Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 2. Part 1 is here.
As ever, all the usual disclaimers - there’s no such thing as ‘best of the year’, and it’s all highly subjective, but all LPs in the appearing in the Albums section are chosen because they and the artists being them, contain many elements of interest and originality. There’s a particular running theme of future dread among these picks, but also done with dark humour. Shown here in no particular order, there is again a mixture of very established musicians, but also many debutants and new voices, particularly among female artists pushing the boundaries of creativity. Feel free to dip into the original reviews, but please also peruse everything else rest of the section, and if you see glaring omissions, as there may well be, also add your own suggestions in comments below.
St. Vincent: All Born Screaming
Annie Clark’s follow-up to 2021’s 70s-inspired Daddy’s Home is a striking, stylish self-produced LP, with a rawer, starker edge, fierce guitars, a theme of characters pushed between their true selves and how they’re perceived, an includes guests Dave Grohl and Cate Le Bon
Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown
The Portishead singer’s first solo LP, 10 years in the making, is an exquisite release of genre-spanning folk, sometimes with eastern inflections, her haunting voice touching on mutability, motherhood, menopause, bereavement, health and heartbreak
Geordie Greep: The New Sound
The former black midi frontman’s debut LP is a brilliant swirl of guitar rock, jazz, prog, funk, pop and a big dash of Latin, channelling Frank Zappa, a dramatic Scott Walker delivery, Broadway musicals, cello, a punchy horn section, his distinctive voice, clever, humorous, soliloquy-style lyrics
Mdou Moctar: Funeral For Justice
After 2021’s acclaimed Afrique Victime album, the brilliant Tuareg guitarist and band band from Agadez, Niger, return with explosive, powerful, emotive numbers, impassioned songs about his culture and social wrongs, wrapped in an electric frenzy of drums, guitars, bass and vocals
Cosmo Sheldrake: Eye To The Ear
A mesmeric new experimental release of 21 short-ish tracks by the British producer, musician and soundscape artist who uses field recordings of nature, human and “more-than-human voices”, traditional instrumentation and electronic production
William Doyle: Springs Eternal
Superbly crafted, innovative ‘art-pop for the anthropocene’ by the innovative British artist, with landscaped sounds in a whirlpool of clever invention, narratives threading through an existential lifespan of gorgeous turns through this follow-up to 2021’s Great Spans of Muddy Time
Laura Marling: Patterns In Repeat
The popular British indie-folk singer-songwriter returns with her eighth studio LP, one of of gentle intricacy and delicate acoustic beauty, particularly reflecting on newly becoming a mother, as well as ideas and behaviours inherited down generations
Royel Otis: Pratts & Pain
Brilliantly vibrant, fresh yet oddly timeless indie-pop, post-punk by the Australian duo Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic, with echoes of 60s-90s garage rock, 80s indie, Velvet Underground to the The Strokes, and produced here by the acclaimed Dan Carey
The Last Dinner Party: Prelude To Ecstasy
A much hyped, but also arguably merited debut by the London five-piece of luxuriant, theatrical rock-pop with some echoes of Abba, and lavishly super-produced by James Ford
Hiatus Kaiyote: Love Heart Cheat Code
Flourishes of rippling piano, harp, guitars, woodwind and the high, dynamic voice of Nai Palm open this sunny, fluidly effervescent new LP by the brilliant Australian experimental jazz/funk prog, soul and R&B band stretching their unique sound and musicianship
Fontaines D.C.: Romance
With a new look, the popular Dublin post-punk band return with their fourth LP, one with a much broadened scope of sounds, poetic but also at times cinematic in musical image and in lyric, with big-time producer James Ford at the controls
Anna Erhard: Botanical Garden
Following several great singles, brilliantly amusing, quirky and marvellously melodic debut by the Berlin indie-pop artist, whose talent for wry, ironic humour and talk-sing delivery really tickles on variety of unusual and highly specific subjects
Naima Bock: Below A Massive Dark Land
Wonderfully delicate, deliciously paced, lo-fi indie folk by the British artist of Greek-Brazilian heritage and former member of Goat Girl, with her second album, following 2022’s Giant Palm
Melt-Banana: 3+5
Totally bananas, but enormous fun and oddly brilliant, this pithy, high-pitched and squeakily energised new release by the experimental, eccentric, eclectic Japanese noise rock band is their first over a decade, since 2013’s Fetch
Jane Weaver: Love In Constant Spectacle
A gorgeous new LP by the Merseyside artist, with her distinctive blend of tender, melancholic synth-pop, but here also some avant-garde jazz and gently surreal, newer pastures of otherworldly, vivid psychedelia, and a first guest producer in the form of the excellent John Parish
Yard Act: Where's My Utopia?
With continuing appeal, the experimental post-punk Leeds quartet return with their second LP, with highly entertaining, broadened musical scope, frontman James Smith’s agile, candid, conversational wit musing on the ironies of success, the music business, resultant guilt, climate change, and titular worries about the future
Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future
The Big Thief singer-songwriter returns with another solo folk album – minimally exquisite, delicate, at times heartbreakingly, with a title that is ambiguous - a future that could be beautiful and dazzling, but also blinding and burning
Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter
A big, bold musical statement from the US megastar, delving deep into country & western territory and cross-pollinating with pop, soul, rock and R&B, with added Beatles, and guests including Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Miley Cyrus on this whopping 27-track LP
Erotic Secrets of Pompeii: Mondo Maleficum
Gloriously theatrical, witty, panache-filled, this is a lavishly swaggering, swirling cauldron of excess, rock-pop, post-punk, prog, baroque indie, and classical, a debut whirlwind LP of history-spanning reference and energy, from Greek myth to Shakespeare and the apocalypse
Gia Ford: Transparent Things
Heartbreak, murder ballads, an Americana-Laurel Canyon smooth, beautiful pop sound, there’s superbly powerful maturity to this debut by the Sheffield/Cheshire raised alt-pop singer-songwriter simmering with dark, tragic stories
Marika Hackman: Big Sigh
This visceral, hypersensitive, alternative folk-pop fourth album by the Hampshire-born singer-songwriter digs deep and dark into the psyche through personal crisis and relationship trauma as one of her best to date
Primal Scream: Come Ahead
Looking cool in shades, a 1960 photograph the father of frontman Bobby Gillespie decorates the band’s 12th LP, and their first for 8 years, serving very much as a inspiration with a Glaswegian phrase, but musically filled with 70s Philly soul and funk, and with the input of Belfast producer David Holmes, it’s one of PS’s most stylish for years
Jack Cheshire: Interloper
Following 2020’s acclaimed Fractal Future Plays, the British experimental musician returns with his sixth LP, an excellent exploration across pastoral psychedelia, lysergic polyrhythms and beautiful field recordings on tricky themes of belonging in age of post-Brexit and gentrification
Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft
The American superstar and her brother co-writer and co-producer Finneas O'Connell’s third LP, of predominantly soft, muted, low key and tenderly whispered, sighing and delicately style with understated release without advance singles
Paul Molloy: The Madmen of Apocalypso
Fabulously perky, catchy, snappy, witty, doomsday gallows humour songs in this second solo release by The Coral guitarist, drawing on styles from ragtime, New Orleans dixieland jazz, vaudeville, Kinks-style 60s baroque pop and more
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...
Feel free to recommend more new albums and comment below. You can also use the contact page, or find more on social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube, and Song Bar Instagram. Please subscribe, follow and share.
Song Bar is non-profit and is simply about sharing great music. We don’t do clickbait or advertisements. Please make any donation to help keep the Bar running: