Even Better's 30 Favorite Albums of 2024
Good year for music, we'd say
Don’t need much throat-clearing here — the headline says it all. We liked a whole lot of records this year, and below you’ll find the 30 we loved the most:
30. Midwife: No Depression in Heaven
Shawn: You’re definitely getting a certain atmosphere when there’s a guitar body prominently featured on the album cover (Loveless duh, Kill for Love) — assuming George Harrison is not also visible. Midwife’s No Depression in Heaven more than fulfills the promise, flourishing in the half-remembered haze before night turns over. Even as the songcraft grows stronger, the songs grow no less glacial.
29. Alice Longyu Gao: Assembling Symbols Into My Own Poetry
Elliott: An album the length of a Simpsons episode and when I throw it on, I frequently run it back when it ends. Alice Longyu Gao is one of our most exciting artists and a bad-mood-killer. Plus the goat Danny Brown makes an appearance.
28. Babehoven: Water’s Here In You
Shawn: My first of two submissions to this list that trade in the all-consuming, indistinguishable space between love and friendship. No matter how gentle or warm, the stakes never feel less than urgent or unconditional, especially on “Ella’s From Somewhere Else.”
27. DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ: Hex
Elliott: RXKNephew, Hong Sang-soo, Matt Farley, and DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ — my Mt. Rushmore of prolific artists who put out new works annually that I will reliably cherish. Hex is one of DJ Sabrina’s most polished albums to date, harkening back to the digital hive of her debut Makin’ Magick, but through a brighter and more confident sheen. “Come In, Carmen” is my opening track of the year.
26. Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive
Shawn: As someone who might live with the #1 HFTRR fan, it’s been fun to watch their graduation from NPR-world to puncture the big indie bubble and become something of an institution. Alynda Segarra’s been making strong records for a long time, and their last two just so happened to cross paths with indie rock’s interest in lap steel and flyover mythos. Segarra has one of the best pure instruments, just a classically timeless folk voice and the hard-won life of sagas to populate these songs. The last record was good, this one’s great. Sounds great too; I’m afraid Brad Cook(ed) once again…
25. Chief Keef: Almighty So 2
Elliott: Chief Keef is one of the great artists of the last 10+ years. It’s rare that he misses and Almighty So 2 is his best project in awhile. The beats are hard as hell and nearly every song makes me laugh. I have nothing smart to say about it other than it fucking goes.
24. MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks
Elliott: Dude’s only 25 and already a god in our online circle of music dorks. Some people may take it personally he’s this low on our list, but it’s less a knock on his undeniable Manning Fireworks and more a compliment to the stuff we loved even more. Mark Jacob Lenderman brings the the people together with his licks and indelible lyrics. A star has truly been born and we can’t wait for what’s ahead.
23. Father John Misty: Mahashmashana
Shawn: Changing it up here from the norm: beautiful voice and artist AND a beautiful personality. “Mahashmashana” the song is triumphant and truly cinematic enough that I’d probably have this on my list even if the rest of this record wasn’t any good; that it just so happens to be is a bonus.
22. Faye Webster: Underdressed at the Symphony
Elliott: Many seem to prefer her 2021 album, I Know I’m Funny haha, but I’m with my pal Michael Brooks in feeling her record this year is a step up. Sometimes it comes down to how often you want to listen to something. I want to listen to Underdressed at the Symphony all the time, and I’m always delighted when I do.
21. Idaho: Lapse
Elliott: Aside from slowcore gods Low and Duster, Idaho is my favorite band of the genre that perfectly soundtracks wet, grey Pacific Northwest autumns and winters. Their first album in 11 years is one of their best, sounding as vital and somber as ever.
20. Chanel Beads: Your Day Will Come
Shawn: The widest gulf between what I thought it would be and what it actually is, and yet also the signpost I’d first point to if you asked me what “indie music” in 2024 sounded like. Dreamy and borderless, with nearly as many pulls from cloud rap as sophisti-pop. Alex G and Frank Ocean remain the most influential artists of the last decade.
19. Blunt Chunks: The Butterfly Myth
Elliott: Songs so catchy and warm it befuddles me how they don’t have more streams. Need somebody like the artist at #16 in this list to take Blunt Chunks on tour as an opener. It’s a tie between “Can’t Be The End” and The Cure’s “Endsong” for my favorite closing track of the year.
18. Amen Dunes: Death Jokes
Shawn: I feel pretty stupid for not realizing this would be it for Amen Dunes — press photos for an album about finality literally had him smiling under a street sign saying “end.” Only fitting that he’d go out with another challenging swerve, drum machines shoving the guitars aside, with just enough reminders of how he broke out so confidently last time.
17. Clarissa Connelly: World of Work
Elliott: An album that was advertised to me as being similar to “Enya and Kate Bush’s The Sensual World,” turning out to be a spot-on comparison and such a specific flavor that I couldn’t love more. Makes me feel like I’m floating over a hazy beach. Quite possibly my favorite sounding record of the year.
16. Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
Shawn: Even though I vastly prefer these last two Waxahatchee albums to what came before them, I still often hope Katie Crutchfield shakes it up and sees if the new audience follows her back to the grittier ‘10s Philly indie rock (that said, kinda cool she’s yassified some of the oldies for her current tours a la Japanese Breakfast with Little Big League standards). But then I hear “365” again and nope, she can stay in this lane a little bit longer.
15. Nia Archives: Silence Is Loud
Shawn: Many are calling this the summer soundtrack for driving way too fast while delivering Instacart through the winding, affluent Pittsburgh suburbs. What if VH1 You Oughta Know-core vocals sang over beats just beyond skittering and restless and alive? Also maybe the best album cover of the year.
