🎹 Music for this post is the music for this post.
If 2023 was a good year for music, 2024 was even better. Let’s get down to it:
1. Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us
https://www.vampireweekend.com
You might mock me for liking Vampire Weekend. I can take it. I was frankly surprised that Only God Was Above Us is as good — if not better than — almost everything they have ever done. It’s certainly on par with Modern Vampires Of The City. The concluding track, Hope, might convince you, too. It will be a useful track for 2025.
2. The Dip – Love Direction
You haven’t heard of The Dip? That’s a shame. Here’s your chance. Love Direction is the best new album from the most under-the-radar band I listened all across 2024. It is a true album in the classic sense: you will want to listen to it from start to finish, and you will want to do so multiple times. Every track features interesting key changes (how about that, Rick Beato!), including the very last track, Let Love In, which pulls a cleverly emotional key change just when you’re not looking, straight out of Chicago. The music is in no way derivative; it is 100% original, Tom Eddy is an incredible singer, and the entire band really knows how to play.
3. Hermanos Gutiérrez – Sonido Cosmico
https://www.hermanosgutierrez.ch
Ecuadorian-Swiss brothers Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez have created one of the most evocative albums of 2024. An instrumental album that is beautifully recorded, given thoughtful production by Dan Auerbach. I daresay that I like this better than anything by The Black Keys. This album is more authentically Country than anything being played on Country radio in 2024. It speaks to the western wilderness in a way that I am sure that Marty Stuart, if he still hosted his TV show, would have highlighted by inviting the brothers Gutiérrez on stage to share their talents with the world. Do no miss this album, no matter what kind of music you are a fan of.
4. Les Amazones d’Afrique – Musow Danse
https://lesamazonesdafrique.com
Les Amazones d’Afrique is a rotating supergroup of West African activists who have created some of the most powerful and danceable music of 2024. I can make a cheap comment and suggest that if this were 1986 and Paul Simon was creating Graceland, he would have wanted to work with Les Amazones d’Afrique. But that would diminish the music on display here. Imaginative, intense, and powerfully female, this is a record for current times. Do not miss this!
5. Abigail Lapell – Anniversary
Given my proximity to the northern border of the US, I have a penchant for Canadian music, and this is my favorite Canadian album of 2024. We seem to be in the middle of a folk rock renaissance, and Abigail Lapell is among the best of the best. The two tracks with Great Lakes Swimmers are instant classics of the genre. This is an album filled with thoughtful compositions and performances. It’s also remarkable in that you can listen to it as background music or foreground music, but please start with the latter, then surprise and intrigue your dinner guests with it as the former.
6. The Sixteen – Charles Villiers Stanford: Partsongs, Pastorals and Folksongs
I am a classical music fan, but this is my first award given to a classical album. That’s not because there aren’t great classical recordings every year — there certainly are — but there are few that blow my mind in a way that non-classical albums tend to. This album did. I’ve been a fan of The Sixteen for many years, but this iteration sees the group perform with as many as eighteen performers, and they are performing music from Charles Villiers Stanford that is universally accessible and gorgeous. Stanford was an influence on, and teacher to, many classical composers you probably know, from Ralph Vaughan to Gustav Holst. No matter what music you like, I suspect you will find something to love about this album. Peace to you and yours until this time, 2025.
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