→ January 18, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 1/18/25.

One new piece this week for subscribers to the Athletic, my reaction to Roki Sasaki’s announcement that he’s going to sign with the Dodgers. I also contributed to the Athletic’s Hall of Fame ballot roundup, listing my selections with a brief explanation.

I do have another board game review going up at Paste next week, but most other writing has been on hold as I work on the top 100 prospects ranking, which is due to go live on January 27th. I actually still haven’t settled on who’s #1 – I see six or seven worthwhile candidates, but nobody is a clear leader. I do hope to get a newsletter out in the next few days as I feel more comfortable about my progress on the top 100.

And now, the links…

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→ January 12, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 1/12/25.

I took a month or so off from these Saturday posts, mostly because I was busy just about every weekend in December – PAX Unplugged, hosting two holiday parties, getting ready for Christmas, then traveling. I do plan to return these to their normal format, but for now I’m doing a briefer one just to get one posted after I was out of town for the weekend (we went to NYC to see friends and to watch SIX).

I did have one story up this week for subscribers to The Athletic, covering the Gavin Lux trade and associated signing by the Dodgers of Hyeseong Kim.

Over at Paste, my review of the excellent board game Tower Up went up this past week; that game appeared on my list of the top ten games of 2024.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Defector’s exhaustive history of the barely-a-company Color Star, which first appeared on anyone’s radar when they signed a partnership deal with the 76ers in 2021 that the team quickly rescinded, is completely bizarre and an amazing piece of investigative work. The short version is that the company looks like it’s been running some kind of stock scam for at least five years, and has never produced any actual product or service.
  • The New Yorker has the story of one author’s copyright infringement lawsuit alleging another author, an editor, and a publisher stole the plot and many key details from of one of her unpublished novels, which delves into the question of how far you can copy an idea before it might cross into infringement, but also explains the anti-literary world of “romantasy” and other fast-fashion books that are written to chase trends on TikTok and other social media.
  • ProPublica published an exposé from and about a man who, on his own, infilitrated multiple right-wing militias, collecting data on members and recording conversations with leaders. He believes they’ll take the country down if they’re not stopped soon.
  • Dogs who press buttons to ‘talk’ to their owners are all the rage on Instagram and TikTok. Is there any science behind this? I’m a strong skeptic here, and I think the experts quoted in this New York Times Magazine piece lean that way as well, although there are experiments underway to try to understand better what dogs really can understand and express.
  • Editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit the Washington Post after the paper refused to run a cartoon she drew that depicted billionaires bending the knee to the incoming President. She explained why on her Substack.
  • Coffee futures prices hit record highs in December and haven’t come down much thanks to below-average rainfall in Brazil and bad weather in Vietnam, the two largest coffee producers in the world. Between weather, climate change, and rising demand, coffee futures prices are up over 75% in the last year.
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→ January 10, 2025
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Castle Combo.

Castle Combo is the latest in Pandasaurus’s line of imports of smaller-box titles from Europe, following previous hits Sea Salt & Paper and Faraway (the latter of which made my top ten games of 2024). It’s a tableau-builder with a few quirks to the selection mechanism to distinguish it enough from the flood of similar titles on the market, and does share some DNA with Faraway in the way it ultimately scores. It’s from two designers who have another game coming out later this year called Zenith; one of the pair, Grégory Grard, co-designed the 2023 game In the Footsteps of Darwin, which earned a Spiel des Jahres nomination, but which I didn’t care for much because it had about as much to do with Charles Darwin as Monopoly does.

Players in Castle Combo will select nine cards to build 3×3 tableaux in front of them, taking one card from the six on display in each turn. The display itself is split into two rows, one of cards with grey/silver backs and one of cards with tan backs, and you may only select from the row where the messenger token sits. Each card has a cost in coins from 0 to 7?, one or two shields in any of the game’s six colors, an immediate power or benefit, and an end-game scoring function. Players begin the game with 15 coins and 2 keys; you can spend one key per turn to either move the messenger to the other row in the display, or to refresh the three cards in the current row with new ones.

Selecting some cards moves the messenger to the other line

Those immediate powers can give you coins or keys – more on those in a moment – usually based on what else is in your tableau already, or other benefits like 1 coin discounts on silver -or tan-backed cards. The end-game scoring is much broader, as nearly all cards give you some number of points per something else in that row, or column, or your tableau as a whole, or where you placed the card, or if some shield color is missing, or too many other things to list. It would be such a point-salad disaster if it weren’t limited to just nine cards all neatly arrayed in a square.

If you can’t afford any cards, you must take one and play it face-down for 6 coins and 2 keys, receiving 0 points for it at game end. After the ninth round, players score all of their face-up cards according to the rules on each. Leftover coins have no value unless the player has ‘purse’ cards on which you can store gold during or after the game; coins not in purses do come into play as the tiebreaker. Leftover keys are worth 1 point each.

There isn’t a ton of player interaction here, which is fine given the number of things you have to track and consider on your turns. Before choosing a card, you have to see how many coins you have and how many you’ll have afterwards (since many cards give you coins back), and then consider its immediate and end-game effects while also figuring out the optimal place for it in your tableau. Actually, you’ll do that for many or all of the six cards on the market at that time; trying to also figure out, say, which cards your opponents might want, or which ones might hurt them more, would be overload for a game of this weight.

The theme doesn’t tie all that well to the game, although I appreciate the comic nature of the art on the cards. You’re supposed to be collecting characters from the upper and lower classes of your city to come live or work at your castle, but even though each card has a character type I find I play without ever even looking at the text. It’s all about the abilities and how they fit into my tableau at that point or will determine my strategy for cards going forward.

Castle Combo plays 2-5 players and promises playing times of 10-25 minutes; I think 10 minutes might apply to a game of two players who’ve played a few times before, but the 25 minutes is probably about right as an upper bound. You only have nine turns and you have just a few choices on each turn, so even though you will find you’re putting a lot of thought into each buying decision, there’s only so much of that you can do before the next player smacks you in the back of the head. I do prefer Faraway, which has a similar weight, playing time (eight turns per player), and even box size, because its main mechanic is more novel. Castle Combo takes a lot of aspects of other games and skillfully smooshes them together into a smart filler-game experience.

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→ January 7, 2025
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Kneecap.

Kneecap tells the story, loosely, of the founding of the popular Irish-language rap trio of the same name, with the three members playing themselves. It’s mostly fictional and entirely hilarious. (It’s on Netflix in the U.S.)

The band Kneecap has risen to significant prominence in both their native Northern Ireland and in Ireland over the last decade, but this biopic blends truth with fiction, although writer/director Rich Peppiatt told NPR that the wilder stuff is the truth and the “mundane” stuff is fabricated. The two MCs switch between Irish and English, between pro-Republican and pro-Irish language activism and rhymes about drinking and drugs, rapping over beats that draw more from the golden age of hip-hop than anything in the last 30 years of American rap. Their second album, Fine Art, featured guest spots from Fontaines D.C. vocalist Grian Chatten and British rapper Jelani Blackman, and the song “3CAG” became a top 10 hit on Ireland’s pop chart.

Kneecap’s script creates some structure around the group, from member Naoise’s father being an ex-Republican paramilitary who faked his death to avoid arrest to a story about how the two rappers connected with their schoolteacher DJ. The throughline, and the real heart of the film, is the rapid, organic rise in popularity that came from their live gigs and a protest campaign that got one of their first songs played on an Irish-language radio station across the island. It has some of the trappings of classic up-from-obscurity music biopics, but avoids many of the tropes of the genre – the drug use is almost entirely comic, rather than leading to some sort of tragedy or downfall; the band doesn’t break up only to come together at the end; there’s a love interest that doesn’t divide the band or otherwise derail them.

The trio’s ascent has been rapid enough that the screenplay instead layers on a political story, from Naoise’s father, played with brilliant understatement by Michael Fassbender, to a Northern Irish police officer who believes they’re dangerous activists, to run-ins with a group called Radical Republicans Against Drugs. Nearly all of this is made up for the movie, and it’s just about all funny even when there’s a serious subtext like the suppression of native Irish language and culture in British-ruled Ulster. The three members of Kneecap are natural performers, to the point where I thought for much of the film that DJ Próvaí was being played by an actor when he’s just playing himself.

The Irish Film & Television Academy submitted Kneecap as the country’s entry for this year’s Academy Award for Best International Feature, and it made the December shortlist of 15 titles. Only one Irish film has ever made the final list of nominations, 2022’s The Quiet Girl (which is fantastic), but Kneecap appears to have a real shot to become the second, and I’d be thrilled if it means more people seek this movie out. It’s a riot, and it’s something novel – it’s not a straight biopic, it’s not a parody or a mockumentary, and it’s about a specific culture that was mostly new to me (I mean, I’ve watched Derry Girls). And because it doesn’t take itself too seriously, or seriously at all, the underlying theme of pride in one’s culture and language is far more effective than it would have been if they’d played it straight. It’s not going to beat Emilia Perez for the Oscar, but it’s a way better film.

