I can sign court documents in my own name now, have people swear oaths before me and (technically) represent you in a solemn criminal trial in front of a sheriff. What that is to say is that I am now a second-year trainee solicitor with a restricted practising certificate and notary public. Things appear to be progressing swimmingly in that regard. More importantly, though, I’ve done it all with the support of dependable friends who’ve listened, reassured, advised and encouraged throughout the year that has been 2024.

Internationally, I did not venture far this annum. I did not break out of the British Isles but ventured to Ireland in May on my Hiberno-Welsh Odyssey. Cardiff my furthest south and Shetland my northernmost extent.

In terms of gigs, I saw Beach Fossils, Say She She, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Honeyblood, Drahla, Alvvays, Ty Segall and Khruangbin. The venues were respectively St Luke’s, Assembly Rooms, Usher Hall, Stereo, Old Hairdresser’s, O2, QMU and the Hydro. As one might expect King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard put on the most maximalist show, though I don’t think their 2024 offering Flight b741 quite reached the heights of Petrodragonic Apocalypse.

Khruangbin’s gig as part of their A La Sala tour was unexpectedly epic given their albums tend towards a median of mellow and measured. I should really have had an indication from the choice of venue, the OVO Hydro, which I’d never been to until this year. It was a theatrical journey with a backdrop comprising three noble arches in antique style and stately steps below – there was even an interval (the set split by a hyperreal thunderstorm serving as a white noise palate cleanser between the halves). Also very good were Say She She in the Assembly Rooms – a vocal trio of session musicians producing glitzy funk and soul with, of course, delectable vocal harmonies – and Ty Segall at the QMU (brooding, grungy psych-infused garage rock with striking dynamic versatility).

Honourable mentions for this year whose albums didn’t quite make the list are The Bug Club, Father John Misty, FLO, Ibibio Sound Machine and Kelly Lee Owens. Above all, however, the single that impressed me the most in 2024 would have to be ‘Holy, Holy’ by Geordie Greep. Black Midi split this year and guitarist/vocalist GG released a solo album. The lead single is an unhinged, through-composed odyssey of a song. Think Earth Wind and Fire’s ‘Groove Tonight’ spliced with Steely Dan’s precision and Santana’s crystalline guitar licks, all over a carnivalesque samba/bossa nova backdrop. It’s operatic, frantic, and transports you from tense, twitchy awkwardness to expansive melodrama and sickly obsequiousness. Or, one might say, “from the shores of Havana, in Moscow and Tokyo/in French Guyanese, in Cantonese/Everyone knows my name!”. Please, if you listen to one new song from 2024, listen to this:

As for albums I can recommend this year, I have eight. They are as follows:

8. Charm by Clairo

Softboy Summer 2k24 would not be complete without Charm by Clairo. This summer I was trying to dial down the intensity in an attempt to ease into my easy runs as part of my marathon training. Clairo is totally unhurried here while still compelling enough to keep you listening through the tracks. Melancholy longing with timeless, classic-sounding instrumentals. Her style reminds me of artists I’ve enjoyed in the past such as Tennis and The Shacks. ‘Add Up All My Love’ was the first song to catch my attention when I heard it by chance on the radio but I think my favourite is ‘Thank You’.

7. Three Bells by Ty Segall

An early standout for 2024 was Ty Segall’s Three Bells. It’s still rock and it’s still loud but here things are dialled back just a smidge. Most tracks are acoustic guitar-driven with electric interjections. The songs have a menacing, sludgy quality to them. The album is consistently engaging from front to back, but a good place to start is the catchy ‘Hi Dee Dee’ or the non-quite-titular ‘The Bell’.

6. My Method Actor by Nilüfer Yanya

Nilüfer Yanya’s song ‘the dealer’ from her 2022 album PAINLESS was probably one of my top tunes of that year. I felt similar things when I listened to the first single from her latest album My Method Actor, ‘Like I Say (I Run Away)’. Overall, the new album is more sedate and mature than previous work. This is the sound of an assured artist, in no rush to tell the story that needs to be told. This is nowhere more exemplified than on the track ‘Call it Love’ – a supremely cool but slightly uneasy meditation on the inadequacy of labelling a feeling. Another standout is ‘Mutations’ featuring some great strings towards the tail end over a shuffling, syncopated drum groove.

5. Loss of Life by MGMT

I really liked MGMT’s Little Dark Age from 2018. The title track was reaching for the anthem status previous hits such as ‘Kids’ and ‘Electric Feel’ obtained, and it achieved a cult following certainly. Loss of Life does not appear to have this ambition. It doesn’t grab you right away, but it rewards on repeated listens. Where Little Dark Age was tongue-in-cheek and ironical, Loss of Life is more straightforwardly melancholic. Actually, it is profoundly melancholic. The kind of album that has thought a lot about its subject matter and come to some rather bleak but verifiable conclusions. Not that there aren’t moments of hope – there are, on tracks like their duet with Christine & The Queens, ‘Dancing in Babylon’ and its heartfelt coda. The order of the day is darkness, nonetheless and my favourite tracks in that regard are the majestic ‘People in the Streets’ and the acoustic guitar-driven ‘Nothing to Declare’.

