The Purple Bird, recorded in Nashville, is one of his most committed forays into the genre — musically of a piece with the rich, twinkling chops of previous releases like Greatest Palace Music and The Best Troubadour.

The old version violently rejected oppression, the new one quietly totes up the damages. Both are valid approaches, and both are musically satisfying.

This one of the best releases of 2024 and one of the best in Blackshaw’s uniformly excellent catalog. Truly, well worth the wait.

The team of Weitz and Shaw have a camaraderie and collaborative spirit that shine through in these recordings, and the individual tracks taken together reveal multiple facets of the pair’s friendship. Working apart, but spiritually together, these two reflect platonic love in musical form.

These songs are gently, buoyantly lovely, littered with domestic imagery but canted into strange angles.

FACS has been a monster band for a while. Wish Defense may be their best so far.

The slow buildup provides a sense of valediction, with distorted layers reminding us of Mogwai’s love of volume, only to have a slow fade cap things off. The Bad Fire is a satisfying listen from disc to double disc.

Seed of a Seed is a pretty record, and you can get lost in that but not for long. Heynderickx is always pulling you up short, interposing a clever line or a surprising sonic texture that upends expectations. A lot of folky, singer-songwriter records provide a bit of respite, but Seed of a Seed is too prickly and interesting for that.

It affords Van Etten the space to really lean into the role of frontwoman, at times reaching into an almost operatic register. It’s a dramatic and unexpected new chapter for an artist who is rarely less than compelling.

The songs won’t grab you or pull your hair. They’re barely touching you. They won’t even acknowledge that you’re there. And yet, they can sink deep into your cortex over time, haunting you like the nightmares you can’t remember and the words you wanted to write down but that fade completely as you open your eyes.

Whether it’s the lengthier, arpeggiating climaxes of “Gene Pool” or the shorter, more reflective burbles of “Burst of Laughter,” it feels like they haven’t lost a step.

The second-hand Buzzcocks reference hints at this bomb-throwing ensemble’s secret strength: the tunes. Even at its most abrasive and agitated, Delivery punches with hooks.

Their 20th album, an absolute hoot of a disc that shows no signs of age or frailty.

The album is lovely. The band as currently constituted has chops, and mixes highly polished songwriting and arrangements with select extemporizations.

Some of the songs feel like echoes of one another, such as “Diver” revisiting the water imagery of the opener, and short instrumental interludes “Made of Mist” and “Resolve” create an uninterrupted sense of flow. There’s an expansion of perception in “Night Picture,” which feels akin to Phil Elverum’s work as Mount Eerie.

The mixture of the mundane and the otherworldly is powerful. The writing is exceptionally good. You probably forgot about The The (I did), but it’s time to take notice again.

Jamming is an intrinsic part of Nap Eyes’ aesthetic, but the songs that are tightened up provide welcome contrast. Neon Gate is a varied and satisfying recording.

The Innocence Mission delivers its tunes with an uncalculated freshness, still innocent, even now.

If nothing else, it leaves you receptive for the bruised and ravaged beauty of “meet me under the ruins,” as radiant as a Jack Rose raga, and a fitting elegy for all that precedes it.

As much as the songs with the band click, “Earthsong,” which features just voice and acoustic guitar, is moving. While I hope that she continues to make vibrant music with others, Jennifer Castle can reveal vulnerability, eloquence and imagination all by herself.

Parker gets plenty of cred for the production acumen he has exercised with Tortoise and the New Breed; his work with the ETA IVtet affirms his mastery of making music that feels and is felt in real time.

The Cure emerged from the studio with a grand late-era statement, full of maturity and melancholy, but with an appropriate sort of wisdom.

It’s a languorous, barely moving, fever dream of sustained organ tones and ritual chants, but it creates its own world if you let it.

The result is a record is suffused with grief without ever drowning in it (or, for the most part, addressing it directly in the lyrics even when you can parse them out).

Revelator is an exhausting listen in the best sense of the term. Skip at your own risk: Far from hip-hop homework, Elucid’s Revelator is a port of call in this storm, a howling document from the edge, muons in which we are all tomographers.

Even more than Luminol, No Depression in Heaven builds up such a heady and consistent ambience that you can relax into it like a warm bath.

Now we have Mount Eerie’s 26-track, 81-minute Night Palace, which unites the many facets of Phil Elverum’s musical preoccupations into a raw, artful, sprawling double album. Unwieldy as it is, there are so many wonderful moments across the track list that it pays dividends to invest the time.

If G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! frequently felt like the massive, sweeping motions of some sort of gestalt entity, it’s fitting that things here feel fractured at times, if no less cohesive.

It’s awful and overwhelmingly loud — but there’s also a soaring quality to the melody that establishes itself amid the clangor and noise. That’s the curious, nearly undecidable quality in The Crying Out of Things. It’s full of ugly volume and rage. But there is a terrible beauty in many of the tracks, an affect that expands underneath the ugliness.