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→ January 3, 2025
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Top 100 songs of 2024.

Better late than never – here’s my ranking of my top 100 songs of 2024, a list that took forever to compile in such a fertile year for great music, a process further complicated by the short break between the holidays, a brief family vacation after Christmas, and life in general. You can see my previous years’ song rankings here: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012. I posted my ranking of the top 24 albums of 2024 just before Christmas.

As always, you can access the Spotify playlist here if you can’t see the playlist below.

100. Jamie xx feat. Honey Dijon – Baddy On The Floor. I’m not a big EDM guy, so I was disappointed with Jamie xx’s follow-up to his outstanding debut album In Colour; he went heavy into EDM-land rather than the hybrid, indie-dance sounds from the last record. This was the best track on his latest album, In Waves, which had an incredible array of guest vocalists and musicians but ultimately left me cold because of the monotony of the beats.

99. The Lathums – Stellar Cast. Iadmit this is music that is almost algorithmically designed to meet my tastes – the Lathums are a direct descendants of the ArcticMonkeys’ musical tree, and this is their most Alex Turneresque song yet.

98. Folly Group – Pressure Pad. Folly Group get lumped into the new post-punk movement that’s been thriving in the U.K. for the last few years, but their sound is more experimental and chaotic than that, best exemplified on this noisy, throbbing track from their debut album Down There!

97. Yard Act feat. Katy J Pearson – When the Laughter Stops. One of my favorite tracks from Yard Act’s sophomore album, the disco-influenced Where’s My Utopia?, features guest vocals from English indie-pop singer Katy Pearson (who eschews the period after her middle initial, Harry S Truman-style).

96. Ezra Collective feat. Olivia Dean – No One’s Watching Me. Ezra Collective won the Mercury Prize in 2023 for their second album, Where I’m Meant to Be, but I preferred their follow-up, this year’s Dance, No One’s Watching, a more melodic (and perhaps more mainstream?) jazz record with some great vocal turns from various guest artists, including neo-soul singer Dean.

95. STONE – Save Me. STONE released their debut album, Fear Life for a Lifetime, in September, and it’s a decent first record, blending elements of punk, indie rock, rap, and even a little pop on tracks like this one and “My Thoughts Go,” although I preferred some of the stuff on their earlier EPs.

94. Swim Deep – First Song. Despite the song’s title,Swim Deephave been around for over a decade and released their fourth album, There’s a Big Star Outside, in July. It’s a shoegazey record with some bigger guitar riffs, although I found the album more interesting for its overall sound than for individual tracks or hooks. This remains my favorite, thanks in part to that big guitar line that comes in before the first verse.

93. Sampha feat. Little Simz– Satellite Business 2.0. The original “Satellite Business” was an 84-second track on Sampha’s 2023 album Lahai without any guest vocals, but this new version features a verse from Little Simz and runs nearly five minutes, taking a forgettable interstitial track and bringing it up to par with the rest of Sampha’s album.

92. Chime School – Give Your Heart Away. More jangle-pop greatness from Andy Pastalaniec, who also serves as the drummer for Seablite (and is a big Giants fans). His second album under this moniker, The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel, came out this summer and it’s full of sunny ‘80s hooks like this track has.

91. Wishy – Triple Seven. This is the title track from this Indianapolis indie-rock band’s debut album, which received pretty broad acclaim and was kind of unavoidable this fall in all the places where I typically find new music. I like their sound but didn’t hear a lot of memorable hooks on the album; this is the best track, but even here I don’t think it has a signature melody or anything specific to set it apart. It’s just a good example of their sound, which gets the “shoegaze” label like everything these days but which I don’t think applies here.

90. Elbow – Lovers’ Leap. This is the song that made me an Elbow fan, but by the time the year ended two other tracks they released this year surpassed it. I’ve said before that I’m late to this party; in my defense, I think they’ve evolved since their Mercury Prize-winning album The Seldom Seen Kid and become both more experimental and more uptempo. I love the horns in the intro here.

89. Kendrick Lamar – reincarnated. I have never been a big Kendrick Lamar fan, and even now I am probably one of the lower folks out there on his newest album, GNX. I admire his experimentation, and he did put out his best song every this year (hint: this isn’t it), but I find his music maddeningly inconsistent, and his delivery can vary widely too. When his lyrics are more driven by emotions, as on this track, his flow is worlds better than it is on some of his more mundane songs. I also happen to love the call-and-response at the end of this song, although Pitchfork’s review of GNX called this song “unlistenable.”

88. Pond – So Lo. I am pretty much a perfect mark for any artist that records an homage to Prince; Pond has certainly drawn from funk before, but the guitarwork here sounds like something that might appear out of Prince’s vaults.

87. Courting – Flex. It should be clear by now that I love Courting’s New Last Name, as it’s shiny and poppy but hasn’t lost its sharper edges with overproduction or even too many layers. I’m assuming the “now she’s calling a cab” is a Killers reference.

86. Lauren Mayberry – Change Shapes. I’d been clamoring for Mayberry to put out a solo album for probably seven or eight years, and she finally did so this year with Vicious Creature … and it’s nothing special. It’s extremely poppy, which is fine, but a lot of the lyrics are shallow and they’re extremely repetitive. Lines like “go to hell or go home/or you will die on your own” (from “Something in the Air”) make the whole endeavor feel superficial. I rather appreciated the Guardian’s mixed review of the album, which mirrored a lot of my own thoughts. This was by far my favorite track from the record, mostly for the memorable melody in the chorus.

85. Khruangbin – A Love International. Another album that disappointed me, A LA SALA is a surprisingly dour affair for a band whose previous output always pulsed with energy. Everything that worked on Mordechai, their 2020 album and first with extensive vocals, is gone here; the album feels like great background music, but that’s a letdown from their assertive work on the previous two records.

84. Corker – Distant Dawn. Corker hail from Cincinnati but sound like they should be from London, or maybe Brighton, with their clear influence from early post-punk – although the band they sound like more than any other is the contemporary group Preoccupations. They’re both more Joy Division than Wire or Gang of Four, with some of the gothic production style of Bauhaus and early Cure.

83. Crows – Bored. When I say 2024 was a good year for music, I mean that a band like Crows, whose first two albums I really liked and whose sound is very much in my personal wheelhouse, Reason Enough, came out in September and couldn’t crack my year-end list even though it is, once again, something I really like. This isn’t a criticism, but I don’t think the record pushed any new boundaries for them, which is why I ended up omitting it from my rankings. It’s also a darker record than the previous two, although that fits their hard-edged punk/hard rock hybrid style.

82. Childish Gambino feat. Fousheé– Running Around. I didn’t have Donald Glover releasing a peak emo-pop track à la Jimmy Eats World on his (supposedly) final album under the Childish Gambino name on my bingo card for 2024, but here it is – and it’s the best song on his fascinating if somewhat inscrutable Bando Stone and the New World record.

81. Hayden Thorpe – They. Thorpe was the lead singer of art-rock band Wild Beasts, who broke up after their 2016 album Boy King, which is one of my favorite albums of this century. His solo output has kept the art part but dispensed with most of the rock, so I haven’t enjoyed any of it as much as I did the work of his previous band. His third solo album, Ness, a musical interpretation of Robert Macfarlane’s 2019 book of that name, is challenging and smart and a little too quiet for my tastes, unfortunately.

80. Lambrini Girls – Company Culture. Lambrini Girls are a punk duo with strong hooks and wry, frequently off-colour lyrics that fit the left-wing roots of the genre. I assume the subject of this track is self-evident.

79. Opeth – §3. This is one of my favorite tracks from Opeth’s latest album, The Last Will and Testament, and also the most accessible song on the record for its scant use of death-metal vocals, making it more of a progressive metal song plucked from the larger and heavier album that surrounds it. It’s not Blackwater Park, but it’s good to see Mikael & company get a little heavier after a few albums that were more King Crimson than King Diamond.

78. Blossoms – Perfect Me. Gary is a more expansive album than their previous work, with more influences and more musical ambition, but there’s nothing here to match “Ode to NYC” or “The Sulking Poet” from 2022’s Ribbon Around the Bomb. This song is easily the new album’s best thanks to the earworm chorus.

