The Best Things of 2024

 

Heartbreak

• MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks - On any given day, I could give you 5 different best songs and 11 different best lines. Sometimes you laugh out loud, mostly you give a wry smile, but you're never not glad he let you in.
• Hanif Abdurraquib, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension - Ostensibly, it's about LeBron James. In reality, basketball is the lens through which we grapple with the messiness of life, mortality and community.
• Sade, "Young Lion" - If I live to be 400, I swear Sade will come down every 10 years, show us she's still the boss and then go away until we need reminded again.
• A Man on the Inside - Again, we go back to the importance of community in trying times. It could have been so cheesy, but instead we get more of the good stuff. I could say the Same about Shrinking and The Bear.
• Iron & Wine ft. Fiona Apple, "All In Good Time" - the best two bankrobbers breakup song of 2024. I feel bad labeling the feature because hearing THAT VOICE unexpectedly might be the highest high of the year.
• Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood - "Right Back To It" is the song of the year. Waxahatchee keeps stepping up her game.
• Arooj Aftab, "Raat Ki Rani" - Lovely. Dark. And a voice that carries it all offf.
• Bon Iver, "Speyside" - The entire EP is ridiculous, but it is a return to the cabin sounds and the soul-searching that comes with it.
• Johnny Blue Skies, Passage Du Desir - Maybe my favorite Sturgill record to date. Honesty, pain and a thousand ferocious guitar licks to punctuate.

Joymake

• Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee - Worth every minute of searching. Strange. Psychedelic. But mostly pure nostalgia for a time or times that never existed. 
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black - late to this, but the word that he is the heir to George Saunders' short story throne is not mistaken. Laughing your way through what must be pre-armageddon is the way to go.
• What We Do In the Shadows - It seems unfair that  Lazlo will live forever, but this is all we get. The most reliable laughs of the past decade.
• Previous Industries, "Showbiz" - If you are an aging, Midwestern hip-hop fan, this lazy beat was made with you in mind. Extra points for naming every song after a long dead retailer.
• Rachel Lichtman, Easy AM 66 - A remake of every local radio show from 1975-1985. The jokes are so subtle until you find your eyes blurry and your car lurching towards the shoulder.
• Jlin ft. Philip Glass, "The Precision of Infinity" - A lot of my music feels very much like it might be born in Indiana. This does not. That's the paradox.
• Doechii, "Denial is a River", "Boom Bap" - So glad that this is getting its year end flowers. The voices, the brutal honesty, the rhymes. Doechii is a damn star.
• [Ahmed], Wood Blues - Jazz should never go this hard. This belongs on ESPN more than 75% of the live sports they carry. Sixty minutes, no timeouts - just a sprint to the finish. Nubya Garcia's Odyssey and Ezra Collective's Dance, No One's Watching deserve mention here as well.
• American Fiction - Again, late to the game, but this one straddles the line between heartbreak and joy. Sadly, in 2024 this registers as somewhere between possible and probable.
• Hawaiian Fried Rice - ham, pineapple, chili crisp, poached egg and sesame oil. Someday, I'll get the ratios right. Until then, I'm still well-fed.
• Brittany Howard, "Red Flags" - I feel guilty that I haven't spent enough time with this record. There's so much going on here - funk, R&B, soul, rock...so many ideas...
• Fargo S5 - It carried over into 2024, so it gets its deserved spot. Heart in mouth at all times - best season yet.
• Charles Lloyd, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow and Shabaka, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace - the calming waters I've returned to over and over.
• Brown Butter Latte - yep, that's the stuff.