Year in Review 2024: Music, Part 2

Best Albums I Listened to in 2024

• “ . . . on reflection “ by William Basinski & Janek Schaefer

• Sorry to Bother You by The Coup (2012)

There’s a solid argument to be made (and others have almost certainly made it) that hip hop is the most obvious heir to the politically-charged folk music of the mid-20th century. Once you get through the basic “war sucks, eat the rich” refrains, the relatively spare writing of that tradition can’t as easily accommodate more sophisticated ideas and less sing-songy compositions (though there are exceptions; see, for example, Josh Ritter’s “Get Ready to Get Down” featuring his characteristically breathless delivery and cheeky wit).

Hip hop, on the other hand, specifically lyrically-focused hip hop, has ample room for complex ideas. And you certainly won’t be bored. Just looking at how this album starts, you’ve got “Magic Clap” to hype you up, then the modern (and, again, more sophisticated) take on “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” that is “Strange Arithmetic,” then “Your Parents’ Cocaine”‘s sharp-edged satire of privileged bourgeois decadence, and then “Gods of Science” in case you somehow still had any doubts as to Riley’s skill as a rapper. And that’s just the first four tracks, we haven’t even gotten to “You Are Not a Riot” or “The Guillotine” (which is not to discount the slower/quieter tracks like “Violet” or “We’ve Got a Lot to Teach You, Cassius Green,” which are also great.)

Sorry to Bother You is a great example of how music and lyrics can work together to grab your attention and then do something worthwhile with it.

(I will say, it is a little confusing to give your movie the same title as an album you’d already made years ago, which music is not in the movie, and then to make another album with the same title but call it a soundtrack, and that music isn’t in the movie either.)

• Impossible Weight by Deep Sea Diver (2020)

After the slow burn of “Shattering the Hourglass,” Impossible Weight takes off on a distortion- and reverb-laden thrillride that rarely loses steam. The steady groove of the rhythm section, Jessica Dobson’s powerful vocals, a signature distorted guitar that pops up throughout the album, and a plethora of musical accents and little production tricks all serve to keep the listener engaged even in the less intense moments.

Which is why it’s a little weird that after 9 tracks of truly great rock music, they chose to end on a quiet acoustic song. Dobson still delivers a characteristically compelling vocal performance, and that would maybe be enough to carry the song on a different album, but here the drop in energy is just too steep, and without enough lyrical specificity or thematic significance to anchor it the song just kind of drifts by. A disappointing ending to an otherwise solid album.

Highlights for the aurally-fixated:
– The warm keys on “Shattering the Hourglass”
– The heavy, almost ITAT-esque drums going into the first chorus of “Wishing” and that big echoey synth in the bridge
– The extended jam session in “Eyes Are Red (Don’t Be Afraid)” and that huge ending with that ethereal, wailing guitar(?)
– The intensity of the second “alone” in the chorus of “Lightning Bolts,” and that groovy bass

• What Matters Most by Ben Folds (2023)

I was honestly a little nonplussed by this on my first listen, but it’s really grown on me. It’s his first album in 8 years, and it feels like that separation has given him the freedom to make whatever he wants without the pressure of it having to maintain some sort of momentum.

Which also feels in line with the thematic connecting tissue between this and So There. That album’s “Phone in a Pool” and “I’m Not the Man,” two different versions of a speaker watching their fame slip away and futilely trying to hold on to it, see themselves echoed here in “Exhausting Lover,” in which the speaker now just wants the party to be over, and “Back To Anonymous,” in which the speaker is finally coming to terms with the loss of that fame (and which does actually literally echo “I’m Not the Man” in its final line). I wouldn’t presume to know how true to life these songs are, as Folds is rarely that direct, but the general idea certainly seems to be one he’s been thinking about for a while. (And for what it’s worth “Back To Anonymous” also has at least one probable reference to a Ben Folds Five song (the line “But I couldn’t stay awake,” nodding to “Narcolepsy”) so I am inclined to believe the speaker in that one is pretty much him.)

Overall it’s kind of a melancholy album, but it also sees Folds at his most experimental (there’s even *gasp* electric guitars!), which is a compelling juxtaposition. And “Clouds With Ellipses,” “Fragile,” and “Paddleboat Breakup” might be his best vocal performances ever; his voice has really warmed with age, without losing any of its range, so his already-effective falsetto now has an added depth to it that’s positively heartbreaking.

• New Creation Myths by Frail Talk (2021)

• Laverne by The Hot Shapes (2023)

• Sometimes You Hurt The Ones You Hate by Damien Jurado (2023)

This album finds Jurado at his most inscrutable since The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, his lyrics filled with Bowie-esque word association that defies interpretation. There’s not no meaning here, some songs even have something like a recognizable narrative, but it’s difficult to tease out.

What really struck me about the lyrics, though, were some familiar themes and phrases.

In “James Hoskins,” the line “the moon is a silver ball” recalls “the moon it will hang / like a silver ball” from the aptly-titled “Silver Ball” off of In The Shape of a Storm.