77. Soccer Mommy – Lost. I’vestruggled to understand the critical acclaim for Soccer Mommy, as her often-flat singing and funereal melodies just don’t do it for me. “Lost” might be the best thing I’ve heard from her, or at least close to it, as her ,vocals are much more expressive and the melody in the chorus balances its somber lyrics with a hint of sweetness in the vocal lines.

76. Blushing – Tamagotchi. Blushing are a dream-pop/shoegaze band from Texas who sound a lot like early Lush – and indeed they covered Lush’s “Out of Control,” which led to Lush singer Miki Berenyi appearing on their second album, Possessions. Their third record, Sugarcoat, is more of the same – imagine Lush but a half-degree heavier at times, with bright vocals shimmering above walls of distorted guitars. This track and “Silver Teeth” were my favorites from the new record.

75. Kamasi Washington – Prologue. I can’t pretend to know Washington’s work prior to this song, but it was everywhere this summer – I think NPR featured it on their extensive weekly playlist – and it’s the sort of jazz I find I can understand and appreciate (which is a criticism of my own tastes, not of any style of jazz). There’s a

74. Bob Vylan – Hunger Games. The best track off Bob Vylan’s album Humble as the Sun wasn’t actually the best thing the British duo did this year, but this grime/hard rock track highlights their viciously satirical lyrics and knack for finding heavy riffs to work along with the vocals. “You are more than your take-home pay” should be a slogan for the Working Families’ Party – or the Democrats.

73. GIFT – Going In Circles. I almost ended up with three GIFT songs on the top 100, with “Later” among the last few cuts from this list. Their album Illuminator was an instant favorite for me with its blend of psychedelia and dream-pop along with a slew of extremely memorable hooks.

72. Japandroids – All Bets Are Off. I’m a bit unusual for a Japandroids fan in that I didn’t love Celebration Rock, one of the most critically lauded records of the 2010s and the album that made and nearly broke them. I liked the two albums that followed, including their 2024 swan song Fate & Alcohol, significantly more, as they polished their sound up just enough to let me appreciate the lyrics and the interplay between the guitar and drums. It’s a shame that they’re done (for now), but at least they left on a high note. I have two Japandroids tracks on this list, and I would guess this is the one that would appeal more to fans of their earlier work.

71. Ride – Peace Sign. Ride’s second act has been something to behold, as they’ve been riding (pun intended) the second shoegaze wave and brought a more mature and more melodic sound to their three post-reunion albums. They’re still recognizably Ride, but it’s like they picked up where “Chrome Waves” left off and kept right on going.

70. Fontaines D.C. – Starburster. Honestly, if Grian Chatten didn’t do that weird inhaling thing before every line in the chorus, this would have been a top ten track of the year for me. Hearing that through Airpods is a bit much. It’s a great fuckin’ song, though.

69. Beyoncé– TEXAS HOLD ‘EM. Surprised? I believe this is the Queen’s first ever appearance on one of my top 100s, but I was captured by this track immediately – and it was the only original on Cowboy Carter that I liked enough for a second listen. Her taste in covers is exquisite, of course, and I hold out hope that she will one day put out an album of standards and torch songs while she still has the voice for it.

68. Charly Bliss – Calling You Out. Charly Bliss’s power-pop sound seemed destined for a breakout album at some point, and I think they had it this year with Forever, although I barely know what constitutes success for an album in the streaming era. The album was full of bouncy pop bangers like this one, which seems to subvert the typical sounds of a teenybop artist with grungy guitars and smart lyrics, although my favorite track from the record (much higher on this list) follows a totally different template.

67. Color Green – Four Leaf Clover. Thispsychedelic rock quartet from California put out their sophomore album, Fool’s Parade, in 2024; imagine Phish, but reined in by more conventional song structures and the limits of time and space.

66. Tunde Adebimpe – Magnetic. The lead singer of TV on the Radio and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew actor is working on his solo debut, due out on Sub Pop this year, and I believe this is his first-ever single as a solo artist. It’s very much in the “Wolf Like Me”/“Mercy” vein and I couldn’t be more pleased.

65. The Lemon Twigs – Rock On (Over and Over). The Lemon Twigs’ schtick does nothing for me but I concede that they do a credible impression of 1960s pop even if I don’t always love the results. There’s some Beach Boys in the vocal lines, sitting on a standard blues shuffle.

64. Nilüfer Yanya – Like I Say (I runaway). Yanya’s third album, My Method Actor, made a few best-of-2024 lists (including Paste’s, where it landed at #32), and after revisiting it at the end of the year I think I’ve underrated it, probably because her sound, with influences from her Turkish heritage, is so new I haven’t been able to pin it down.

63. clipping.– Run It. This hip-hop trio headed by Daveed Diggs (along with two producers) plans to release its fifth album some time in 2025, with this as the first single; Diggs often writes high-concept lyrics, and his delivery is outstanding, as he can use his voice almost as a percussion instrument with his rapid-fire rhyming.

62. Atlas Genius – Animals. I thought Atlas Genius had given up the ghost when my daughter, who loved their first two albums, happened to look them up while we were driving her down to college, only to see they’d just put out an album – their first in nine years. End of the Tunnel sounds just like their first two records, but perhaps a little lighter on the big hooks that made “If So,” “Trojans,” and “Molecules” hits. This was our favorite track by a wide margin.

61. Foxing – Barking. Foxing’s self-titled 2024 album was an ambitious, arduous listen with a lot of screaming and other harsh elements befitting the lyrics; I’ve said before it’s like hearing someone cracking up in album form. This was by far the most accessible track on the record, although even that probably undersells how haunting it is.

60. High Vis – Drop Me Out. High Vis blend a lot of styles in their music, but they’re a hardcore punk band at heart and that’s very evident here on the third single from their third album, Guided Tour. They twist the genre around by bringing in some dance elements and eschewing the most dissonant elements of hardcore.

59. English Teacher – R&B. English Teacher won this year’s Mercury Prize for their debut album This Could Be Texas; I was disappointed in the record after they placed songs on my top 100s for 2021 (“Good Grief”, not on the album) and “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” (which is), as it moves them further away from their rock and post-punk influences and into something more proggy in a way that weighs many of the songs down. This was probably my second-favorite track on the album, ahead of “Nearly Daffodils.”

58. Elbow – Good Blood Mexico City. The track I come back to the most from Elbow’s latest album Audio Vertigo is this swirling, ebullient song that if anything ends far too soon, with a huge guitar riff that comes in at the chorus. The song is apparently a tribute to the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.

57. Waxahatchee – Much Ado About Nothing. A non-album single Waxahatchee released in October, this track again features MJ Lenderman on guitar and fits very much with the vibe and style of Tiger Blood; it doesn’t appear that it was a bonus track or late cut but it certainly sounds like it could have come from the same sessions.

56. Mdou Moctar – Oh France. Moctar’s pyrotechnics on guitar are front and center of most of the tracks on Funeral for Justice, but this song opens with him noodling away before hitting that two-chord sequence that leads into each chorus. It’s a fireball of pure guitar energy and makes me want to flip on my amplifier and crank up the distortion pedal.

55. The Howl & The Hum – Same Mistake Twice. I wasn’t familiar with this British group before hearing this track, which was one of their first as a solo project for lead singer/songwriter Sam Griffiths after the other three members left the band in 2023 or so. He writes earnest, introspective lyrics over traditional indie-rock sounds driven by acoustic guitars … and yeah, this song does remind me a little of The Head and the Heart, which is kind of unfortunate in its way.

54. Lotte Gallagher – This Room. A singer-songwriter from Melbourne who is around 19 years old, Gallagher just released her debut EP, A Better Feeling, in October, featuring this outstanding indie-pop track that draws heavily on sounds from the ‘90s and the aughts.

53. Hundred Waters – Towers. Hundred Waters’ four-song EP, also called Towers, was the band’s first new music in seven years, so long that I thought they were done, especially since singer Nicole Miglis put out her first album as a solo artist this year. The four songs on Towers are actually unreleased tracks from their best album, The Moon Rang Like a Bell, so they have that same sound that I loved when the LP came out in 2015.

52. SPRINTS – Heavy. This Irish punk band released its first LP, Letter to Self, last January, featuring several songs they’d put out previously, including “Adore Adore Adore,” “Up and Comer,” and “Shadow of a Doubt.” This was the best of the new songs on the record – and I think it’s my favorite.

51. The Tubs – Freak Mode. When I first heard this track, I assumed the Tubs came from the Midwest, as their take on jangle-pop seemed so quintessentially American. They’re actually a Welsh band, started by two of the founding members of Joanna Gruesome after that group called it quits in 2017. The Tubs’ second album, Cotton Crown, is due out in March.