Atkinson, like other environmentally conscious composers such as John Luther Adams, Raven Chacon, and Liza Lim, creates an ecology when they create a piece, an environment they populate with sonic significations for their own meditation, and more so for our beleaguered world, its remaining beauty, and its tiny place in the universe. A favorite of 2024.

If the first third of the record was maybe a modernized version of County Records, and the middle third was Windham Hill, the final third is decidedly ECM territory, fusion with a folk twist, because that fingerstyle mastery is omnipresent. Hearing Williams’ fuzzed out lead on “Dream Lake” will send chills down your spine, it is completely inspirational musicianship.

Callahan’s set may have erred on the heavy side of recent material (as much of this tour did), but he was even-handed in what he cut and ruthless in how he ordered what was left; only opener “First Bird” is left untouched in its original place. He would’ve been fine leaving the sequence as he played it, frankly, but Resuscitate! sharpens Callahan’s considerate cowboy demeanor even whilst songs expand in length and narrative moments stretch out in relatively small spaces, extending into stories that meander, convoluted and beautiful as any bedtime story.

“Six Six Seven (Monsieur Faux Pas)” is all rushing, clambering, beat-wrecked chaos (and very early Liars), while the single “Strawberry Hill” fills well established structures with pastel colors, a pop song melting into dream state. You could fit this latter song onto an Animal Collective-family album, Avey Tare or Panda Bear, possibly.

The Hard Quartet is one of my favorite recordings of the year, a strong collection of songs made by established artists who refuse to be hemmed in by anyone’s expectations.

The results are two fistfuls of noise-rock at least as potent lyrically as anything on God’s Country and arguably harder musically, for a few reasons.

Messy, expansive, full of contradictions, sharp turns, and a joie de vivre that wants to experience and express everything at once. They are also endlessly inventive and engaging, their effortless melding of styles held together by glorious harmony and complete assurance.

I do know that there’s a lot to love about Cutouts, and it’s certainly a more substantive release than its title might suggest — that these are the cutting room–floor tracks from the Wall of Eyes sessions. Far from it: overall, this is a more colorful and dynamic record.

File this one alongside Fabulous Muscles, Angel Guts: Red Classroom and Forget as one of Xiu Xiu’s most gratifying albums.

As always, the beauty of Gendron’s music feels both hard fought and carefully wrought, something worth sharing and protecting.

It’s hard to tell if these songs celebrate youth and beauty or mourn it from a remove; there’s a bit of both in every track. And indeed, that combination of surface and undercurrent, rave-up and desolation, dance beat and aria, is what makes Orchestra Hits so compelling.

Viewfinder works because of the way it sounds, at times bright and harsh as neon, at others soft and ambiguous and elusive. You may not be able to discern exactly what it means, but the colors are bright, the edges sharp and the turns often surprising.

Prog may still have its detractors, but This is BASIC is a case study in why it deserves another look.

The shorter songs that compose the remainder of American Standard are just as uncompromising, and they also foreground the band’s gift for coupling a caustic, aggro sensibility with compelling melodic structures. Rarely has noise rock been so tuneful, and then also so awfully punishing.

The doomed romance, the ragged heartful-ness, the underlying shimmer of cleverness, that’s one element that makes Lenderman’s fourth full-length studio album so special. The other is the wrecking ball arrangements, that turn loose squalls of feedback addled electric guitar amid hazy swoons of strings. .... It never feels like Lenderman is trying to[o] hard. It’s like it’s all natural, all heartfelt, all direct from him to you, except it’s not. It’s more interesting than that.

It [“Walk Through Fire”] jives together with machine-like precision and fluid grace. The rest of the EP is pretty good, too.

Caught between abandon and damming the stream of consciousness, Hopkins’ work seems to require a commitment from the listener that is not always reciprocated. It’s often beautiful passages feel somehow manipulative. But, when he lets loose, Ritual becomes, for 13 minutes, extraordinary.

The music has a spaciousness to match the timeline: jangling steel strings slide over martial drums while fuzzy synthesizers burst and Rigby repeats the title phrase. She sounds both invigorated and uneasy; a little bit triumphant and a little bit daunted by her arrival.

A pure, dream-like quality hovers around these tunes. The subject matter is, perhaps, a touch more mature than it was. Friendships gone fallow, loved ones missing, roads not taken, the bittersweet recognition that life is what it is now and will likely continue that way—the songs consider midlife with clarity and a little sadness but not much turmoil.

Whatever we think of Jung’s psychoanalysis, it’s interesting to hear a hardcore record driven by such relatively hifalutin concepts. And it’s excellent to have more music from Gel, a band that continues to grow and make some of the best punk of the decade thus far.

This is a Red Bull of an album, a total kick in short bursts but likely a strain on your heart in larger doses.

Once again, the band demonstrates mastery both of crafting hooks and building compelling long form pieces.

