All this week, we’ll be counting down our editors’ picks for the Best Albums of 2024 and, just like we did last year, we’ll be taking ’em on one chunk of the alphabet at a time, ending with our list of 2024’s Essential Releases on Friday. Next week, our genre columnists weigh in with their picks for the year’s best records. And you can get a jump start on your holiday shopping with our 2024 Holiday Gift Guide.
December 2: Best of 2024: A – F
December 3: Best of 2024: G – M
December 4: Best of 2024: M – R
December 5: Best of 2024: S – Z
December 6: 2024’s Essential Releases
Isleña Antumalen
ÑAÑA
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Chile has a long history of socio-politically charged music, and this year Mapuche singer and rapper Isleña Antumalen brought prescient stories of environmentalism and decolonization to the dance floor on the kaleidoscopic ÑAÑA. Meaning “sister” and “friend” in different Indigenous communities across the Americas, the album title captures the artist’s proud heritage and extends solidarity with water protectors (“KO”) and non-European beauty standards (“Ñaña descoloniza tu belleza”). Bouncing between dembow, reggaetón, cumbia, jazz, and hip-hop, the album’s patchwork of sound is as dazzling and brazen as the artist herself, and as colorful as the Indigenous peoples that continue to thrive on this continent.
–Richard Villegas
Baby Rose
Slow Burn
Vinyl LP
It’s hard to believe that a couple of the tunes on this record came about at a first meeting between vocalist and band—they ooze the confidence and hooks of a Muscle Shoals classic. “Timeless” is a music descriptor that gets thrown around like a frisbee on a hot day at the beach, but when a deep golden voice—like the one belonging to Baby Rose—meets the backing of BADBADNOTGOOD, Toronto’s finest purveyors of jazz-leaning soulful journeys, the outcome rightfully owns the praise.
–Andrew Jervis
Candy
It’s Inside You
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), T-Shirt/Shirt
Candy’s third album was conceived in the wake of a collective “Eureka” moment on the part of the Richmond wrecking crew: Given that heavy music is a vehicle for moshing, and moshing is essentially an extreme form of dancing, who’s to say rave music and hardcore punk aren’t two sides of the same coin—musically compatible, even? To be clear, the band’s not dealing in hypotheticals on It’s Inside You, just hard evidence in the form of sick riffs, industrial synths, and brutal drum loops. Standouts like “Dancing to the Infinite Beat” and “Faith 91” bridge the chaos and euphoria of the two undergrounds with such confidence and seamlessness you’d swear the pit and the dancefloor were one and the same. That’s precisely Candy’s point—and the secret to their power.
–Zoe Camp
Willi Carlisle
Critterland
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
Now more than ever, we need love. That’s more or less the message behind the music of Willi Carlisle, a folk singer and songwriter originally from the American Midwest, though he sounds like he’s from another time entirely. On his stunning third album Critterland, Carlisle empties his distinctive artistic arsenal—banjo, squeezebox, encyclopedic knowledge of old-time musical styles, even seven minutes of spoken word—and spins deeply moving tales of anguished hearts, broken families, discarded dreams, and, importantly, the beauty and deliverance of a life lived in the presence of love. Now more than ever, we need each other. Now more than ever, we need Willi Carlisle.
–Ben Salmon
Erika de Casier
Still
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD),
When 2019’s Essentials appeared on the scene, Erika de Casier’s Y2K-indebted R&B felt novel—a futuristic nostalgia trip that hadn’t yet been cannibalized by the TikTok trend cycle. In 2024, de Casier simply improves on it. On Still, the Copenhagen pop star fills in the lines she drew on 2021’s Sensational with an even wider range of club influences to augment her signature digital R&B sound. Laid-back reggaetón beats, skittering drum & bass drum breaks, and Timbaland-esque earworms all lend themselves to de Casier’s sultry, girlish (dare I say coquette-ish) vocals. The embodiment of the Aaliyah lyric “Sometimes I’m goody-goody/ Right now I’m naughty-naughty,” Erika is in her Y2K princess bag and rewriting the blueprint, still.
