Another year has passed, which means I get the pleasure of writing about my favourite albums that were released last year, and you get to read about them. What a trade-off!
Like I did last year, I will list my favourite albums by their release date starting in January, because I cannot accurately rank them for life of me, with the exception of #1, which was (spoiler alert) Getting Killed by Geese, and which I already wrote about extensively, and #2 probably being George by Jake Minch.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the list and maybe find something cool to check out 🙂
oklou – choke enough
February 7th — Electronic / Alternative pop — (Pronounced okay-lou)
This is a winter album. I gave it a few spins at the beginning of the year and while I did initially like it, I didn’t find myself returning to it much until later in the year. I did really enjoy take me by the hand (ft. Bladee) and I did have that song on a playlist that I listened to regularly.
But it was only in about October or November when I finally really grew to love this album. While I might not remember the precise date, I do remember the precise location of where it clicked for me. I was at 3345, a record store in The Hague. I like to walk in if I’m already going by, just to browse a little or to pick up a free poster they sometimes give away. And one day, choke enough was playing through the store speakers. I had just walked in in the middle of obvious, and it made me stop in my tracks a little. Then, ict, such a cute song. I enjoyed hearing these songs there and then so much that I didn’t want to leave the store. And something about it felt so appropriate, like the songs found me exactly in the moment when I was ready to receive them. But alas, all things must end (and I had somewhere else to be). Immediately as I stepped back out on the street, I put the full album on and it was as if something had shifted.
A genuinely beautiful, ethereal and tender album. I think the colour palette they chose for it is perfect, and the performance oklou did at the skating rink for NTS was also beautiful.
Annie DiRusso – Super Pedestrian
March 7th — Indie / Alternative / Pop (?)
Annie’s debut album is an incredibly fun and tight indie pop / rock / whatever-kind-of-labels-we’re-using-for-this-genre album! I listened to it a lot at the start of the year after it came out and I still return to it now. I don’t have too much to write about it now that I’m trying to, which is making me feel a little bit bad. But I want to highlight that it’s fun, it’s very solid, the songs are incredibly listenable and danceable and replayable. Put it on, it’s nice. Also, it has pretty funny cover art, and Annie put out a remix of one of the songs with Samia, and that cover is comedy genius.
Black Country, New Road – Forever Howlong
April 4th — Alternative / Rock / Baroque Pop (?)
The stakes were pretty high with BC,NR’s first proper studio album after Isaac’s (then vocalist) departure in 2021. On 2023’s Live at Bush Hall they proved that the band is more than its main vocalist and lyricist and that they are all excellent musicians, both individually and collectively. Now they cemented this notion even further on their first studio album without Isaac. And it’s such a wonderful album!
The songs are so full and lush and big. The storytelling is wonderful. Generally just such a lovely set of songs!
They turn up the whimsy on here to the max. Now there’s multiple vocalists and multiple songwriters. Once you pay close attention, you can tell which song is whose. The songs are still theatrical and dramatic and big. But now sometimes with extra charm. This is the album that will draw (/has drawn) a divide in the band’s fanbase, without a doubt. But regardless of anyone’s opinion, it’s BC,NR Friends Forever!
Djo – The Crux
April 4th — Alternative / Rock / Alt Pop
I think I’m definitely in the minority of people who love this album and have never seen a full episode of Stranger Things. Yes, it’s Joe Keery, it’s Steve from Stranger Things.
I did not really expect to love this as much as I did. In the same vein as Annie DiRusso’s album, this is a super fun, super solid pop/rock/alternative album that I listened to a lot and returned to a lot. My favourite song on the album is Egg, and I really wanted to shout it out because the first time I properly listened to it, a surprised smile sprawled across my face. That’s because it takes so many twists and turns and it’s just a joy to experience.
Again, a fun, solid album to put on when you just wanna listen to something nice!
Turnstile – NEVER ENOUGH
June 6th — Hardcore (yeah, come at me for this) / Rock / Dream Pop (?)
Turnstile have been on my radar literally since 2016 when I liked precisely one song by them (it was Blue by You) but I could never get into Turnstile because I was never into heavier sounds. I listened to their last album, GLOW ON, after it made considerable buzz online and I liked a few songs. But man, did NEVER ENOUGH really click for me last year.
After I listened to it I (briefly) got very excited about alternative rock music again. For about a week or so I felt the same way I did when I first really started getting into listening to music and discovering what I liked and didn’t like. And it was so magical to experience that kind of bliss and excitement and enthusiasm again. I did also make a trip to Rotterdam in the summer to go see the visual album that they made for the record at the cinema and it was really wonderful. I had so much fun and it was visually so stunning and I’m so glad I went.
Also, Grammy winning album, baby! I’ve said this before but it bears repeating; the Grammys are bullshit unless the people I like win.
Lorde – Virgin
June 27th — Pop
I will admit here that I had a bit of a tough time with this album, it was a bit of a push and pull. I think it’s because I put up an incredibly high expectation on Lorde, but that’s only because I love Lorde so much. To me, like many others, she has that big sister energy, and we impatiently await for her to pass down her wisdom to us in the moments we need it most. She made another excellent pop record, that’s hard to deny.
What I struggled with initially, but have come around to since, was the fact that it was so honest and so open that at times I wondered if I really should have been let in on all of that. Why is she sharing this? And am I allowed to hear it? I’ve accepted it since, and it’s become one of my favourite albums of the year.
