Blog's 2024 Albums of the Year
The albums that soundtracked the most absurd year ever.
2024 was wild. For the end of the year, in lieu of a December Albums of the Month, we’ve decided to put together something akin to that except it’s the whole year. Crazy. Here’s what albums defined 2024 for us here at Blog.
And the Wind (Live and Loose!) - MJ Lenderman
Stellar, Fuzzy, Cathartic
MJ Lenderman has had quite the year ascending up the steps to indie-rock stardom. Ok so maybe the idea of an “indie-rock-star” is counterintuitive — but it's also just plain fun. Straddling the border between underground and overground means keeping yourself half-buried while reaching for the stars. Its an interesting challenge to commit yourself to the sounds of indie rock stars of the past, with their lazy and lethargic lilting vocals and roaring walls of sound. These ideas were new and innovative in the 90s, so how does MJ keep this winning formula moving forward?; he returns to his country roots. The bending guitar melodies of indie rock and the twang of country and have always flirted with each other, but MJ Lenderman marries his influences in holy matrimony.
He’s also been playing live with his heroes, Drive-By Truckers on his home turf in North Carolina, and also just joined Dinosaur jr. at the Bellwether in Los Angeles to help sing In a Jar, on a lineup that included Kim Gordon and Mike Watt. Definitely some big big steps.
His 2024 album Manning Fireworks was a favorite among Oberlin students this year (you couldn’t work a co-op crew shift for longer than 20 minutes without hearing MJ whine through a dying portable speaker). Much has been written about that record as a 2024 album of the year candidate, but I hope to turn people’s attention to 2023’s And the Wind (Live and Loose!), which includes a wonderful mix of songs from all his projects, updated to a direct delivery that foreshadows the sound of Manning Fireworks. Pedalsteel guitar player Xandy Chelmis is given free reign to go absolutely batshit over the whole album, and they sound phenomenal. The songs stretch from gentle country ballads to screaming distorted rock riffs, all while MJ’s comedic lyrics tell a story of 21st century loserdom. –Hayden Asiano
The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess – Chappell Roan
Electric, Lesbianic, Inimitable
Despite comparisons to artists like Renee Rapp and Sabrina Carpenter, I truly believe that Chappell Roan is doing it like nobody else. I discovered this album around when she was opening for Olivia Rodrigo, and immediately became jealous of all the eleven year old girls getting to hear Chappell’s lesbian sex anthems live instead of me. The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess was one of my most listened to albums of the year. I believe it’s an unskippable album, but I particularly had Pink Pony Club, Casual (obvi), and Guilty Pleasure on repeat. I’m so excited to see where Chappell goes next after this stellar debut album. –Edie Carey
Bubbly, Gay, Colorful
Throughout this past year, I have had many moments in my life that I fear are fully encapsulated by a song off this album. It all started with “HOT TO GO!” way back in March, I must have streamed this song several times per day, and though I was very much in my slay era, I was desperately trying to be. At various moments (too many) this year, I found myself listening to “Casual” around the clock. Many crash outs were accompanied by my screaming to the bridge. I’ve never strained my voice and tested my range so much as when I attempted to sing the chorus of this song. It wasn’t pleasant for the people in my home, but I found much comfort within the song. I was drawn to “Pink Pony Club” when I started getting ready to move back into college, nervous about the upcoming semester but overall so excited to leave my town. I’ve come back and back to this album so many times this year, and I honestly couldn’t think of a better way to encapsulate my Rises and Falls as an Northeastern Girl than The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. –Logan Modan
Dummy – Portishead
Meditative, Cinematic, Brooding