50. Oceanator – Lullaby. I love how this track starts out like it’s going to be a late-80s metal song with heavy, crunchy guitar riffs, before Elise Okusami brings in a vocal melody that sounds like it could come from a straight pop track. It’s the best track from her third LP, Everything is Love and Death.

49. La Sécurité – Detour. A Montréal-based art punk collective, La Sécurité channel early U.S. new wave/post-punk acts like Blondie, Television, and even Devo on thisbouncy, sparse track that is their first new music since their mid-2023 album Stay Safe came out.

48. The Weather Station – Window. Tamara Lindeman’s ever-changing project The Weather Station will release their seventh album, Humanhood, in about two weeks, featuring this track that echoes School of Seven Bells in the ethereal chorus.

47. DEADLETTER – Mere Mortal. DEADLETTER’s label describes them by evoking Gang of Four and Talking Heads, but I don’t see how you could hear this track without thinking of Madness, just with more prominent guitar work. It’s incredibly catchy and the lyrics feature some clever turns of phrase, such as “Like a set of crutches set aside for optimists to walk with.”

46. Alcest – Flamme Jumelle. As with Opeth’s latest, Alcest’s new album Les Chants de L’Aurore is best digested as a whole, and some of the best tracks include harsher elements that deter me from putting them on this list; “Flamme Junelle” is the most straightforward track on the album and has the most prominent melody lines in the vocals and the haunting guitar lick that follows the verses (and reminded me, oddly, of a similar lick from My Bloody Valentine).

45. Geese* – The Bonecracker Acetates. Fun fact: This isn’t Geese, the Brooklyn-based band, but that’s how it ended up on one of my auto-generated playlists on Spotify … and I assumed it was those guys, because they mess around constantly with genres and styles, and their singer sounds different on so many tracks. This is a Lancashire-based blues/jazz/math-rock trio that also plays with genres. (I added the asterisk to their name; I assume at some point we’ll get a Geese UK and a Geese US or something to distinguish them.) Anyway, this song is built on a deep, bluesy shuffle that absolutely rocks.

44. The Killers – Bright Lights. Released in concert (hah!) with their Vegas residency, this is certainly my favorite of their tracks since “Dying Breed” in 2020 and represents the best of the Killers in my opinion – it’s big, it’s anthemic, it’s a little bombastic, and it builds to a rousing chorus.

43. The Mysterines – Sink Ya Teeth. The best track from the Mysterines’ sophomore album Afraid of Tomorrows gets Lia Metcalfe’s smoky voice front and center, and has a faster tempo with more prominent rhythm guitars than most of the tracks on their debut record. I’m still waiting for word on whether the band is still a going concern after they abruptly cancelled their fall tour in late August; they’ve had no social media activity since then.

42. The Cure – Alone. “Alone” is the critical consensus best track on the Cure’s magnificent comeback album Songs of a Lost World – and I agree that it’s great, but I have it as the second-best. This is what many people think of when they think of the Cure: dark, depressing, tenebrous, synth-heavy, ambient. That’s one of their modes, but they run deeper than that.

41. Royel Otis – If Our Love Is Dead. Royel Otis are huge in their native Australia, winning the ARIA awards (their equivalent to the Grammys) for Best Group and Best Rock Album for their debut LP Pratts & Pain, along with earning a nomination for Album of the Year. I wasn’t a big fan; I didn’t hear much in the way of hooks or other memorable lines on the record, but this track, from the deluxe edition, is a banger – and yes, it has a great hook in the chorus.

40. The Darkness – I Hate Myself. The Darkness refuse to change and I love them for it. Their music is a glorious throwback to the late 1970s and early 1980s styles of glam rock and early metal (particularly the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, popularized by Iron Maiden & Judas Priest). This single, one of two they released at the end of the year off their upcoming album Dreams on Toast, is vintage Darkness, combing a fast-driving hard-rock riff with ridiculous lyrics.

39. Jorja Smith – Don’t Let Me Go. One of two new-old songs Smith released this year, first written a decade ago but never released until this year; the other, “Loving You,” is also strong, but this track is such a beautiful showcase for her voice.

38. The Chameleons – Where Are You? The Chameleons are one of the forgotten bands of the new wave/post-punk movement in the UK that came to dominate American pop charts between Thriller and the rise of hair metal and then rap in the end of the 1980s. They broke up before the decade ended, re-formed once to put out an album in 2001, and then broke up again; that remains their last full-length LP. They put out two EPs in 2024, with the promise of an album (Arctic Moon) some time in the near future. This song is up there with the best of their early output like “Swamp Thing” and a harbinger of good things if that full-length record ever appears.

37. Kid Kapichi – Can EU Hear Me? Kid Kapichi might be my favorite band among the hordes of descendants of early Arctic Monkeys, as they combine the same sense of melody and wry, witty lyrics with more direct punk influences. This song, mocking Brexit as it deserves to be mocked, has the wonderful line “You can’t just separate a tectonic plate, mate!”

36. Miles Kane – Fingerless Gloves. I believe this is the only instrumental track on the top 100, driven by a great guitar hook by Alex Turner’s former bandmate in the Last Shadow Puppets and the former leader of the Rascals.

35. Hinds feat. Beck – Boom Boom Back. Beck isn’t on this track a ton, and I’m not sure it’s any different for his presence other than perhaps the marketing value, but it’s one of Hinds’ best songs ever, with higher production values than they’ve had before and their signature intertwined vocals that are always just slightly off from each other in time.

34. Jack White – It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking). White’sback-to-basics rock album No Name starts off with a suite of ass-kicking guitar tracks, none better than this funky, bluesy number.

33. Pond – Neon River. Stay with this song through the oddly quiet beginning, as a huge guitar-driven chorus is about to hit you square in the face just before the one-minute mark.

32. The Libertines – Shiver. I’ve said plenty about All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, and I’ll say more about it later on this list, but “the last dreams of every dying soldier” is such a great opening line.

31. Kaiser Chiefs – Reasons to Stay Alive. I know Kaiser Chiefs’ very name probably sounds passé, but they’ve had quite a few great if totally ignored songs past their “I Predict a Riot”/“Ruby” days. Their latest album had two standouts, including this one, and I think Nile Rodgers’ presence on some of the tracks helped significantly.

30. Charly Bliss – Nineteen. You don’t hear me wax poetic about many straight piano ballads, but this song blew me away the first time I heard it and it still gives me goosebumps when it comes on. Charly Bliss ought to be superstars off this latest album, Forever.

29. The Smile – Eyes & Mouth. I want to like The Smile more than I do, but too much of their output has felt pretentious and noodly to me; this track has some incredible work from Tom Skinner on percussion and a simple but highly effective riff from Jonny Greenwood on guitar. I wish more of their songs sounded like this.

28. Doves – Renegade. Doves’ comeback single and their forthcoming album – their first since 2009’s Kingdom of Rust – feature singer/bassist Jimi Goodwin, but their tour hasn’t as he continues his recovery from substance abuse. This first single from Constellations for the Lonely has the broad, spacey, anthemic sound of their best work on The Last Broadcast and Lost Souls.

27. Griff – Tears For Fun. Griff’s full-length debut album Vertigo finally dropped this year,with two songs that made my top 100 last year in the title track and “Astronaut;” this is the best of the new material. She’s a legit pop star in her native U.K. already, and opened for some pretty big names this past year including Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter.

26. Courting – We Look Good Together (Big Words). My favorite track yet from this English dance-rock-fun band, whose last album New Last Name came out in January but will see a follow-up early in 2025.

25. Japandroids – Chicago. I talked a bit about Japandroids above; this song really captures their best sound, where they blend high energy with the sort of despair that struggles to find words. They went out with a bang.

24. Sam Fender – People Watching. The best Killers song of 2024 was by Sam Fender.

23. milk. – Don’t Miss It. This Dublin band has only released a handful of songs so far, but I’m already a big fan, and this is their best track yet – a swirling indie-pop gem with a guitar line that seems very familiar (early Cure?) and a singalong chorus.

22. Kaiser Chiefs – Beautiful Girl. If this song had come out in 2006, it would have been a huge alternative-radio hit, but as I said above, I think people just dismiss Kaiser Chiefs as an artifact of the aughts even though they can still churn out a banger like this one.

21. Phosphorescent – Revelator. The title track from Matthew Houck’s latest album, his first since 2018, is the best song he’s ever written, accordingto Houck himself. I agree. This sort of modern folk-rock often misses me because it’s too slow and gentle, but that one extra chord change in the chorus is just (chef’s kiss).

20. Yard Act – We Make Hits. It ain’t braggin’ if you can bring it. I don’t know if this was an actual hit anywhere, but it should have been.

