When I say that the music in this third list is good, I’m not making an April Fool’s joke (never been in my nature).

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1) Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future (album)

Any song addressed directly to a parent is bound to get me emotional. Always has done, and always will. I’ve seen my own in person once, for a period of a fortnight, in the last six years. But, I think about them daily, and especially when a song mentions family. So, the first track on Adrianne Lenker’s sixth solo record, ‘Real House,’ is more than enough to get me. Penned as an open letter to her mother, with her voice mic’d so close, so intimate, it finds her reminiscing on childhood hospital visits, her first house with a garden, an appeal for the existence of magic. Magic does exist, and exists in Lenker’s music. Bright Future is a stunning record, which finds Lenker working at the height of her powers as a songwriting. What elevates every second of the album is the production, recorded straight to tape, blemishes and all. It pulls you in, to the effect that you feel you are in the room, watching her and her band work, eavesdropping. It’s not dissimilar to the feeling I had with the Joni Mitchell live album I wrote of last month, so much warmth here, so much feeling. Bright Future sends out tendrils, feelers, illuminating dark spaces, Lenker ruminating on natural decline (‘Donut Seam’), or reimagining Big Thief classics (‘Vampire Empire’). This is a beautiful record, and seems a shoe-in for my top ten of 2024, come the year end. Special mention also to i won’t let go of your hand a six-track release Lenker put out on Bandcamp earlier this month, rougher around the edges, but also great (and with 100% of profits going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund) – check that out here also.

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2) Posture & the Grizzly – Busch Hymns [10^th anniversary remaster] (album)

2014 certainly had no shortage of stellar punk / emo-adjacent records from stellar artists, including the likes of Chumped, Dikembe, The Hotelier, Nouns, Somos, and You Blew It! I was eighteen at the time, at the height of my Topshelf Records / Midwest emo phase, and, looking back on it now, for releases of that nature, 2014 is the defining year of the 2010’s. It’s easy then, with such a wealth of records, to overlook Busch Hymns. This recent reissue has certainly elevated the original in my memory. Brash, loud, and tinged with hints of skramz and screamo, Posture & The Grizzly’s debut is a near-perfect seventeen minutes. Worth mentioning too that everything the band put out afterwards is also gold.

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3) twenty one pilots – Overcompensate / Next Semester (singles)

I can tell you about the first time I ever heard a twenty one pilots song. I was in a Hard Rock Café in Tianjin, China, an hour outside of Beijing. I was the only customer (unsurprisingly), and the single TV in the place at one point played the song ‘Guns for Hands.’ I didn’t mind it, but I also didn’t follow-up and download the song, or the album it was on. It’d be four years until I listened to another twenty one pilots song, when ‘Overcompensate’ was recommended to me earlier this month. I was a fan immediately, intrigued by the tempo and directional changes throughout the track, the chorus lodged in my head for the days after. It led to repeats, and also a first listen of the band’s best album to date, Trench, which I was also a fan of, recognising in it some of the things that appealed to me about the emo/pop-punk adjacent records I binged in my teens. I know there’s a lot of lore to the band, which I don’t much care for, but I’ll praise ‘Overcompensate’ and ‘Next Semester’ on their artistic merits, not needing to connect them to the band’s backcatalog. The latter, released yesterday, at the time of writing this, is another winner, more tight drumming and memorable hooks, but this time with an engaging narrative in which vocalist and guitarist Tyler Joseph reflects on anxiety spirals and near misses. It’s fair to say that upcoming LP Clancy will be the first twenty one pilots album I listen to immediately on release – I’m curious to see how it plays out. Have to say though, after listening to this new single a few more times, I do wish Next Semester committed to one more chorus, and dropped the minute-long ukulele outro. Sorry.

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4) Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well / Same Trailer Different Park (albums)

I was obsessed with Kacey Musgraves’ 2018 album Golden Hour. It’s not even a guilty pleasure of mine – no guilt involved. I completed most of God of War (released the same year) with Musgraves as soundtrack, understanding that her voice presented quite the juxtaposition to the bloody violence I was inflicting on the masses. It was an ‘odd’ period in my life. I still listen plenty to Golden Hour, but, like most, was left pretty disappointed by 2021’s star-crossed. Let’s not talk about it. Instead, let’s speak about Deeper Well, which is a safe but enjoyable album, nothing too fancy, but recapturing some of the glow of earlier releases. On listening to it, I realised I’d never actually listened to Musgraves’ debut, so have given that a few spins this month too. Same Trailer Different Park is fairly heavy-handed lyrically, but I enjoyed the simpler charm of it, four-leaf clovers and sunny skies. It lacks the nuance of some of the highlights from Golden Hour, some of which is found again on Deeper Well, Musgraves a little wiser with her songwriting than she was in 2021 (‘Anime Eyes’ aside, let’s not talk about that one either). Anyway, 2024 is still a great time to get into Kacey Musgraves, at the majority of points from her discography. “When I say yee, you say haw… I didn’t say fucking yee.” [Apple Music]