4. A Dream Is All I Know – The Lemon Twigs

The Lemon Twigs topped last year’s list for me. They followed up Everything Harmony in 2023 with another fantastic collection of songs in 2024 on A Dream Is All I Know. Once again it is tune after tune. This time, though, the tone is more upbeat. Gone, largely, is the luxuriant sadness of the last record apart from perhaps on the track ‘Ember Days’ – “When is it June for us/those whose permanent place is a dark alleyway?”

Instead, the main influence here appears to be the Beach Boys. It’s more 60s than 70s is what I’m saying. Less glam and gritty than wall of sound sweetness. The reason the Lemon Twigs land lower on my list this year is that there are definitely some tracks to skip if you are not in that saccharine frame of mind. The title tune is fabulous, however, as is ‘Church Bells’ which precedes it. I am quite partial to the closer too for its unabashed Status Quo/T-Rex stomp feel – ‘Rock On (Over and Over)’.

3. The Sunset Violent – Mount Kimbie

I adored and continue to adore Mount Kimbie’s 2017 album Love What Survives. The Sunset Violent is a worthy successor seven years later. At just nine tracks one does wonder whether more of an offering could have been put forward after all this time, but almost every single one of the tracks is saturated in the dark, scuzzy, melancholic and aloof vibes that made its predecessor so great. ‘Got Me’ is perhaps the only one I’d skip as it feels a bit tonally inconsistent with the rest of the bunch. If an album is only nine songs long, I really want to wallow in the darkness and I don’t need a (comparatively) light-hearted interval of a track. It’s too much of a gear shift for me, and from the plays on Spotify, I can see I am not alone in skimming over it the majority of the time. Mount Kimbie’s familiar collaborator, King Krule turns up a couple of times on the record and it benefits immensely from the expressive vocals of Frenchwoman Andrea Balency- Béarn. I really love the tracks ‘A Figure in the Surf’ and ‘Fishbrain’.

2. Brat by Charli XCX

I’m not sure it is possible to be living on planet earth and remain unaware of the phenomenon that was Brat summer. With Brat Charli XCX has come full circle. Starting out as a would-be pop princess, she took a handbrake turn and vroom vroomed her way quite a considerable distance from the mainstream. With the help of pioneering collaborators such as AG Cook and the late SOPHIE, she produced some of the most original pop music of the past decade. Perhaps in pushing to the fringe, she evaded the attention of the majority while garnering fierce adoration from the initiated. She is now inescapable and defined the Zeitgeist for a time like no other artist.

But what does Brat sound like, I hear you ask? It sounds like The Club, and I am deliberately employing those two capitals. Charli XCX is reaching for an archetype on Brat, which means that the songs in their elements will be absolutely and instantly familiar to the listener, but in their combinations and manipulations, they comment on and deconstruct the idea and experience of what it is to enter that sanctioned space of hedonism, figuratively (mostly) and literally. Emotionally, it is primarily confident and combative with a secondary face of vulnerability and insecurity. It is the chaos and disorder of the party mentality and its creative potential for connection and the unexpected. There is profundity, absurdity, anxiety and euphoria. You cannot listen to this album unchanged. Give it a spin from ‘360’ to ‘365’. You won’t walk away the same person!

While the most experimental of the tracks are ‘Club Classics’ and the closer, I have a soft spot for ‘Talk Talk’, which is full of longing and trepidation about approaching someone you’ve grown fond of in public.

1. Imaginal Disk by Magdelena Bay

I was only dimly aware of Magdelena Bay pre-2024. Tunes from their previous albums had been on my Spotify playlists in the past but for some reason, they didn’t stick with me. This seemed to change after being directed towards the single ‘Death & Romance’ by the internet’s busiest music nerd, Anthony Fantano. Its triumphant piano chords induct you into a strange universe that is realer than real before the confident countermelody of the bass cuts through turning what might be an expansive ballad into a tight piece of power pop that is both multilayered yet retaining room to breathe and grow.

Imaginal Disk is masterful at evoking a vast spectrum of emotion. The enigmatic vocalist does not appear to be of this world. It is an album of abstraction, with many of the song titles concerned with concepts more than the concrete and quotidian. That is, except for songs like the weird ‘Watching TV’ and undoubted banger ‘That’s My Floor’ – the best tune about going up in a lift since Pink!

An album highlight for me has to be the sublime ‘Image’, which is true alt-pop perfection in the mode of Kylie Minogue a la c. 2000. It winds down beautifully too, with the gorgeous penultimate track ‘Angel on a Satellite’. If you only have time to listen to one album from 2024, make it this!