19. Good Looks – Broken Body. A handful of readers tried to turn me on to Good Looks when the Austin rockers released their latest album, Lived Here for a While; I loved this song, obviously, but it was the only memorable track on the album for me, with a jangly guitar riff that repeats for most of the song and a catchy vocal melody right from the first line.

18. Ezra Collective feat. Yazmin Lacey – God Gave Me Feet For Dancing. We’re in the part of the list where it’s mostly songs that I think should have been everywhere in 2024, but this one in particular just seems like one everyone should love. It straddles the line between jazz and jazzy, with beautiful vocals from Lacey and a great couplet in the chorus (“God gave me feet for dancing/and that’s exactly what I”ll do”) that you should be seeing on T-shirts.

17. Katie Gavin – Aftertaste. Gavin is part of the indie-rock band MUNA, but her solo debut What a Relief goes in a completely different direction, leaning more into folk and country in a way that elevates her voice, never more so than in the chorus on this lovely song.

16. Michael Kiwanuka – Floating Parade. The best track on Kiwanuka’s latest album Small Changes calls back to classic R&B from the 1970s, and like the best tracks on his previous album, it’s driven by a prominent and complex bass line.

15. GIFT – Wish Me Away. This song evokes so much of the music that I loved in the 1990s that I was almost compelled to love it, although the two strong hooks – the opening guitar riff and the floating vocals in the chorus – didn’t hurt.

14. Humdrum – There And Back Again. One of the catchiest tracks of the year came from Loren Vanderbilt III’s debut album (as Humdrum), Every Heaven, powered by a guitar line that seems straight out of 1980s jangle-pop and a tremendous hook in the chorus.

13. Fontaines D.C. – Favourite. Fontaines D.C.’s latestalbum crosses all kinds of styles and genres, taking the band well away from their punk roots, and on this standout track they play it incredibly straight – it’s almost a pure pop song, and shows how far their songwriting has come in the last five years.

12. Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well. I was never much for Musgraves’s music before this latest album, also called Deeper Well, but her sound on this record steers more into folk and a little away from country while working with sparser arrangements and production.

11. The Cure – A Fragile Thing. My favorite song from Songs of a Lost World is this dramatic, textured track that still brings the band’s trademark despair but offsets it here with an ominous piano line and then brings in a surprising guitar solo from new member Reeves Gabriels.

10. Parsnip – The Light. Parsnip calls back to 1960s power popthroughout their new album, Behold, as on this two-minute earworm powered by the vocal lines in the verse.

9. Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice. The title track from my #2 album of 2024 is another showcase for Moctar’s guitar heroics, and the fury of the music matches the tone of the lyrics (translated as “Dear African leaders, hear my burning question/Why does your ear only heed France and America?”), as the Tuareg musician was touring in the U.S. just as the Nigerien government fell in 2023.

8. Gojira, Marina Viotti, & Victor Le Masne – Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!). The highlight of the 2024 Olympics for me was the performance of this song of the French Revolution, pairing the French metal icons Gojira with opera singer Viotti contributing a verse. Nothing could match the majesty and grandeur of the live performance, with Gojira’s members standing on balconies of the Court of Cassation while Viotti, dressed as a pirate, floated into the scene on a replica of the Liberté. The song earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance.

7. Elbow – Adriana Again. This track came out about seven months after Audio Vertigo and will be on a new EP coming out early this year; it ended up my favorite Elbow song of 2024, even ahead of the two album tracks on this list, because the chorus was stuck in my head for weeks.

6. Waxahatchee – 3 Sisters. Katie Crutchfield’s lyrics are powerful – “If you’re not living, then you’r? dying/Just a raw nerve satisfying” remains my favorite couplet on the album – but it’s how she delivers them that sets this track apart.

5. Nice Biscuit – Rain. I became a Nice Biscuit fan this year after finding this track from the Australian indie-rock band, off their second album, SOS. They draw heavily on psychedelic rock, which has been a signature part of a lot of Australian rock over the last five years, with some elements of shoegaze and other 1990s alternative music.

4. Bad Omens feat. Bob Vylan – TERMS & CONDITIONS. The best thing Bob Vylan did this year was the duo’s guest appearance on this Bad Omens track, which packs a hell of a punch in just 2:07, with two furious verses and one of the year’s most memorable choruses (“who they killing/when they makin’ a killing/conditions getting’ worse/ignore the terms and conditions”).

3. The Libertines – Oh Shit. This ended up becoming my favorite track on my favorite album of 2024, although it had some stiff competition in the 2023 single “Run Run Run” and this year’s “Shiver.” The lyrics here are fun if not as clever as some of the turns of phrases elsewhere on the album, and I have found myself walking around the house singing the chorus “Oh shit, oh shit/Let’s make some money/Just enough to get us by” more times than I can count.

2. Los Campesinos! – Feast of Tongues. Inmost years, this would have easily been the top track, but it had the bad fortune to run into the The Great Diss Track War of 2024. Los Campesinos! have probably gotten the most attention here for silly songs like “You! Me! Dancing!” and “Avocado Baby,” but this track is an anthem that should be blasted from phones and portable speakers at every antifascist protest for the next decade and beyond. The slow build and heavy drums give even more power to the couplet that closes the chorus: “When the black cloud comes, if one flame flickers/We will feast on the tongues of the last bootlickers.”

1. Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us. Could it really be anything else? I’ve never been a big fan of Kendrick’s output, especially not his earliest stuff, but this song is a tour de force – not just as a diss track, although it obviously is that, but as an ambitious and wide-reaching piece of music that blends genres and styles, and that also features some unbelievable wordplay. I’ll never hear a reference to the chord A minor the same way again – and neither will you.

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→ December 24, 2024
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Top 24 albums of 2024.

My gimmick of ranking a number of albums equal to the last two digits of the year lives once more, although I think I may just have to cap it at 25 next December before it gets out of hand. I had plenty of albums to consider in 2024, though, as it was a strong year for albums overall and for albums that might be 1-1 worthy in any year. Some honorable mentions include Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere (some brilliant music, but I just can’t do with that much of the death metal trappings), Childish Gambino – Bando Stone & the New World, Bob Vylan – Humble as the Sun, Katie Gavin – What a Relief, Parsnip – Behold, Japandroids – Fate & Alcohol.

You can see my previous year-end album rankings here: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and my top albums of the 2010s. My top 100 songs of 2024 will go up some time in the next week.

24. Griff – Vertigo

Griff is a pretty big deal in the U.K. and opened for Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift this year, although she hasn’t broken through at all in the U.S. yet. I’m generally not a fan of highly polished pop music, but her brand of sophisticated pop that isn’t overproduced and that lets her powerful alto voice shine is much more in line with my tastes. Highlights include the title track, “Astronaut,” and “Tears for Fun.”

23. Wheel – Charismatic Leaders

Wheel keeps changing personnel, with only lead singer/guitarist James Lascelles left from the original lineup, but the sound remains the same. This is heavy, crunchy prog metal, driven by powerful and intricate guitar work, but never deviates into blast beats or death growls that might destroy the intense vibe of the music. I don’t think this is their best album, but it’s so much in my wheelhouse (pun intended) that I still like it quite a bit. Highlights include “Empire,” “Submission,” and “Porcelain.”

22. Pond – Stung!

Pond are all over the place yet again, and I’m good with it because the highs are high enough. They’re an experimental rock band from Australia with a heavy emphasis on psychedelic rock, but are comfortable veering into funk-pop (“So Lo”) or a mélange of 1970s hard rock and 1960s Motown rhythms (“(I’m) Stung”), or just straight-up psychedelic rock that your parents might have heard at Woodstock (“Neon River”). The album is 14 songs and 54+ minutes long, so it does wear out its welcome a bit as it goes on, so it’s a little lower here than it would have been at midyear, when I had it on my unordered list over some other titles like Ride’s Interplay.

21. HINDS – Viva Hinds

HINDS went back to its original lineup, shedding two members to become a duo again, and their first album since 2020’s The Prettiest Curse is their most assured and polished record yet. HINDS has always thrived on a bit of chaos, the question of whether these two women can really even play their instruments or carry a decent tune, only to have them pull it together with a strong chorus or wry lyrics. On Viva Hinds, they’ve tightened things up across the board but haven’t lost that sense that they’re always on the verge of careening off the track. It’s lo-fi and proud of it, but now it’s not quite so rough around the edges. Standouts include “Boom Boom Back” (featuring Beck), “Mala Vista,” and “En Forma.”

20. Foxing – Foxing

Pitchfork summarized this album by calling it “Nearer My God’s evil genius twin,” and I can’t beat that. It’s wild and weird and ambitious and despairing, the sound of someone coming apart at the seams, with death metal-style screaming, soaring and haunting backing tracks, and despondent lyrics about mortality and isolation. It’s incredible, but also a difficult listen – and, as you might guess, it’s really hard to talk about individual tracks here, although if forced I’d highlight “Barking” and “Hell 99.”