It has been a busy fucking year. 2024 will, at least for me, be known as the year of positive (but also negative) chaos. Graduating high school and starting college, along with everything in between has been a lot. In all of the chaos, I am literally so grateful that I picked a random artist off the Tank Girl soundtrack to listen to. I was vaguely aware of Portishead, I knew Jim Jarmusch liked them and they were on my favorite movie soundtrack (Tank Girl!!) so why not listen to their first album? Not to be overdramatic but Dummy changed me. It was such an original sound that I had never experienced before. It’s the best score for any main character moment but also the quiet moments of just being with yourself. It’s literally one of the most versatile albums of all time. Its chill but oddly powerful vibe has literally been exactly what I needed this year, which I could have never expected. Like all of Portishead’s discography is stellar but Dummy has just been that one that stuck with me. “Glory Box” is definitely the most well-known, but honestly “Wandering Star” and “It Could Be Sweet” have scored so many late-night drives and moments of deep thought that they have to be my favorites. Though, I swear, there’s not a single skip on the album. –Charley Burns
The Woods – Sleater-Kinney
Explosive, Uncompromising, Raw
The Woods isn’t the record I listened to the most in 2024 — that’s Adrianne Lenker’s songs — but it is the record I listened to the most consistently; I guess it was kind of the anchor of the soundtrack to my life this year. The Woods is about as close as anyone’s ever come to a perfect album, not just in spite of, but thanks to its imperfections. Every single aspect is deliberate: the calculated rage of Janet Weiss’s drumming, Corin Tucker’s strategic use of her signature crackling shriek, Carrie Brownstein’s jagged, vicious guitars, sharp like perfect triangles. Yet underlying this spectacular aggression and energy is a vague but profound gnawing — a want for a different life, fatigue under the pressure of creative work, bored frustration with everything for no reason and every reason. And so I listened to it under a million different circumstances, some more specific than others. I would walk around Tappan Square listening to “The Fox” on my favorite rainy winter nights, carried by its propulsive rhythm. Over the summer, I sat in a café a few towns over from my hometown for like four hours listening to “Modern Girl” on repeat while writing a personal essay about it. Whenever I was in my home state for any reason, I would listen to “Jumpers,” replacing the “Golden State” in the chorus (“Lonely as a cloud / In the Golden State / The coldest winter that I ever saw / Was the summer that I spent) with “Garden State” when I sang along to it in the car. I threw it on basically any time that I wasn’t feeling mopey, which was actually a lot more than you might think, thank you very much. It’s just that kind of record, with that kind of staying power. –Sloane DiBari
Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit – Snowing
All-season, Cathartic, Juvenile
Snowflakes are an almost cliche symbol of impermanence: if you don’t melt them in your tongue, the sun will eventually come along and do it for you. Snowing’s lifetime as a band was fleeting, an exercise in impermanence: their entire discography is 18 songs long (plus a few alternate/demo versions) and they only lasted about 3 years before breaking up. Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit is a record frozen in time, a perfect snapshot of youthful angst and anxiety. Despite the frankly cringe-worthy (though self-aware) title and less-than-stellar singing, this EP has followed me throughout 2024. I’ve combed YouTube for live performances, learned the riffs on my guitar, and even made a Shrinky Dink out of the cover art! The reason I keep coming back is because Snowing, unlike most “emo revival” bands, were seriously good songwriters. John Galm’s lyrics cut through, dancing around an emotional core (dead fathers, halfway-lovers, unrequited crushes) before getting to the heart of it with a well-placed line or two. The guitar playing is top-notch, if not a bit too noodly: the searing opening lead of “Kirk Cameron Crowe” and the dense riffage on “Methuselah Rookie Card” are both prime examples of an emo guitar style that Snowing’s many imitators would make cliche in the following years. I wonder what the members of Snowing think about these songs now, as they approach middle age: I imagine they’re proud of them, even as they wince at some of the lyrics (I would too). I imagine I’ll look back on 2024 someday, embarrassed and most likely regretful about quite a few things I did this year. Hopefully this EP will bring me back to better memories: the snow falling outside, the cars I rode in and the front lawns I stumbled through, feeling the dew on my legs as I passed the moment by. –Benjamin Rosielle