New music
Jonathan Geddes
Travis arrived onstage with the theme tune from classic sitcom Cheers as an accompaniment. The cavernous OVO Hydro might not be a place where everyone knows your name, but a Glasgow homecoming by local lads made good certainly tapped into a festive vibe of friends and familiarity, with singer Fran Healy making ample reference to the group’s roots during their set.That fondness for the quartet is partly why they were able to play such a large venue to begin with, given the rest of their tour visited more compact, if still decently sized, buildings. Of course, the group’s late 90s and early Read more ...
Tim Cumming
A suitable place to find yourself out for the winter solstice, buttoning up for the longest night of the year, was at the Cadogan Hall off Sloane Square, a former place of worship marking its 20th year as a concert hall.The Unthanks, too, are approaching their 20th anniversary, and their winter tour of 2024 draws from their magical new album, In Winter, a double set that has drawn comparison to that ultimate winter album in British folk music – The Waterson’s Frost & Fire.For their celebration of the season, and of its spirits, they draw on big songs such as The Coventry Carol and The Read more ...
Tom Carr
There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so clearly amongst the crowd, something that takes a hold and doesn’t relent for a sustained length throughout the year. For me, 2024 was not one of those years.There are a few worthy contenders that came close to clinching it, each having their time dominating my Spotify listens. There’s Pearl Jam rolling back the years with their highly energetic and driven Dark Matter, a heaping dose of solid, earnest alternative-rock. Or, there’s Bring Me The Horizon and the second instalment of their Post Human Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
One of last year’s major joys was the box set version of Hawkwind's Space Ritual, an 11-disc extravaganza which made the great live album, originally issued in May 1973, even more great. Now the two studio albums which preceded it – X In Search Of Space and Doremi Fasol Latido – have become similarly packaged, though less colossal, box sets.X In Search Of Space – also known as (X) In Search Of Space – was released in October 1971. Hawkwind’s second album, it came out when the band were still an underground attraction, a band lacking traction with the mainstream music scene. They were popular Read more ...
peter.quinn
From placing first in the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition in 2019 to being a triple Grammy winner, Samara Joy’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. Joy’s third album, Portrait – an astonishingly good collection which saw the vocalist, songwriter, arranger and bandleader reach ever greater heights of artistic expression – is my Album of the Year. The splicing together of “Peace of Mind/Dreams Come True”, the first co-written by Joy and tenor saxist Kendric McCallister, the second a song from Sun Ra’s felicitously titled album Sound of Joy, was one of this year’s most Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Born Horses remains as inscrutable as it was when it was issued in the summer. While it is about the search for enlightenment through journeying into inner space, much of what’s described – the album’s words are largely spoken – is allegorical, coming across as beatnik-style reportage documenting a form of psychedelic experience.This seeming exploration of inner space resulted in the album’s narrator discovering that they were born a horse, one which developed wings. Spiritual bonds are also found. A bird is discovered within. Musically, the album is similarly audacious: jazz-psychedelia, or Read more ...
Katie Colombus
My Spotify Wrapped this year is somewhat at odds with my Album of 2024. A ‘Van Life Folie Americana’ phase of Spring (presumably due to the actual VW trip to the Costa Brava at Easter) followed by the ‘Cinnamon Softcore Art Deco’ moment in early Summer – which I largely owe to Lana del Rey live at Reading Festival prep, has been trumped by an underdog that should Spotify have picked up on, would have read something like ‘Eclectic, Unhinged, Buenos Aires Basement Rave’ chapter.Being a massive nerd for NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts, I began to play CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso on Youtube repeat as Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In many ways, 2024 has been a stellar year for New Music. There have certainly been plenty of albums released that could easily have gained “year’s best” status in recent times and would have buried those that actually did receive those plaudits.Veteran artists like the Very Things, Peter Perrett and Les Amazones d’Afrique all put out career highlights. As did plenty of bands who finally found their feet after making initial tentative steps, such as Aussie pub rockers Amyl and the Sniffers, political punk-rappers Bob Vylan and French-Moroccan psychedelicists Bab L’Bluz. However, the record Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Kenny Barron’s Beyond This Place is glorious. Whereas I’ve found some of the more talked-about albums of 2024 either been uneven or unfocused – as if attracting debate is more important than just setting out to make a great album – everything just works so well here.We are treated to the most fluent playing from young alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins I have heard to date. The way in which the recording has captured Johnathan Blake’s shimmering and empathetic busy-ness is just fabulous. The quintet is often reduced to duos and trios, and that gives the individual musicians, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Vanilla Fudge could provoke a strong reaction. Writing about them in 1982, Tom Hibbert – then best-known for his contributions to Smash Hits – said of their February 1968 second album, The Beat Goes On, that “on one side of the bombastic concept LP, Vanilla Fudge summed up the history of music from Mozart, through Cole Porter and Elvis, to The Beatles concluding that it was all worthless.”“On the other side,” continued Hibbert. “Fudge unleash on the unwary listener their vision of the ‘now generation,’ in the form of a dull reworking of Sonny Bono’s ‘The Beat Goes on.’ This was the recurring Read more ...
joe.muggs
I don’t really want to talk about this year. Genuinely.It’s been so horrific on the macro scale with deranged Fascism and the effects of rampant and undeniable climate change looming everywhere you look – and on the personal level I’ve been been bombarded with all the inevitable, arbitrary slings and arrows that life can muster, from multiple bereavements on down – that I’d very much rather just neck a load of tranquilisers and fine wines and resolutely enter my hands-over-ears, “lalalala can’t hear you”, era. And yet, and yet… life persists, culture persists, community persists, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I’ve known for some time that Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom’s Never Work is my Album of the Year. This lividly witty, no-filler take-down of workplace servitude arrived on vinyl in May. The creation of two Canadian indie-folkies (from The Burning Hell), it’s my most-played album of 2024, containing my most-played songs, the title track and the poignant, “The Rich Stuff”, the latter a call to revolution themed around The Goonies.One big problem. I just discovered Never Work came out in 2020. Was it a vinyl reissue? Who knows!With its disqualification I scrabble about. A couple of monster Read more ...