19. GIFT – Illuminator

This Brooklyn psychedelic rock band put out an album in 2022, Momentary Presence, that was largely recorded by singer/guitarist TJ Freda during the early days of the pandemic, when getting the whole band together wasn’t possible, so while Illuminator is their second album, it’s also a first in some ways – and it shows. This is a stronger, more coherent record, and it’s full of bright hooks and a blend of psychedelia and shoegaze that manages to feel fresh even though those styles date back decades. Highlights include “Wish Me Away,” “Going in Circles,” “Later,” and “Light Runner.”

18. Elbow – Audio Vertigo

I admit to being very late to the party on Elbow; I didn’t love their most acclaimed album, The Seldom Seen Kid, winner of the 2008 Mercury Prize, and kind of wrote them off as a dream-pop band that was too chill to hold my attention. That was unfair to them and probably to my ears, as they’re way more ambitious and experimental than that, which showed on their tenth album, Audio Vertigo, a wide-ranging collection of songs that go from the mellower sounds of Kid to some aggressively uptempo and progressive tracks like my favorites on this record, “Lovers’ Leap” and “Good Blood Mexico City.”

17. Ride – Interplay

Ride hit their stride here on their third post-reunion album, with a more mature sound that blends the shoegaze of their first incarnation with mellower synth-pop sounds from their influences, producing a record that shimmers enough to stand apart even with the glut of neo-shoegaze releases that have flooded the scene in the last two years. Standout tracks include “Peace Sign,” “Last Frontier,” and “Portland Rocks.”

16. SPRINTS – Letter to Self

The long-awaited debut full-length from this Dublin punk-rock band did not disappoint, and it’s one of the most true-to-form punk albums of the last few years, with spare lyrics and repeated lines over fast-paced guitar lines that mostly get out in under 3½ minutes. (Unfortunately, lead guitarist Colm O’Reilly left the band abruptly in mid-May.) Highlights include “Heavy,” “Adore Adore Adore,” “Literary Mind,” and “Up and Comer.”

15. Kid Kapichi – There Goes the Neighborhood

They’re probably never quite going to match their incredible, no-skips debut album, but Kid Kapichi keeps churning out angry yet catchy working-class anthems with a touch of Alex Turner in the lyrics but a heavier, crunchier backdrop of guitars more inspired by punk and pub-rock. Highlights here include “Let’s Get to Work,” “Can EU Hear Me?,” and the wonderfully weird “Tamagotchi.”

14. Charly Bliss – Forever

This is the album I was waiting for Charly Bliss to make, after the promising but a little tepid Young Enough in 2019. It’s mostly sunny power-pop goodness, with bigger and better hooks than their previous albums, although the ballad “Nineteen” is a stunner on its own thanks to Eva Hendricks’s plaintive vocals. Other highlights include “Calling You Out” and “Back There Now.”

13. Mysterines – Afraid of Tomorrows

I was all about the Mysterines’ earliest singles and EPs, but was disappointed when their debut album, Reeling, saw them take the pedal off the gas, eschewing some of the heavier, snarling riffs and vocals that made me a fan of the band and specifically of singer/guitarist Lia Metcalfe. This is a much stronger, more confident record, and has far more hooks than its predecessor. Unfortunately, the band cancelled their fall/winter tour at the last minute with an ominous note saying it was “due to recent circumstances,” with no further word from the band since that message on August 31st. Highlights include “Sink Ya Teeth,” “Stray,” and “The Last Dance.”

12. Yard Act – Where’s My Utopia?

Yard Act’s first album, 2022’s The Overload, was my #3 record of that year, as they nailed their contemporary twist on the classic post-punk sounds of Gang of Four and the Fall; their sophomore album finds them expanding their musical palate, with more electronic and disco elements and less post-punk in the music, although that ethos remains in the lyrics. I preferred The Overload, but this one still has some bangers, including “We Make Hits,” “Dream Job,” and “When the Laughter Stops.”

11. Courting – New Last Name

Courting sound like they’re having a blast on just about every song they produce, and the result is that this album, their second full-length, explodes with joy and youthful exuberance throughout. They’ve dialed back a little of the weirdness from their debut, Guitar Music, but they’re still off-kilter in smaller ways, including some of the tones they use for the lead guitars and the often lo-fi production that contrasts with the electronic elements that seep in. Standout tracks include “Throw,” “Flex,” and “We Look Good Together (Big Words).”

10. The Cure – Songs of a Lost World

The Cure hadn’t released an album in 16 years, to the point where I assumed Robert Smith, now 65 years old, was probably done writing new material. Instead he surprised everyone (I think) with the band’s best record since their best album, Disintegration, came out 35 years ago. Songs of a Lost World is, of course, a dark and brooding record, with mortality a major theme throughout the album, anchored by the melancholy “Alone” and “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” although there’s more of a hint of the band’s prior melodic leanings in “A Fragile Thing,” my favorite track from the album.

9. Opeth – The Last Will and Testament

When I heard Opeth was bringing back the death growls for their first new album in five years, I had mixed feelings; their 2001 album Blackwater Park, which is a progressive death metal record that has those vocals, might be my favorite metal record of all time, but they had gone so long without visiting that style that I worried this would come off as gimmicky or outdated. That worry was misplaced – this is a fantastic, complex, rich record that doesn’t overdo the death growls and still puts their intricate guitarwork front and center. It’s a concept record where all tracks but the last one are just named with the section symbol and a number, and if you listen straight through there isn’t the typical variation between songs, although if I had to pick one or two to isolate as the best it would be “§1” and “§3.” It’s a return to form, certainly, even though I liked their prog phase for what it was.

8. Jack White – No Name

Man, I’ve been waiting for White to rock out like this for a decade, at least, and he finally delivered. This is a crunchy, loud, old-fashioned rock album. It grabs you by the throat from the start, with the first four tracks all guitar-driven riff-fests, and doesn’t really let go. It’s not a White Stripes album, but it might be the most similar thing he’s done to peak White Stripes since they broke up. Highlights include “That’s How I’m Feeling,” “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking,” and “Old Scratch Blues.”

7. Michael Kiwanuka – Small Changes

Kiwanuka won the Mercury Prize with his last album, KIWANUKA, which leaned more into 1970s R&B with a dash of funk, including some unbelievable bass lines. On his follow-up, Small Changes, he goes for a much more understated sound, with slower tempos and sparse production (by Danger Mouse and inflo) that put much greater emphasis on his vocals. He doesn’t swing for the fences anywhere on the record, in his lyrics or the music, producing something that’s a little less immediate but ends up quite lovely in its own way. Highlights include “Floating Parade,” “Lowdown (part i),” and the title track.

6. Waxahatchee – Tiger’s Blood

I loved Katie Crutchfield’s 2020 album Saint Cloud, and still think that’s the superior album of the two, but she is on a heck of a run right now with those LPs and her newest single “Much Ado About Nothing.” Tiger’s Blood is a slower, more tenebrous affair than the previous record, and I prefer her music when she incorporates a little more rock or folk and works less in the traditional country lane. There are some great hooks here, though, and her voice shines throughout, perhaps even more so on the more somber tracks that don’t appeal to me as much with their music. Highlights include “3 Sisters,” “Evil Spawn,” “Bored,” and “Crimes of the Heart.”

5. Ezra Collective – Dance, No One’s Watching

This is the latest example of a band winning the Mercury Prize for an album that didn’t do much for me, only for their follow-up to become one of my favorites of its year; the same thing happened with Sampha, to pick one other case. Ezra Collective is a jazz quintet that brings in a lot of Afrobeat and other African musical traditions, and on their latest album they leaned a little more into Afropop and even just mainstream pop sounds to create an album that’s a bit more accessible and certainly more full of hooks. Highlights include “God Gave Me Feet for Dancing,” “Ajala,” and “No One’s Watching Me.”

4. Fontaines D.C. – Romance

Fontaines D.C. went from punk to something between punk and post-punk between their second and third albums, but on their fourth album, they went in a totally different musical and lyrical direction – several directions, really, delivering one of the most unusual and ambitious records of the year. Vocalist Grian Chatten is still front and center with his commanding delivery, while they go from sheer pop beauty on “Favourite” to something like nu-metal on “Starburster” to a bluesy, funky groove on “Death Kink.” There are elements of shoegaze, nods to rap, and still some vestiges of their punk origins. It doesn’t always work, but they absolutely went for it, and few bands have that kind of vision or musical courage.