14. Friko: Where we’ve been, Where we go from here
Shawn: The years don’t quite match, but a died 2022/born 2022/welcome back Arcade Fire meme basically sums this one up. Relieving to know at least some kids still go wild for this strain of indie, despite the forefathers being pretty fashionable to dunk on. Someday, I’ll get to see them live and feel extremely old.
13. Kendrick Lamar: GNX
Elliott: It was his year. It already was before he even put out a record, but the victory lap of GNX solidified a year of greatness worthy of peak steroid-era Bonds. Nearly every Kendrick record has had game changing masterpiece ambitions with a conceptual narrative for hip hop heads to exhaustingly analyze. But for the first time since Section.80, Kendrick asks, “what if I just put out a record of great songs that are all pretty different from one another?” The results are so satisfying.
12. Oso Oso: life till bones
Shawn: The way people go absolutely bananas for “That Thing You Do” in That Thing You Do — that’s me with pretty much every melody Oso Oso writes, and they’ve rarely been punchy or as brilliantly constructed as on Life Till Bones. Jade is, at this point, one of the best living pop songwriters.
11. Porter Robinson: SMILE! :D
Shawn: There’s brat, and there’s bratty. Some of SMILE :D would qualify, when it isn’t busy being so nerdy, or hooky, or exceedingly earnest, or grappling with medium-level fame in a way that feels revelatory. “What if the 1975 headlined Anthrocon” might be an easy way to triangulate what makes this record so divisive, but it’s a disservice to the boldest, most generous outing in Porter Robinson’s pop evolution.
10. Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee
Elliott: Even if we knew Cindy Lee, one of my favorite working artists, was releasing an album this year, I would’ve put the odds that it ends up at #1 on Pitchfork’s year end list at like +10000 (if you don’t understand what this means, trust me, you’re better off not being familiar with gambling math). Many of my favorite records create their own worlds that I escape to. The 2-hour Diamond Jubilee is just that, and as I spend more time with it over the years, I wouldn’t be surprised if I feel like a fool for not putting it at #1 of my personal list.
9. Kim Gordon: The Collective
Elliott: Kind of convinced Kim Gordon will live forever. My thoughts remain unchanged when I wrote about the album here, and my appreciation for one of my heroes only deepened after getting to see her live during the summer. I saw some noisy shows this year, but nothing came close to touching Kim the God.
8. Wild Pink: Dulling The Horns
Shawn: Back to basics, an expansion, a capstone. One of the sharpest everyman lyricists in indie rock keeps outdoing himself, bringing back the fartlek structures of the self-titled debut (my favorite Wild Pink record…until this year, probably) with those chunkier, distorted Jesu guitars one-off singles like “Q. Degraw” only hinted toward. My favorite version of the band.
7. Charli xcx: BRAT
Shawn: I never could understand how typing all-lowercase became the shorthand for the chicly chaotic and blase — you do have to manually turn it off on your phone, after all. Well, one of the only underdiscussed things about the album by Charli XCX-turned xcx is how she’s planted the flag for the real no-effort heroes who live their lives capping the first word only. What’s left to say though? Brat summer. Kamala harris. Saturday night live. Dimes square. Times square. Despite all that, a great, generational pop record that might wind up becoming a little underrated because of all that noise.
6. The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World
Elliott: One of the greatest bands to ever do it gives us yet another titanic collection of feeling 45 years after their debut. The epic arrangements and Smith’s pained vocals that miraculously sound as good as they ever have make for a record that’s almost unbearably moving.
5. Fine: Rocky Top Ballads
Elliott: Not my first discovery from Ethel Cain’s Instagram stories, but certainly the one that’s been replayed the most. It’s a record I sink into like a warm bath of introspection and grace. “Big Muzzy” quite possibly my song of the year.
4. DIIV: Frog In Boiling Water
Elliott: The most resonant record of the year for me, the one that feels closest to how I feel on a daily basis. Its swampy riffs and poignant lyrics create an album that’s constantly waging war with apathy, and making peace with dancing with both despair and hope.
3. Hovvdy: Hovvdy
Shawn: My favorite album of the year has been credibly likened to a porch cover of Jesse McCartney’s “Beautiful Soul” with drum machines. Other things you might say: Pinegrove without the thesaurus, little bit of John Mayer in the one dude, lot of Chris Martin in the other dude (he’s even named Charlie Martin, and they’ve covered Chris). It’s all love, of course, because even if I wasn’t microtargeted as the correct taste and age demo for this one (“coming up on 31/all my friends are on my phone”…so true), the band has solidified into the best version of itself in this decade after warming up in the 2010s. The rare double album without an inch of bloat, that finds quiet gravitas in the small moments and familial love — slowing down just enough so life’s momentum and the relationships we hold dearest don’t slip right by.
2. Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk
Elliott: A hug and a dance at the same time. A tasty sugar high with no come down. Nothing but heart-shifting bangers. The chorus of “That’s My Floor” changed lives and reminds us of Audioslave…and if you’re getting Audioslave comps…that’s a lock for a top 3 Even Better finish.
1. Cassandra Jenkins: My Light, My Destroyer
Shawn: We’ve already seen Cassandra Jenkins wrench cosmic power from the quotidian chance encounter, and this time she more directly casts her gaze to the stars above. With that expanded horizon comes a masterful level-up in almost every way, shuffling the deck of glistening sophisti-pop, honest-to-god rock songs, and the same earthly, omnivorous sense of searching. Light and crisp with her touch as ever, it’s a record whose cool remove only reels you in tighter.