Another song off that album, “Hands on the Table,” contains the line “I am directing our movie, our play in my mind / A moment suspended in time that I keep on rewind,” which would seem to prefigure the references to “acting with these scripts in our hands” and being “stuck here on rewind” in “A Lover, A Balcony Fire, An Empty Orchestra.”

When he sings, in “Mr. Frank Dell,” about

“Petitioning a pardon for Dianne
Who once took Arizona as a hostage
Singing her demands through the desert sands”

it’s hard not to think back to The Horizon Just Laughed and “Percy Faith”‘s third verse:

“Alice in disguises
Bill Close taken hostage
Dear Loretta, these are my demands
I’ll be selling Arizona to the next potential buyer
Who comes in from the north in search of sand”

And then there’s “A.M. A.M.”, from Visions of Us on the Land, which touches on many of the themes present throughout this album but most obviously contains the line “Don’t go changing / I’m not leaving you,” which closes out this album at the end of “I Was A Line.”

But it’s unclear what, if anything, to read into these. While there’s a strong case for these being the explicit callbacks described above, you can find references to Arizona, movies, and AM radio throughout his discography, and the word “rewind” is in 9 of his songs, with 5 of them containing the phrase “on rewind.”

Ultimately this feels a little like noticing all of the clever little connections between sections in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas; yes, there’s something there, but it’s hard to tell whether there’s really a point to it. (Oh, also, “cloud” is another of Jurado’s favorite words, appearing, in either singular or plural form, in 15 songs.)

(Since writing this review I was reading Conversations Vol. 2, from the collected conversations between Jorge Luis Borges and Osvaldo Ferrari, and there’s this bit right at the end that seems relevant here:

FERRARI. No, I think that it has to do with your desire to be faithful to all those symbols that have seemed essential or permanent to you.

BORGES. Well, I’ve written about that recently, as a matter of fact, and I listed them and I wondered why I’ve chosen those particular ones. And then I came to the conclusion that I’ve been chosen by them. Because I wouldn’t have any trouble, for example, doing without labyrinths and talking about cathedrals or mosques; doing without tigers and talking about panthers or jaguars; doing without mirrors and talking, well, about echoes, which are like auditory mirrors. Yet, I feel that if I worked like that, the reader would spot immediately that I’d lightly disguised myself (both laugh), and I would be exposed, that is, if I said ‘the leopard’, the reader would think about a tiger; if I said ‘cathedrals’, the reader would think about labyrinths, because the reader already knows my habits. And perhaps expects them, and perhaps…well, they’re resigned to them, and they’re resigned to such an extent that if I don’t repeat those symbols, I disappoint them in some way.)

All that being said, Jurado’s main strength in this latter part of his career has been his sweetly vulnerable vocal and gift for melody, both of which are here to draw you in despite the opacity of the lyrics. And some might find this preferable to 2022’s Reggae Film Star, which was more reliant on narrative, possibly to a fault. For me, I’ll take whatever Jurado decides to put out, because there’s always something worth listening to.

• Strange Medicine by Kaia Kater (2024)

Lyrically Kater’s writing is often stylistically not to my taste, but most of the time the music is good enough that I don’t care, a jazz-folk fusion featuring Kater’s excellent banjo skills.

• Heaven Heaven Heaven by Ben Levin (2024)

I admit I haven’t been keeping up with Levin’s output over the last couple years, and so I was surprised to find he’s ditched the electronic/experimental pop sounds in favor of heavy-hitting, guitar-driven rock, and what’s more, it works. Levin remains an incredibly emotive lyricist, and the arrangements here are perfectly suited to amplify that emotion, whether it be through driving polyrhythms; softly strummed guitars backed by heavy, ominous drums; or goosebumps-inducing explosive choruses. Those moments of catharsis are like bursts of light on what is a pretty dark album.

• Lynyrd Nimoy by Lynyrd Nimoy (2020)

• A Thread, Silvered and Trembling by David McDowall (2024)

• Light, Dark, Light Again by Angie McMahon (2023)

I put off listening to this one for a while, because I had a feeling from hearing the first couple singles that I was gonna be disappointed…and unfortunately I was kind of right.

It’s not a bad album, enjoyable enough to listen to, but man, Salt is so good, and this just doesn’t quite get there. Partially it’s the production/arrangement, moving away from the guitar rock towards a more lush soundscape, but it’s a little diaphanous, warm but not full, if that makes sense. To put it another way, Brad Cook co-produced a lot of these tracks, and unsurprisingly he’s also a frequent collaborator with Justin Vernon—not, though, on Bon Iver, Bon Iver or 22, a Million, but on i,i and Big Red Machine. Maybe what I’m saying is there’s not enough bari sax and saw synths on these tracks?

