2024 was a good year for music. Some very good albums and songs didn't make these lists.
5. Eyelids - No Jigsaw
Jealous Butcher Records, 03/2024
The Eyelids are something pretty special. This Portland-based supergroup has been churning out the powerpop hits for 10 years. This 2-LP compilation of singles, one-offs, covers, and oddities is my favorite release by them. And it's a testament to how musically good 2024 was that this comes in at #5. This would probably be #1 in other years.
Many of these songs have been covered in past years on this blog. Among the slices of pure power-pop goodness, there are also some really strange things here. A cover of The Fall sounding... just like The Fall. Peter Buck (R.E.M.'s famously silent guitar player) singing? This is a super fun album and worth your time.
4. Suburban Eyes
Spartan Records, 08/2024
A new album and band from Eric Richter of Christie Front Drive (and Antarctica), Jeremy Gomez from Mineral, and John Anderson from Boys Life. Does not sound much like Christie Front Drive, Mineral, or Boys Life.
What it does sound like, however, is a less electronic Antarctica, and if you are a fan (like I am), this one is great.
Good solid rock songs. Nothing flashy or intrusive, but good solid tunes. I don't have a lot of words about this. Instead, you should just listen to it.
3. Bonnie Prince Billy, Nathan Salsburg, and Tyler Trotter - Hear the Children Sing the Evidence
No Quarter Records, 05/2024
I collect Lungfish covers, because I love Lungfish songs. Lungfish songs are so interesting-- It's as if they're songs turned on their side. If most music is horizontal, Lungfish songs are vertical.
This fun record is two typical one-chord Lungfish covers, but presented in an atypical manner. These songs are stretched to their absolute logical conclusion, clocking in at over 20 minutes apiece. That's one song per side of the LP. Bonnie Prince Billy's voice is well-suited for these mantra-songs. The music is hypnotic. It grooves. It's vastly wide and deep.
2. Symmetry/Symmetry - Interference
self-released, 10/2024
Oregon's answer to Radiohead. Symmetry/Symmetry surprised us with a new LP this year (It's been 10 years since their last EP). This one is in heavy rotation on my turntable right now, and I can't say enough good things about the band. Fantastic musicianship. Great songs. Hints of prog and white-boy-blues, but more interesting and tuneful than either. "All We Know" would make a decent James Bond theme. Do yourself a favor and check this whole album out.
I also can't stop talking about Symmetry/Symmetry's Christmas/Christmas album, which gets tons of play at our house each December, and is in my top-3-of-all-time Christmas records.
1. The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
Fiction Records, 11/2024
The last time The Cure released an album, I was childless. Now, I have teenagers that can listen to this. (Not that they would want to. Hating your parents' music is part of growing up.)
This album is very very good. Of course, nothing can match The Cure's creative peak in the 1980s, but I attempted the pointless exercise of ranking my top 10 favorite Cure albums, and this album surprisingly made it into the top 10. In my (admittedly biased and limited) experience, I don't know of any other artist producing work this good into their 60s. Heck, most artists aren't this good in their 30s.
Among other things, this album is a testament to brevity and editing. I'm sure Robert Smith &co wrote many many songs over the past 16 years, but they edited it down to these 8. These 8 songs are very, very good. Contrast this to all the mediocre late-career albums put out by so many bands. This is a great coda to a band I saw described as "The Led Zeppelin of Alternative Rock"
This isn't the album that would convince anyone to be a new Cure fan, but if you can see past the makeup and hear the gorgeous songwriting, the inventive guitar, the driving bass, the cascading rhythms, this is a great Cure album. These songs were great live, too.