–Stephanie Barclay
Cavalier
Different Type Time
2 x Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette
After a six-year hiatus, New Orleans-based, Brooklyn-raised emcee Cavalier returned with Different Type Time, his Backwoodz Studioz debut and arguable magnum opus. It’s a sprawling record, an hourlong treatise about learning one’s place in the universe. The album’s jazzy sonics smolder like a full ashtray, with thick basslines, warbling keys, and reverberant horns billowing into a pleasant, low-hanging cloud. Cav is a dazzling and curious writer, examining all possible pockets and shapes, twisting words around themselves like he’s solving a Rubik’s cube. Each song feels tactile, translating tiny scraps of memories—he peels a Satsuma orange or sips a Colt 45 on some near-forgotten Brooklyn summer afternoon—into winding, philosophical ruminations.
Listen to an interview with Cavalier on The Hip-Hop Show.
–Dashiell Lewis
Yu Ching
The Crystal Hum
Vinyl LP
If A.R. Kane pioneered dream pop by merging cold, dub-influenced spatial explorations with C86 jangle, Taiwanese artist Yu Ching brings a warmer, twee approach to her lo-fi, spring-reverb atmospheres on The Crystal Hum. Moving back to Taiwan after 11 years in Berlin, Yu Ching delves deeper into the kind of introspective soundscapes she crafts with Aemong; the result is one of this year’s best bedroom pop records. Her erratic melodies melt into air, guided by bending guitars and simple drum patterns, promising a gentle passage into that good night.
–James Gui
Church Chords
elvis, he was Schlager
Vinyl LP
“Curator” might have become something of a dirty word, but it feels the neatest way to describe Stephen Buono, the impresario at the center of Church Chords. For elvis, he was Schlager, he blended raw performances from a cast of collaborators—Wilco’s Nels Cline, Tortoise’s Jeff Parker, Thundercat collaborator Genevieve Artadi among them—into ultra-sleek avant-pop. In less able hands, this heady mix of cyborg funk, cosmic jazz fusion, and chanteuse song might collapse into chaos. But Buono’s sensibility—intrepid, exploratory, with an eye on the big picture—maintains a bold and coherent vision throughout.
–Louis Pattison
Listen to an interview with Otherly Love Records co-founder Stephen Buono about elvis, he was Schlager.
Cindy Lee
Diamond Jubilee
Vinyl, Compact Disc (CD)
A ghostly torch singer, a 1960s girl group diva marooned in time, a funk-disco impresario, a reverb-drenched indie oddity—Patrick Flegel’s seventh and possibly final album as Cindy Lee teems with artistic personas, taking on a dizzying array of forms over its two-hour-plus length. Diamond Jubilee is so large and so varied that it’s hard to keep the entire album in your head. Yet fragments bubble up to haunt and provoke: The airy croon of “Dallas,” the ebullient pop of “Kingdom Come,” the pop-locking syncopation of “GAYBLEVISION,” the squalling, thundering, falsetto-trilled desolation of “Golden Microphone.” Less an album than a universe, Diamond Jubilee rewards extended exploration.
–Jennifer Kelly
Read our Album of the Day on Diamond Jubilee.
Crizin da Z.O.
Acelero
Samba, pagodão baiano, punk, gabber—these are just a few of the tags peppering the liner notes of Crizin da Z.O.’s ACELERO. Opening with the pounding force of “O Fim Um”—featuring former Sepultura drummer Igor Cavalera—and culminating with the full-throttle rush of closer “Acelerado,” the third release from the collective (and first for Rio de Janeiro’s QTV Selo) is an industrial funk juggernaut, all Afro-Brazilian rhythms and thick swaths of pummeling noise sewage hurtling forward at thrilling breakneck speed.
–Filipe Costa
Kim Deal
Nobody Loves You More
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), 2 x Vinyl LP, Cassette
Of course Kim Deal made a great solo record—the legendary Deal has never made a bad one. Nevertheless, Nobody Loves You More is a highlight in a flawless discography, a humble collection of odds ‘n’ sods cobbled together with pals from across the indie rock spectrum over the past decade that doesn’t deviate from the vintage Deal sound of guitar-based rock with sweet and sour melodies and lo-fi dissonance—but oh, how sad everything is! As straightforward a record as the enigmatic Deal has ever made, Nobody Loves You More is also rather devastating, assessing with clear-eyed melancholy the existential angst of mortality, regret, and grief—aka: getting old. Sprinklings of trumpets and strings add to the tragically romantic character of these songs, a quality that has never been associated with Deal’s music but, in retrospect, perhaps should have been all along.