Anyway, the other part is the lyrics. There’s a lot of what to me reads as New Agey woo-woo, and while I’m aware that that’s my own bias and probably not a generous interpretation, I just really didn’t vibe with it. So a song like “Divine Fault Line,” which I loved the music of, is then ruined by that last line of the chorus which I’m just too cynical to take seriously. Similar problems arise with “Mother Nature,” “I Am Already Enough,” and I legitimately could not get through “Music’s Coming In” because with that I didn’t even like the music.

There’s still good stuff here. My favorite tracks, “Fireball Whiskey”, “Letting Go,” and “Staying Down Low,” are strong showings that feel like they’re building on Piano Salt. I like some of the new sounds too, like the scotch-snap melody in “Saturn Returning;” the gated-reverbed drums on “Fish” (and really that whole song, I remain a sucker for the neo-80’s sound); or the understated, almost-spoken vocals throughout “Making it Through.” And for that matter, it could but need not go without saying that her vocals on every song are as good as ever, she’s still in probably my top 5 singers.

So, I’ll take my handful of songs gladly, and hope the next one is more my speed.

• With Teeth by Nine Inch Nails (2005)

Apparently a lot of people didn’t like this album because they felt like it was more of the same and Reznor was too old and sober to pull it off. But this is the first NiN album I’ve ever listened to and I had none of that context, so I thought it was pretty good.

• Cult of the Lamb (Original Soundtrack) by River Boy (2023)

At times both creepy and charming, making it perfectly suited for the game it’s scoring (and, in fact, I probably would have stopped playing the game sooner had it not been for how good this soundtrack is). Love the vocal-samples-as-instrument technique, it works really well in this context.

• In Other Waters (Original Soundtrack) by Amos Roddy (2020)

Definitely a good soundtrack, but didn’t hit me the same way as the Citizen Sleeper OST and I’m trying to figure out if that’s contextual or actually rooted in the music. Because I listened to the CS soundtrack basically right after finishing the game, so those tracks were still attached to the game in my head and I was bringing much more of that experience to the music. Whereas it’s been almost 6 months since I played In Other Waters, and while I could conjure up some of the gameplay based on the song titles it was much more vague, and I none of the tracks seemed familiar except for “A Drifting Lense” (which is also my favorite track and one I knew I would love within the first 2 notes).

The again, it’s possible I connected the most to “A Drifting Lense” because it’s one of only a few tracks that has recognizable motifs and melodic structure. Compared to Citizen Sleeper this music is much more abstract and atmospheric, particularly later pieces like “The Arcology” and “Anomaly.” These function less as songs and so are less able to stand on their own outside the context of the game. I mean, it’s been almost a year since I played Citizen Sleeper, but “Matsutake” can still make me feel exactly the same way it did the first time I heard it (and it can also get stuck in my head, as it is now).

But that’s not a fault of In Other Waters. The music is still good, and certainly within the game it’s an invaluable part of the experience; navigating a minimalist topographical map with only the occasional text box for company would be a lot less impactful without Roddy’s contribution.

• The Wild At Heart (Original Soundtrack) by Amos Roddy (2021)

It is a little weird listening to the soundtrack for a game I’ve never played. Soundtracks, or at least soundtracks comprising original compositions, are so inseparable from the work they’re scoring that I can feel that lack of context, the gap between the emotional impact of the music itself and the impact it would have if I had formed those associations with it over hours of gameplay.

But Roddy is a skilled enough composer that this soundtrack absolutely stands up on its own, communicating so much through the instrumentation and sound design that you still get a sense of the environments and emotional arc of the story without needing to see it. I was frequently reminded of River Boy’s Cult of the Lamb score, as well as Roddy’s own work for Jump Over the Age (e.g. that iconic Citizen Sleeper synth that you can hear on “Tunnel of Trees,” “Ratllebrook,” and several other tracks), all of which is to say this is right up there with some of my favorite game scores despite having never played the game it’s for (and probably never will play, it’s been described as “Pikmin meets Luigi’s Mansion,” both games I bounced off of as a kid and have never really been called to revisit.)

• The Letters of Dr. Kurt Gödel by Levi Weaver (2011)

It didn’t occur to me (though it probably should have) that an album called The Letters of Dr. Kurt Gödel would be a concept album, and it’s a testament to Weaver’s compositional skill that I figured it out not by noticing narrative threads or recurring lyrical themes or references to Kurt Gödel (who I don’t really know enough about to recognize any but the most overt references), but by the sound of the album.

There’s a sonic cohesiveness to the songs, not just in the way they’re strung together through those seamless transitions but in the dramatic arc of the whole thing, to the point that you can feel the story even if you’re not paying that close attention to the lyrics ’cause you’re nursing a bad Slay the Spire habit.

The lyrics (upon review) are good though, and it’s a testament to Weaver’s lyrical skills that what could have easily been an esoteric, obtuse concept album manages to stand on its own and effectively communicate its themes and (especially) its emotional arc even if the listener’s knowledge of Kurt Gödel is incomplete.

Hands down his best album (of those I’ve listened to.)