3. Alcest – Les chantes de l’aurore

Alcest started out as a death-metal project for the musician who goes by Neige, then incorporated shoegaze sounds to create something called “blackgaze” that was later co-opted by Deafheaven (with whom Neige has worked), after which Alcest added a second member and released an album that was all shoegaze with no metal. They’ve varied their mix of genres on subsequent albums, but this latest one gets the balance right, as they did on 2016’s incredible Kodama. The album is primarily heavy shoegaze, with some very infrequent screamed vocals deeper in the mix, so the wall-of-guitars sound is really the emphasis. Highlights include “Flamme Junelle,” “Komorebi,” and “L’envol.”

2. Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice

Hailing from Niger, a country that has been torn by political strife including a military coup this time last year, Moctar blends Tuareg music with western rock styles, particularly psychedelic rock and blues rock, crafting indelible guitar riffs and furious solos beneath the protest lyrics (sung in his native language, Tamasheq) that have boosted his popularity in the Sahel. I caught the last show of Moctar’s U.S. tour, at Union Transfer in Philly, and he blew the doors off the place, with incredible shredding and extended jams for several of the songs he played, including jumping into the crowd for his final guitar solo. Highlights include the title track, “Imouhar,” and “Oh France.”

1. The Libertines – All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade

I ended up flipping this with Funeral for Justice because this is by far the album I came back to the most this year; if I’m pretending to be a professional critic, I probably put Mdou Moctar first, but the fact is this was my favorite record of 2024 and nothing else was close. The likely lads came back better than ever, with a slew of intoxicating and surprisingly upbeat tracks – ”Oh Shit,” “Run Run Run,” “Shiver,” and “Night of the Hunter” – that still bear that clear Doherty/Barât sound, just with better production and less breaking and entering. That this album exists at all might itself be a wonderful gift to their fans; that it’s this good is musical miracle.

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→ December 22, 2024
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Top 20 board games of 2024, part two.

My annual post of the top 10 games of the year is now up over at Paste. Compiling that list has gotten harder each year, because I play more new games in a calendar year than before, and because there are more games coming out each year – good and less good. I started out with 17 possible titles for the top ten, cut it down for Paste, and then decided to throw together a second post here with the next ten. I’ll just reiterate that there are also games that came out in 2024 that I didn’t play but that might make the list based on what other people have said about them, what I’ve seen, and what the response and ratings are for the games on Boardgamegeek.

11. Harmonies

This might have made my top ten if I’d ever played the physical version, but I’ve only played it on Board Game Arena, and I think I really need to see the physical components. It’s a simple game with tight, medium-complex scoring, taking the general gist of Calico and making it somehow a little more forgiving without taking away what makes Calico good. On each turn, you take all three colored tokens from one spot on the board, and then place each of them on to spots on your own little map of hex tiles, with each color representing a different terrain type with its own placement and scoring rules. You can also select a new scoring card if you have room, with a maximum of four at any time, although once you fill all the spots on any scoring card you can set it aside and draw a new one. The game continues until someone has two or fewer empty hexes remaining. I’m also not 100% sold that all of the starter scoring cards are balanced, but that aside, it’s a wonderful thinker of a game, and really easy to learn – just hard to play well.

12. Dracula vs. Van Helsing

A great asymmetrical two-player game where the players play with the same deck of four colors with cards numbered 1-8 but have different goals: Dracula wants to kill four humans in any of the board’s five districts, while Van Helsing wants to drain all of Dracula’s hit points before that happens. To set up, each player draws five cards and lays them on their side of each of the five regions in the order in which they were drawn. Each number has a specific power that activates when you discard it, so on your turn, you’ll draw one card and either replace a card in front of you (discarding and activating that one) or discard the newly drawn one (activating that). Once the discard pile has at least six cards in it, either player can choose to end the round, giving their opponent another turn, or end it immediately by discarding a value-8 card. It’s surprisingly balanced for its asymmetry, and extremely tense like a sudden-death overtime because the game can end at any time. (Full review)

13. Harvest

A reworking of a 2017 game published by the now-defunct Tasty Minstrel Games, Harvest streamlined some rules and made the boards and components much nicer while retaining the “kinder Agricola” vibe. You’ll place three workers in each of the game’s four rounds, gathering and planting seeds, collecting water and compost, tending plants, and harvesting them, while also clearing more land and building buildings for powers and points. The core of the game is in the plants, but there are multiple ways to win here; you can focus on certain plants over others, or go heavy on buildings, and so on. It’s not as punishing as Agricola, which has a huge penalty if you can’t feed all of your family members at the end of certain rounds, but you can still end up knee-deep in compost if you don’t manager your resources well. (Buy it here)

14. Gnome Hollow

Gnome Hollow was a huge hit at Gen Con with its bright, colorful components and combo of route-building and set collection. You draw and place two hexagonal tiles from the market on every turn, placing them on the map all players are building in the center of the table, and then move one of your two gnome workers to take an action – claiming a path in progress, selling mushrooms at the market, gathering a flower, or visiting a signpost to grab some extra mushrooms. When you complete a path, you get the mushrooms shown on the path, and then you move one of your path tokens on your board, gaining a bonus if the path covers 5 to 7 tiles, and scoring more points at game-end the more ring tokens you’ve moved. The scoring is extremely simple, and there’s plenty of interaction on the map and in the competition for the best spaces at the mushroom market. It’s a very solid game across the board, pun intended. (Buy it here; full review coming in January.)

15. Castle Combo

I find it hard to separate this game entirely from Faraway, as they both came from the same US publisher/distributor (Pandasaurus) in almost exactly the same box size with similar cartoonish art. The designers aren’t the same, and the games don’t have a ton in common other than one trait – you will play cards early that will determine your card choices later on, because they only pay out if you get the right cards and place them the right way. You’re all building a 3×3 grid of cards, selecting from two rows, and on your turn you can only select one of the three cards in the row where the Messenger sits. You can pay a key to move him or to refresh the cards in the row. You pay the price in gold to buy a card and then place it wherever you want, usually getting some immediate return in gold or keys (with some other possibilities), and then earning points at game-end from that card based on what else is in its row or column or just your whole tableau. It’s just 9 turns and managing your resources while ensuring you snag the card you need keeps the game tense right to the last turn. These two designers have a very promising new game, Zenith, coming out next year from the company that published the next game on this list. (Buy it here)

16. Captain Flip

The first release from PlayPunk, the new publishing imprint from designer Antoine Bauza (7 Wonders, Tokaido) and Thomas Provoost (co-founder of the publisher Repos), Captain Flip is a light family game where players try to fill their pirate ships with different crew tiles. Your ship has five columns of varying sizes, anywhere from one to five spaces high, and the powers or rewards of tiles you place often depend on what else is in that row or column. If you don’t like the crew member on the tile you drew, you can flip it to the other side, but then you have to play that one, even if it might hurt you to do so. One character, the Gunner, gets you 5 coins (points) when you play it, but if you have to place your third Gunner, you lose immediately. It was one of the three finalists for this year’s Spiel des Jahres, losing out to Sky Team. (Buy it here)

17. Fairy Ring

This might deserve to be a little higher but I need to get more plays in before deciding. It is a really clever family-level game that blew away my expectations in terms of its strategic depth – the rules are simple, but you can play it pretty seriously regardless of your age. Players play mushroom cards to the area (village) in front of them, stacking them by type if you wish, and then moving their fairies around the table based on the number on the card they just played, passing through all players’ villages and taking points from the card on which they land. If your fairy ends up on one of your own mushrooms, you score based on the mushroom type. If it ends up on another player’s mushroom, that player gets points, and you only score if you have at least one of the same mushroom type in your village. The game has two seasons with different decks, bringing higher numbers in the second deck. Each season has six rounds, so you get just twelve rounds in total, limiting the game time. The big strategic question here is how to set up your village to maximize your points without handing too much to your opponents, with all the information out for players to see, so everyone can follow that plan if they wish. (Buy it here)

18. Seers Catalog

Seers Catalog is a card-shedding game where you play tricks to try to get rid of most of your cards – someone objected to me calling this a “trick-taking” game because you don’t take the tricks, but you do play them, so sue me – but not all of them. If you have five or fewer cards remaining in your hand at the end of the round, you gain points equal to the face value of the lowest card in your hand. Then all players lose 1 point per card in their hands. The catch is that once you’ve got 5 cards or fewer left, you can’t pass during a trick – you have to play if at all possible, so someone else can potentially bait you into playing your last card. There are two ‘artifact’ cards with 0 value (mostly) but special powers that spice up each game as well. Seers Catalog is also quite unusual for a trick-playing game in that it works well with two players. (Full review)

