa Dabice is a livewire, snaking across the stage in a bright yellow ball gown, a Siren in Disney princess disguise. You leave exhausted, uplifted a bit bruised. Album of the Year, Band of the Year; give them all the awards.
Fran Slater: Big Special – POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES
I’d never heard of Big Special until a couple of days before this album came out. A bit of buzz from my favourite record store led me to stick it on, expecting it to probably be good but nothing special. About 80 seconds into opening song ‘Black Country Gothic’, after a frantic percussive intro and the first shout into the mic, my jaw was on the floor.
And the album just never let up after that. How a band manages to be so funny in one moment, so prescient in the next, so clever and cutting from one second of a song to the next, I will never know. The album is full of instant classics, one liners, and addictive music. If you haven’t listened to it yet, stop being a shithouse and stick it on.
Tom Burrows: Brittany Howard – What Now
For Brittany Howard, life is feeling everything: happiness and sadness – every colour of the rainbow. That’s reflected in the wide ranging music across What Now. It’s a kaleidoscopic melding of funk (‘What Now’), psych rock (‘I Don’t’), house (‘Prove It To You’) and blues (‘Samson’). It’s also a really accomplished record; one that’s easy to overlook (I barely remembered a track after my first play), but one that sinks into you on repeated listens.
Without exploring the lyrical content, it’s a lush, varied and hugely enjoyable album which pushes her sound and talent in new directions. But listen to what she’s saying and it’s incredibly melancholic and wistful. The contrast suggests that life in all its vibrancy is full of disappointment, longing, and questions for which there are no answers.
The journey she travels leads to an outpouring of emotional release on closer ‘Every Color In Blue’. Musically, the song sounds as if Nina Simone had made Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes’. Tension builds and builds as Howard describes how life’s ups and downs sometimes get the better of her, and she ends up “all out of rainbows”. Very little music moved me as much as this in 2024. Howard’s vocals feel like they come from deep within her soul, and I know very few modern artists who can communicate this level of visceral emotion.
James Spearing: Fabiana Palladino – Fabiana Palladino
Feel free to argue with me that this is not the way an album of the year should be measured, but the tour I was most gutted about missing this year was Fabiana Palladino’s. The instrumentation and quality of musicianship throughout the album, feels like something you need to experience with as many senses as possible. That being said, its easy to lose yourself in the audio only experience of Fabiana Palladino too. It’s a love letter to all her influences and musical heroes, but without sounding like simply a copy or a parody. Indeed it elevates what you may think to your 2024 ears are the now slightly naff sounds of late 80s/early 90s RnB and soft rock. So think again. And much like the Rosie Lowe album I’ve also picked, in ‘Stay With Me Through The Night’ we have another contender for song of the year. I can only hope that I can write about Fabiana again in the best gigs of 2025.
Matt Paul: Knocked Loose – You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To
As always I’ve had several obsessions throughout the year. They mostly come and go within 6 weeks or so. But since this You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To came out in May it has been my go-to album. And it’s easy to see why. This album is packed with furious energy. And it is completely unrelenting.
Though my interest in metal is growing, I am not a full-blown metalhead yet. But Knocked Loose are creating songs full of genre blends and versatility which makes for something a lot more accessible. Blending songs with traditional pop structure, reggaeton breakdowns, spacy atmospheric interludes, but keeping true to the Metalcore genre.
The album highlight is ‘Suffocate’. This song is massive because of two key elements: vocals and drums (sorry everyone else). The lead vocalist Bryan Garris is fantastic throughout the album, but with Poppy there is an extra dynamic to the song as they bounce off of each other in this twisted duet. And the drums sound huge with this recurring bounding and rambunctious breakdown that just feels like I’m being clobbered round the head. Its a theme throughout. The albums is at its best when the vocals and drums are doing something unexpected or different. And that is happening all over the place You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To.
At 27 mins this album does not stick around. But there’s absolutely no slack. By the time I’ve finished listening, I’m often dizzyingly exhausted. Even after 6th, 16th or 60th listen. But still I can’t help but go back and press play again.
Sam Atkins: Lucy Rose – This Ain’t The Way You Go Out
No album this year has seen me demand that other people listen to it like the latest album from Lucy Rose. I reviewed it on this site back in April and said ‘I can see Lucy Rose’s voice, her lyrics and her musicality ending up as my favourite thing I will write about in 2024’ and honestly I wasn’t far off. Alongside Billie and my other fave album this year What Now by Brittany Howard this Lucy Rose album has defined my 2024.
It’s so daring and creative, while remaining very close and emotive. Songs like ‘Over When It’s Over’ and ‘Life’s Too Short’ feel familiar and soft jazz at times but beneath every moment is musicality and instrumentation that’s so unexpected and thrilling. Closer ‘The Racket’ and standout ‘Sail Away’ soar in ways I could never have expected from Lucy Rose and showcase a true musical talent. If you listen to any album that you may have missed from 2024 make sure it’s This Ain’t The Way You Go Out.
Fran Slater: English Teacher – This Could Be Texas
Seeing a band like this deliver on their promise is so rewarding. I’d been banging on about them for a while, having caught them live 3 times before the album was even released. So to hear songs like ‘Nearly Daffodils’, ‘R&B’, and ‘World’s Biggest Paving Slab’ finally released to record was a joy in itself.
But across the album, the band proved that they’re even more than their live show suggested. They mix interesting time signatures, clever lyrics, and songs that keep you guessing to produce a sound like nobody else. And while this is definitely a defining album of 2024, the most exciting thing is that it feels like the best is still to come.
Picky Bastards 