–Mariana Timony
English Teacher
This Could Be Texas
Like all good Dadaists, there is a real-world anxiety lurking behind the absurd. In the case of English Teacher, the Leeds foursome combat a Northerner’s working class malaise with a surrealist’s cheek. Tories get the finger on the solemn “Broken Biscuits” (“You can’t stop the banks from bursting/ Blame the council not the rain”) and so do presumptuous racists on the snarling “R&B” (“Despite appearances I haven’t got the voice for R&B/ Even though I’ve seen more COLORS Shows than KEXPs”). Despite being the band’s first outing, This Could be Texas paces itself with preternatural confidence, building tension into enveloping dirges only to cut it loose at the next time signature change—oftentimes all within the same song. This, coupled with the band’s sweeping vistas of sound lends itself to a Texas-sized grandeur that the outfit clearly aspire to. It’s an ambitious first outing and one of the year’s best.
–Stephanie Barclay
Etran de L’Aïr
100% Sahara Guitar
T-Shirt/Shirt, Vinyl LP
The Tuareg band Etran de L’Aïr began nearly 30 years ago with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a calabash for percussion. They toured relentlessly through their native Niger until they pieced together enough equipment for a full band: Three brothers on electric guitar and bass, accompanied by a family friend on an actual drum set. 100% Sahara Guitar is their third album, but the first to be recorded in a proper studio. Don’t call this the desert blues: Etran de L’Aïr play sun-glazed, psyched-out, blissful music, full of galloping drums, overlapping guitar solos, and chanted vocals. It’s 100% Saharan, 100% celebration, 100% rock ’n’ roll.
–Matthew Blackwell
Ezra Collective
Dance, No One’s Watching
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Sometime during the mid-20th century, jazz turned from a dance genre into “America’s classical music,” creating an unfounded hierarchy of value between music for the concert hall and music for the dancehall. Riding off their 2023 Mercury Prize win, Ezra Collective has created a jazz manifesto with Dance, No One’s Watching, exposing the false binary between art and dance music, staying true to their roots as a so-called “party band,” while drawing connections between dub, highlife, hip-hop, and abstract jazz that show their virtuosity in full bloom.
–James Gui
Read our Album of the Day on Dance, No One’s Watching.
Sierra Ferrell
Trail of Flowers
The decade-long surge of non-mainstream country artists has been decidedly dude-heavy—it’s Zachs and Jasons and Tylers just about all the way down. How refreshing, then, to experience the steady rise of Sierra Ferrell, a distinctive singer, skilled songwriter, and downright ancient soul originally from West Virginia. For years, she has made music that sounds like it should be crackling out of an antique radio: vintage jazz and ragtime, old-time fiddle tunes, rockabilly, blues, murder ballads, the occasional yodel, and so on. Trail Of Flowers offers more of the same, but the songcraft is sharper, the arrangements fuller and the production crisp and crystal clear. It’s a record that just sounds incredible, which only brings out all the colorful charms of Ferrell’s tunes—like precious family heirlooms polished up and properly displayed for all to see.
–Ben Salmon
Francine Thirteen
Psalm of Tiamat
In Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is literally the mother of all gods—the source from which all subsequent divinity sprang. Or, as Francine Thirteen puts it in “Black Maria” from the album that bears the goddess’s name: “Our holy Father/ Was not the first to walk on water.” Consider Psalm of Tiamat, then, an alternate spiritual history of humankind—a worship service for those entities sidelined by conventional religious practices. Thirteen is more than up to the task; across seven songs, she casts a riveting, hypnotic spell on tracks that move from haunting, goth-y grandeur to mystic spiritual jazz. Her vocal delivery is the album’s magic talisman; whether it’s the ruminative hum of “Taweret Sobek Re” or the primal thrum of “Tiamat,” Thirteen delivers every line with the poise and authority of a high priestess summoning messages from the beyond. You’d be well advised to heed every single word.