19. Pixies

Designer Johannes Goupy made my top 10 with Faraway and also designed 2023’s very solid Rauha and the complex game From the Moon (which I haven’t played), and he’s here as well with this wonderful small-box game for just about all ages – maybe 7 and up, to put an actual limit on it. The whole game is a deck of cards in four colors, numbered 1 through 9, and you can only play a card face-up to its matching space in your 3×3 tableau. If you can’t or don’t want to do so, you can flip the card face-down and put it anywhere. If you place a card in its proper space on top of a face-down card, or a space that already has a card of that number in it, it’s “validated” and scores its face value. You also score the net of the various positive and negative symbols on all of your face-up cards, and score for the largest contiguous area of one color. You play four rounds, one for each season, with the area bonus increasing in each round. The card-drafting mechanic (very similar to Faraway’s) gives you some real player interaction, too. (Full review)

20. Life in Reterra

Earth is on the rebound, as some unstated disaster has led to a world where humanity has to start over. In Life in Reterra (get it? it took me way too long), players place terrain tiles with various symbols on them that allow the placement of citizens, relic tokens, or buildings, the last of which can give you additional powers or gain you extra points. The real strength of Life in Reterra is its flexibility: in every game, you choose five buildings to use, taking one of the three recommended sets or just mixing and matching as you please, as long as you match all five required building shapes. Once everyone has filled their 4×4 grid, you score. It’s got a longer runway with the various building tiles’ rules, but the game play itself is very quick. (Full review)

Honorable mentions: Courtisans (full review), River of Gold, Parks Roll & Hike (full review).

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→ December 18, 2024
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Zoomies.

Zoomies is a new Kingdomino-like game of tile-laying with a cutesy puppies theme that underscores this game’s main appeal to kids. It’s very light and you only have eight turns in the entire game, but there isn’t a whole lot of opportunity for strategy within it, making it a bit of a chore for the adults to play.

In Zoomies, players will place domino-like tiles that have two squares on them showing any of five different dog types, with some squares also bearing special symbols for bones or for dogs with zoomies. (If you’re unfamiliar with this phenomenon, it’s when a dog gets so excited by something they run around like crazy for a minute or two to get the energy out. My dog does this pretty much any time someone comes home from an absence of more than an hour.) You must place a tile so that at least one square on it matches an adjacent tile already on the shared tableau, after which you get to place one of your eight scoring tokens on the tile.

There are four varieties of scoring tokens, which are two-sided, so you don’t have to use all four kinds over the course of a single game. The Leader token lets you claim a “pack” of contiguous squares of the same dog type (and background color), scoring one point for every dog within the pack at the end of the game. The Bones token gives you two points for every dog within that pack (which may have a Leader token on it, even from another player) with the bones symbol on it. The Frens token points to an adjacent dog type, and scores you two points for every dog of that other breed that touches the pack where the Frens token sits. The Zoomies token scores you an escalating number of points based on how many adjacent dogs of any breed have the zoomies icon on it, up to 15 for a group of 5 such squares.

You must place a tile and a token on every turn, so the game only lasts eight rounds, by which point the tableau takes up a lot of the table, anyway. Because the tokens are two-sided – Leader/Zoomies and Bones/Frens – you do have an added decision to make when choosing a token to place, since it eliminates the chance of using the other side in the future. The opportunities for any kind of planning are very limited, however, and you usually don’t have many options on your turn that make any sense. My stepdaughters liked the theme, but the older one seemed to lose interest in the game as it went along, and my wife and I both agreed the gameplay was thin. Depending on who’s playing, I think I’d rather play Kingdomino or the excellent kids’ version, Dragomino.

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→ December 10, 2024
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The Gang.

I admit I was pretty skeptical when I heard about The Gang, a new small-box game that was described to me as “cooperative poker.” It is that, but it works far better than I expected it to.

The Gang is based specifically on Texas Hold ‘Em, where players begin with two cards in their hand (pocket cards) that other players can’t see, and then five cards are revealed in three stages, first three (the flop), then one more (the turn), and then the last one (the river). In actual poker, players bet after each of these stages, but nothing is resolved until after all five cards are out and the betting has concluded. In the Gang, the players try to determine the ranking of all players’ best hands, best to worst, after the river card is flipped, but must not communicate at all about what’s in their hands. The only communication comes by taking the ranking tokens after each step – so, for example, if after the flop, your best hand is nine-high (which is terrible), you would probably grab the one-star token for that round, which is the lowest one. Someone else might try to take it as well, so you have to decide whether to let them have it or whether to swipe it from them as a way of signalling that, hey, your hand really sucks. You can never have more than one of those ranking tokens in front of you, and you can’t put a token in front of someone else – only in front of yourself or back to the middle of the table.

There are four sets of those tokens, one set for each stage, but you only ‘score’ the set for after the river. If all players have the correct ranking tokens based on their best possible hand, your team has completed the challenge and gets to flip a heist card; if any player is out of ranking order, you have triggered the alarm and flip one of those cards instead. You all play a best-of-five, so if you get three heist cards before you trigger three alarms, you win the game.

The game also comes with various cards to increase the difficulty or change some of the rules, like giving each player a specific power or requiring you to win in four rather than five. I understand why these exist, since otherwise the entire game is a regular deck of playing cards and the 16 tokens, but I don’t think it needs them. It just overcomplicates things without making the game any more interesting. I might feel better if I played this a few dozen times and maybe got tired of it, but there are just so many possible combinations from a deck of 52 cards that I think it’s got a lot of legs.

The one caveat I would offer is one the tutorial app acknowledges – the game plays 3 to 6, but with only 3 players, it’s just not that challenging. There are only six possible configurations of tokens/rankings with three players, so you could accidentally get it right now and then, and that takes a good bit of the fun away. I played with 4 and 5 and it was appropriately difficult, winnable but not easily so, and that meant that when we nailed it, everyone got that positive feeling from a job well done. We had one people where we had three people whose hands were separated by just four cards – something like queen high, jack high, nine high – and we got it right. That was incredibly satisfying. The group had a 12-year-old and an 8-year-old, and both were able to grasp the concept and the scoring with the help of the reference cards (which just shows the hierarchy of the values of possible hands), although the 8-year-old struggled a little bit with the nuance of being, say, second-highest – if he saw he had a good hand, he wanted the top token. I imagine that will smooth out with more plays.

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→ December 4, 2024
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Orbital.

Samantha Harvey’s Orbital was a surprise winner of the Booker Prize in 2024, beating the favored Percival Everett’s James (which won the National Book Award a week later), and coming in as the second-shortest book to ever win the Booker, just a few pages longer than Penelope Lively’s Offshore. I can confirm that the book is, indeed, short. I am a bit flummoxed at what the judges saw here, though.

Orbital takes place on the International Space Station and follows six astronauts, all from different countries, as they make many trips around the planet while living on the apparatus. The characters have first names and national origins, but very little else to distinguish them, just a breadcrumb of backstory here or there and some broad brush strokes like one being religious and another secular. The book lacks a single narrative throughline, instead rolling along with the station and tracking smaller movements – a bit of dialogue, a look at space, a memory from Earth – in language that can be lyrical but also insubstantial.

There is nothing to grab hold of in Orbital, neither plot nor character. I could not tell you a single character’s name from the book. I could barely tell you anything interesting details about any character, even without needing to attach them to specific people. There are passages that feel more tangible, like one character’s grieving over her mother’s death while she’s on the station, and another’s memory of a visit to a fishing village that is threatened by a typhoon as they fly uselessly overhead, but they sit on top of the rest of the book; there is nothing to integrate them, such as using them to inform the characters, with anything else that transpires.

The relative paucity of details around the characters creates a sense that they are less individuals than parts of a collective one, which could be a metaphor for humanity as a whole, and the way that these astronauts cooperate in space would then be a contrast to the way their home countries fall into conflict on terra firma. (After some diplomatic brouhaha, some astronauts aren’t supposed to use the bathrooms in rival nations’ parts of the station.) That’s a tricky thing to do if you put any sort of national properties into the characters, but the downside of Harvey’s approach is that she combines six entities painted with faint colors and the resulting whole just looks grey.

There was one moment in Orbital that did stick with me, as it provoked the only real emotional reaction I had to the novel. The Russian cosmonaut likes to play with a ham radio and talk to random people as the station orbits, which also means the conversations can’t last very long. The scene is whimsical and wistful, a symbol of the connections we can make with anybody, the endless curiosity of people everywhere, and the fleeting nature of those connections and our very existence. I wish Harvey had made all of Orbital out of that.

Next up: I’m about 2/3 of the way through Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors, winner of this year’s Nebula Award for Best Novel.

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