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5) Everything Everything – Mountainhead (album)

I have a feeling that I can already tell you, with some confidence, what my most-played song of 2024 is likely to be. It’ll be ‘Cold Reactor,’ one of the lead singles taken from Everything Everything’s great seventh LP Mountainhead. I cannot get this thing out of my head. It is the ultimate earworm, tunnelling and tunnelling, just as the band are lyrically on the song itself. Moreso than ever, the new year has me riddled with all kinds of anxiety, and ‘Cold Reactor’ is absolutely a micro-embodiment of my current state of mind, trying to hide that anxiety while also simultaneously throwing myself into my relationships and my work, unable to muster up the enthusiasm and conviction needed to feel fully present. It sounds deep, the song is, but it’s also wonderfully upbeat instrumentally. The chorus here is immaculate. The approaching apocalypse has never sounded so damn welcoming. I almost want to apologise for adding this one to the list, because it’s impossible to shut out. The rest of the album is pretty good too, although, for me, this song is the stand-out.

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6) Yard Act – Where’s My Utopia? (album)

There’s something about being from the UK but living 6,000 miles away from the UK that makes me appreciate acts like… Yard Act a little more. I have only heard a Yorkshire accent from two sources in 2024 – from Yard Act frontman James Smith, and competitive eater / YouTuber Beard Meats Food. In a strange way, they both endear me more to the north of England, my own accent (from neighbouring Lancashire) having mostly disappeared after six years away. Some of the anecdotes Smith recounts on Where’s My Utopia could have been plucked from my own adolescence, having visited Blackpool Illuminations (the title of one of the tracks here) myself annually with family. It resonates, showcasing Smith’s penmanship, a poet of the everyman. I don’t mind that the band’s gritty post-punk, the likes of which I’m sure I heard in smoking areas in my uni days, has transitioned slightly towards electronic rock on their second full-length. In fact, I think it works for them well, making Where’s My Utopia a slightly different, but still wholly absorbing listen compared to their debut. Yard Act has exploded in popularity in recent years, and for good reason. A shining beacon in the scene at present. One for my more nostalgic days (I’m encountering them increasingly frequently as I near thirty). [Apple Music]

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7) Athletics – Who You Are Is Not Enough / When to Run (singles)

Speaking of nostalgia, remember Athletics? This New Jersey post-rock outfit last released music in 2016, but 2024, so far, has seen them re-release their final two songs (with promises of new material at some point). They sounded great then, and they sound even better now. Crisp melodies, passionate vocals, and instrumentals rising to gorgeous crescendos. Glad to see the band back, but disappointed to have missed out on tickets for their Shanghai show in May. It’s been a delight to revisit these songs, and also to be pulled back in the direction of their first two LPs, which are excellent. If you aren’t already familiar, I fully recommend a listen. [Apple Music]

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8) Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood (album)

It’s fair to say that Katie Crutchfield’s 2020 album Saint Cloud is my go-to comfort record, my first thought after a moment of indecision on what to listen to. Perfect for every season and mood, it’s a generous and vibrant album, and one of my most-played from the year of its release. I can’t say that I immediately love Tigers Blood in the same way, but there is however plenty to love here, and I’m sure that, with time, I’ll grow equally fond of this most-recent Crutchfield release. I adored the singles, the tender MJ Lenderman duet of ‘Right Back to It,’ and fuller ‘Bored,’ both of which hinted at the diversity we might find on Tigers Blood.

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9) bedbug – pack your bags the sun is growing (album)

Sometimes I’ll scroll through my Bandcamp feed and click on an album purely because I like the name of it, which is what happened with this album, the title matching the warm and fuzzy soundscapes featured. pack your bags… is a wonderfully restrained release, pure indie mesmeric in quality. It charms in its imperfections, the occasional vocal frazzle or the restart on ‘postcard’ catching me off guard on first playthrough. It charms throughout, actually, the kind of album meant to accompany late-night drives or hazy afternoon wood-walking.

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10) Nouns ­– still (album)

I’m currently in the process of trying to put together a 10th-anniversary piece on this album, so have been revisiting it recently. Still holds up, still one of the best from the 2010’s. Keep an eye out – probably sometime in May.

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