BEST MUSIC OF 2024
MK.GEE, THRESHOLD, ADDISON RAE, CAMERON WINTER, AND MORE
I was initially drawn to Threshold after seeing a few friends post the single cover for this song. At the time I had no idea that it was my own friend Isaac (of Strange Ranger) behind it, and he seemed happy that his mysterious new project fooled me. Context aside though— this is one of the best songs I heard all year, and I guarantee that its minimal arrangement + hypnotizing chorus will pull you right in to its strange little world. And it doesn't stop there, this entrancing dream-like atmosphere extends to the rest of the album that arrived shortly after, Thief. I feel like he's on to something truly new with this sound.
@tyler
STAFFDec 30, 2024
Last year I helped my friend Danica make the live videos for this album. After we got the one take of “Are You Looking Up” the bus pulled over and everyone piled out with big grins on our faces. It had been a tough shoot, but we knew we had finally shot something really special. When we got back on and started to drive, Mike was just turned around, playing his guitar again, jamming like he had been, to no one, the whole weekend. It seemed like he was completely unfazed by what we all thought was this spectacular moment. I remember asking him right there, “Is this just what you do, all day, every day?” He grinned and whispered to me, “What else is there to do?” This year, nobody will shut up about his music, it seems like they’re trying to crack the recipe for his secret sauce, but from what I’ve seen, they’re overcomplicating it. His music is really good because he is fiercely devoted, extremely confident, spending all day, every day, messing with instruments and gear, hacking away at melodies to uncover amazing songs. I don’t think he really cares about anything else, and I think he’s going to make a lot more.
@uncle_hesh
STAFFDec 30, 2024
My pick for SOTY. I NEED BLOOD. By The Furniture Group (great new project from Teo Hedigan and Melody English). Tyler texted it to me and said it was up my alley. It was in fact, literally more than any other song this year. Just cool as hell. That bassline. Transfixing! 2024 was kind of the best year ever but tonally there was something “ominous”, vibes skewing toward “moody” and “intense”, this song encapsulates that. And like yeah, I need blood. We all need that…
@vivi
STAFFDec 30, 2024
I get the most out of “Wristwatch,” with its descending riffs giving way to Xandy’s pedal steel on top of the guitar lead. The lyrics open with “So you say I’ve got a funny face/It makes me money” which conjures up a character misquoting Quiet Riot’s 1983 cover of Slade’s “Cum on Feel the Noize.” Lenderman excels at characters that come across as guys not getting it right, low-key committed to not quite understanding. A denseness, a hapless but easily seen wrongheadedness. Doubling down on not wising up.
Dec 30, 2024
It’s easy to love and to talk about love. What’s difficult is kicking a door down.
Dec 30, 2024
OK so basically this was their year. As I am sure the following years will also be. The thing about Snow Strippers is that they’ve put out a crazy amount of music in the last few years, and it’s consistently way too good and dynamic. So What If I’m A Freak had the sample heard around the world (FUN FACT IF I ACTUALLY KILLED MYSELF YOU COULD GET ARRESTED FOR THAT) and I mega enjoyed listening to it full volume bass blasting in the passenger seat (don’t drive) of a car. Sounds so good in a cute guys car… sometimes I wonder if you like it when I’m dying for it
The breakout star of today’s hyper-online, borderline avant-garde underground rap scene, 17-year-old Gunner Shepardson—better known as Nettspend—is, depending on who you ask, a visionary, a harbinger of hip hop’s end, moderately interesting, or maybe just the most swagged-out teenager on the planet. Your opinion likely hinges on the year you graduated high school—or where you were on the night of December 18, 2023, when a mob of skaters and balaclava-clad SoundCloud rap devotees descended upon an industrial metal detector outside the Mercury Lounge after waiting four hours for Nettspend, xaviersobased, Yhapojj, and Phreshboyswag to make an appearance. For me, the answer somewhere lies in the reuploaded video for Nothing Like Uuu: a mesmerizing hyperpop-rap hybrid that somehow distills the essence of a month at Market Hotel into just two minutes. It’s a whirlwind of gratuitous fog machine smoke, mumbled Chief-Keef-Jr-isms about wanting to "get geeked all night," swirling synths straight out of a Doss DJ set, and, at the center of it all, Nettspend—the inexplicable teenager with black X’s on their hands, completely at home in the chaos.
Dec 30, 2024
TME is Iglooghost’s most conventional album and it still makes me fucking crazy – like I’m freebasing nicotine and cocaine at the same time, while on one of those rollercoasters that drops at a 90-degree angle. Part of that disorienting feeling, this time around, comes from textures and sounds I didn’t expect: post-punk drums on “Coral Mimic”; the electro beat on “Nemat0de”. I’m sick to death of “genreless” music; Tidal Memory Exo was a genre unto itself.
Dec 30, 2024