The Best Albums for Old Heads of 2024, Pt. 4 (and final!)

The four-part album of the year series concludes with a list (unranked, of course) of would-be #1 records of 2024

At last, we’re here — on time, under budget, and with 10% fewer typos than last week.

I thought about getting into a little introductory analysis of my choices so far over the course of this anti-list series, or at least some justification of what I’ve left out.

But the chances of anybody not scrolling down to the albums just below is vanishingly small. This is the most exciting list of them all — every album that deserves a number one ranking on a typical AOTY list!

We can have a little post-mortem overthinking session in the coming weeks. For now, scroll on.

The End-of-Year Schedule

• Week of November 17th: Noteworthy Releases

• Week of November 24th: Albums Worthy of a Top 50 List

• Week of December 1st: Albums Worthy of a Top 10 List

• Week of December 8th: Albums Worthy of a #1 Slot

Let’s go.

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The Best Albums for Old Heads of 2024, Part Four - Albums Worthy of a #1 Slot

I have to sneak in one small confession under the wire.

Even though I don’t rank albums, and even though I hate playing favorites, there is one album on the list below that has become my absolute favorite of 2024. It started out on level footing with the others and has since soared light years beyond them.

Is it painfully obvious which one it is?

Albums are listed in alphabetical order by artist.

1. Beyoncé - COWBOY CARTER (I nearly left this record off altogether, so let this last minute inclusion on my list of worthy number ones be a shock to all of our systems. One doesn’t produce an album this grandiose without a deep knowledge of and personal connection to the entire back catalog of American country music and the debt it owes to Black musicians. To quote one of my best friends and favorite music writers, “It’s the mark of a true artist to reflect the world around them and, with COWBOY CARTER, Beyoncé puts herself in the same bracket as David Bowie when it comes to reinvention.” If that ain’t country, tell me, what is? Standout tracks: AMERIICAN REQUIEM, 16 CARRIAGES, TEXAS HOLD ‘EM, YA YA¹)

2. Charli xcx - brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not (Oh no, the second mass appeal pop record in a row on my list. Exeunt all the anti-poptimists from the chat, and frankly with good riddance. Like Bey, Charli is an expert in her field, an absolute historian of a now sadly dying club scene. Gen Z may be obsessed with her, but they are clutching their pearls at her party girl behavior, and losing their collective minds to learn she’s old in her 30s. With brat, and every subsequent iteration thereof (yes, I picked this version of the record just so I could throw Guess into the standouts; WORTH IT), Charli sustained a brief but powerful resurgence of interest in an entire culture around something that has been utterly lost to the children: the concept of having fun. Standout tracks: 360, Sympathy is a knife, Von dutch, Guess)

3. Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee (Erstwhile frontperson of Women, Patrick Flegel, has created an absolute masterpiece triple album worth every moment of its slightly inconveniently obtained genius. Imagine, if you will, stumbling on an abandoned vintage car on the side of the road late at night. Eerily, the radio is playing, though you can’t see anyone nearby. The music sounds out of time, a haunted ‘50s prom night. You get in the car. You can’t switch off the radio or even turn the dial. Each note fills its space so thoughtfully. You sit for hours, days, years. Standout tracks: Diamond Jubilee, Glitz, Always Dreaming, Lockstepp, If You Hear Me Crying²)

4. Fat Dog - WOOF. (When I saw this band play in Barcelona, I had only heard of them in passing. I’d actually come to see The Dare, so I was calibrated for a completely different atmosphere. What I got was cocky, untethered post-punk showmanship. It blew me away. This record, their debut, came out a few months later, and much as I was looking forward to it, I couldn’t have anticipated just how strong of an impression it would leave. I’ve always had a predilection for music that made me feel a little bit unhinged. Here, a short but frantic ride through both inanity and insanity, double dipped into klezmer and industrial, does the trick nicely. I’ve already described it as an unholy combination of Gogol Bordello, Radiohead, and the Crystal Method. That will either turn you fully on or fully off; there’s no inbetween. Standout tracks: Closer to God, King of the Slugs³, Running)

5. Friko - Where we’ve been, Where we go from here (The most underrated and possibly unexpected album on this list is also one of the most raw and nostalgic. I hear so much early 2000s indie rock in this, but especially Arcade Fire, The New Pornographers, and The Walkmen. There was a specific brand of spilling-over-the-sides emotion pouring out in music at the time, something that solidified with Funeral, that this debut captures beautifully. Standout tracks: Crimson To Chrome, Crashing Through, Statues)

5. The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy (I will be fully transparent with you and admit that I have Spotify to thank for my discovery of this band. It is their much-maligned algorithm, the one you’re trying to avoid by reading this very newsletter, that served up the band’s first single to me in the Summer of 2023, while I was spending a week in France. By the time I was back in the US, as the rest of the singles started trickling out, their buzz was growing and all of the absurd industry plant gossip was building up with it.

   The last time I heard this much rancor about undeserved fame was around Wet Leg, another group of young, well-off, and (worst of all) pretty British musicians. Like them, The Last Dinner Party are actually pretty fucking brilliant. They’re putting out truly exciting songs — gorgeous, baroque pieces of artwork inspired (but not derivative of!) ABBA, Kate Bush, Florence and the Machine, Siouxsie Sioux, David Bowie, and Adam Ant. They also have stage presence absolutely bursting out of every pore. Good for them, I say. Standout tracks: The Feminine Urge, Sinner, My Lady of Mercy)

6. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (The first time I heard this record, I liked it perfectly well but thought it was a bit erratic. All of the hardcore songs mixed in and out with far gentler tracks didn’t quite flow for me. They do now. This is punk rock with a full range of human emotions — a full range of women’s emotions, I should say. It’s desire and rage laid bare, and those are not things that demand consistency of tone. A deep nod to Courtney Love and some ‘90s alt-rock mainstays, both light and dark (I hear the Cardigans on the softer numbers), this might be the record that will convince you that punk rock can be a thing of painful beauty, vulnerability, and resonance. Standout tracks: I Got Heaven, Loud Bark, Softly)

7. SPRINTS - Letter to Self (I’ve yapped about SPRINTS so much at this point that I’m getting sick of myself. Head to this article for the details, but please don’t miss these garage/post-punk rock stars. Standout tracks: Heavy⁴, Shadow of a Doubt, Up and Comer)

That’s all she wrote.

If I missed your favorite, it might not be because I disliked it — I might just not have listened to it! I don’t know if you noticed, but there are a hell of a lot of new records to keep up with.

What was your favorite album this year?

1. YA YA is possibly my pick for pop song of the year. Its genius rivals Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, and I fully realize the kind of outrage I should be anticipating with that claim. Haters to the left.

2. When I was in college, I went to see Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, play at the student union. Perhaps predictably, she had a small bout of anxiety during her set and stopped midway through a song to ask us all to sit down on the floor, thinking it might relax the atmosphere. A friend of mine whom I sat next to at the time recounted his own Cat Power anecdote where, upon catching her backstage at a similarly small gig, he had complimented her performance and her response was simply, “Lou Reed, man. Lou Reed.”

I can’t explain why this meta-Marshall story, this Cat Power matryoshka if you will, reminded me of the way I felt listening to the Cindy Lee record. But it did. So I share it with you now.

3. The best song of the year, hands down — genre irrespective. Let it hit you at the four minute mark.

4. My most played song of the year, if not my actual favorite, according to Spotify Wrapped.