When What Was That came out I listened to it non-stop and it quickly took the spot for my most played song of the year (and it’s even climbed to be the #3 most played songs of All Time). The first time I heard it, something came over me and it made me sob, even though the ~vibes~ are not particularly sad or depressing on that one. Broken Glass is another song that has had a similar effect, and I’ve definitely cried to it more times that I’d like to admit. Not to get too personal or bum you out on a year-end list, but as someone who struggled with what is not quite disordered eating, but not really exactly ordered eating either, for the better part of the last two and a half years (I’m doing much much better now!), the line “Making weight took all I had” is a direct punch in the gut every single time and it still makes me choke up.
It’s quite a short album at just 34 minutes, but it packs all the highs and lows of the last few years of Lorde’s life. All around a pretty god pop record.
Jake Minch – George
July 11th — Singer-songwriter / Folk / Indie
I found Jake’s music when a video of him playing a then still unreleased acoustic rendition of his song Jessie popped up on my Instagram reels at the start of 2024. I then got entirely and completely obsessed with the one EP he had released by then, so much so that Handgun, a song off of said EP, is still my most played song on Apple Music ever. I also wrote about it already (it was one of the first posts on my blog)!
What I wrote about the style of music he makes still stands true. It’s like if you put all of my favourite indie folk singer-songwriters in a blender and used that magic serum to make the next generation write songs. Jake’s songs are still sincere and immediate and diaristic. They’re like little journal entries that, while in many cases hyper-specific, encompass the experiences that come along with being young, growing up, leaving your hometown (and returning on occasion), and being falling both in and out of love. There’s something so honest about all these songs. Something almost naïve, and youthful and hopeful, but sad. I don’t know, they just make me feel whatever the feelings that you feel when you’re seventeen are called. It’s such a special album.
If it wasn’t for Geese completely bewitching me last year, this would’ve been my most played album of the year. I have become a bit of a Jake Minch ride or die.
Hayley Williams – Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
August 1st (????) — Rock / Alternative
The release strategy of this album was very unusual, hence the (????) at the released date. She first released the songs as loose tracks you could play on her website, no tracklist. Then she released all the songs as singles on streaming, again, without a tracklist. Everyone was then encouraged to organise them into their own playlist.
This is my favourite Hayley solo album to date, I think. It feels so much more free that the others, the songs are confident and even fun. I danced and jumped around (and maybe cried) to Mirtazapine all August. There were three more songs released as a part of the full album a little later, one by one. The first one of them, Parachute, is a great song, but also a genuine gut punch. Absolute insanity from Hayley, she’s one of the best doing it.
Also, it’s worth mentioning here that Hayley is such a staple in the modern alt rock scene and I have nothing but endless respect for her. She’s just so damn cool. And by the looks of it–and now free of her 20-year (???????!!!!) record deal as part of Paramore–she doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all.
Ninajirachi – I Love My Computer
August 8th — Electronic / Dance / EDM
I was very late to this album, having only listened to it towards the end of the year. But I’m including it here despite not having spent as much time with it as the other ones on this list simply because it was genuinely the most fun I had listening to an album all year.
Nina’s album is bursting with energy, and not to be like that “Guy who’s only seen one movie and it was Boss Baby after he watches his 2nd movie ever: Getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes from this” meme, but I got a lot of Porter Robinson vibes from this (I have not listened to any other music in the modern EDM genre). Which was kinda cute since I later learned that in the song iPod Touch she makes a reference to a Porter song. This is an incredibly fun album!
I also want to shout out the song Sing Good because it made me smile a lot and I think it was one of the sweetest songs I heard all year. The 🥹 emoji in song form.
Geese – Getting Killed
September 26th — Indie / Rock / Alternative
I already wrote a lot of words on Geese’s Getting Killed, my personal album of the year, so I’ll be short here. It’s a solid and confident album in its execution, nervous, anxious and existential in its themes, and an overall incredibly fun rock album made by people talented and skilled beyond their years. You’ve already heard all about it if you pay even the slightest attention to year-end lists. I love this album so much and it consumed me entirely. And yeah, maybe it’s been overhyped but man, oh man, does any of that really matter when the music really is just that good? I love music !!!!
Some other albums that I liked that came out this year (in no logical order, I just wrote them down as I thought of them) and I would recommend you check out if you like any of the other albums I listed in here:
- Truman Sinclair – American Recordings
- quickly, quickly – I Heard That Noise
- Wet Leg – moisturiser
- Tobias Jesso Jr. – s h i n e
- Keaton Henson – Parader
- Jerskin Fendrix – Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire
- Racing Mount Pleasant – Racing Mount Pleasant
- Wet – Two Lives
- Miya Folick – Erotica Veronica
- Hayden Pedigo – I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away
Also, some songs I really liked that I hadn’t mentioned above
- Samia – Bovine Excision
- Samia – Bloodless
- Model/Actriz – Cinderella
- My New Band Believe – Lecture 25
- Miya Folick – Light Through the Linen
- Big Thief – Incomprehensible
- quickly, quickly – Enything
- Nourished by Time – 9 2 5
- Barry Can’t Swim – Different
- The Orchestra (For Now) – Escape From New York
- Way Dynamic – Miffed It
- Renny Conti – Looking at the Geese
This concludes my favourite music of the last year list. I loved a lot of music and I’m so excited to love more this year.
As always, thank you for reading!
Until next time,
Mia