The Metallica-aping opening riff and punching electronics-assisted kick of the title-track tell of new territory setting you up for something much larger-sounding than any of the previous three records, but that’s aided by a refined, popcentric approach.

You can really feel that extra decade-plus in the structures, songwriting, and sonics of All Hell, but the polish and compositional sophistication here don’t belie a lack of fire.

Susanna’s voice is a reassuring constant, an effortless, uninflected carrier of melody. She has her diva-ish moments, but mostly lets the notes assemble out of air and fog, coalescing with a purity that seems not quite human. .... Susanna’s earlier works distilled agitated work into timeless, edgeless serenity, but now her arrangements fuel the music with urgency.

When “Upper Ferntree Gully” takes off, it’s to the sort of easy midtempo riffs that once made Billy Corgan listenable, with a soupçon of Mascis noise thrown in for good measure as Smit builds an intergenerational metaphor from a kangaroo pouch. It sets the scene for an album of sharp twists that owes its success to the personality and wit of Smit’s omnivore genre jigsawing.

That’s Realistic IX in a nutshell: it brings both the burn and the balm.

It’s not often that music this loud and distorted can break your heart.

There is an aura of immanence, of something more than banjo, bass and drums, that infuses these mystic tracks. Many things are possible, too, when you put together three such capable player and give them time and space to transcend themselves.

With this latest liveliness, Pollard and company continue that relentless growth. And remember, they’re leaving the breathing space for you: no one said they needed it.

“Sublime Eternal Love” closes the album with an affirming major progression. The vocal overlaps are still there, but Chrystabell’s diction is more distinct, ending a recording of dark pathways moving towards an imagery of endless light.

This two-disc set capture the duo in full-psyched out freak mode, 18 tracks of spiraling, tightly harmonized, punchily played guitar pop that the two brothers have been holding onto since COVID bollixed up a post-Beyond the Door tour in 2020.

In the end, it feels wrong to call this album a solo record, since it is defined and elevated by the people Goddard works with. He’s been adventurous in seeking out partners, choosing some familiar ones and some that no one would have predicted, and the risks, especially, have paid off.

Fussell is still a captivating figure singing by himself with a guitar; I wouldn’t want to see his front porch abandoned. However, this album’s changes in approach and material invariably work. These and the talents of his collaborators help When I’m Called to be one of Fussell’s strongest recordings to date.

Vertigo is another compelling chapter in their evolution.

La Luz takes a big day-glo colored leap in News of the Universe, expanding a spooky, surf-rocking, girl-group sound into psychedelic overload. This is a full-on, trippy symphony, evoking baroque late Beatles, Os Mutantes and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.

My Light My Destroyer is a transformational record for Jenkins. However daunting the path forward may seem, she has a lot to say as she overcomes successive challenges.

An album on which the odd lyrical infelicities barely detract the duo’s breezy musical confections. Brijean still reside in a pastel world but the shades of gray have become harder to ignore and Macro is a homeopathic remedy which works best when they make you believe.

Both performances are lovely and odd (and they are rendered distinct by flourishes from other musicians recruited into the sessions: Zak Riles’ unobtrusive banjo picking in “Hear the Children Sing,” Ned Oldham’s gentle, pellucid electric guitar in “The Evidence”). But it’s Oldham’s singing and Higgs’ lyrics that make Hear the Children Sing the Evidence so memorably discomfiting.

Though there are no weak links in the 10-song, 30-minute track list, Cohen tucks the album’s finest moment midway into the second half. “Night or Day” is such a catchy, perfectly executed song that it deftly snaps everything into focus, prompting the realization of just how odd and sneakily exploratory Paint a Room can be.

Eiko Ishibashi’s soundtrack skilfully and subtly complements the film’s themes, capturing stillness, beauty, sorrow and uncertainty in such a way that the album succeeds on its own terms as a nuanced listening experience.

At various points during the second half, the music threatens to take off into a more fiery, chaotic realm, only to recede into questioning placidity. Much like the rest of the music on this album, it goes nowhere and everywhere all at once, creating and re-creating a space that feels intimidatingly boundless.

Yes, this is a heavy album, but luxuriously so. It’s music that stares death in the face and instead of running, hunkers down and gets comfortable.

Listeners wanting a somewhat more traditional metal record experience may find those tactics more comfortable to engage. Listeners wanting a SUMAC record will be happy to know that the band’s tendencies toward intuitive sonic conflagration are not entirely domesticated. .... Harsh, but beautiful. Bruising, but full of care. It’s a really good record.

As Cunningham pans across the channels, his sound design strikes the ears and creates synaptic leaps that draw pull the listener’s focus. Many of constituents will be familiar to fans of Boards of Canada, Two Lone Swordsmen and Aphex Twin and if the early tracks of Statik sound more challenging in their discordances, you will feel borne along by the idiosyncratic juxtapositions Cunningham creates.

The Decemberists fill the album to overflowing with sharp, catchy songs, Colin Meloy’s idiosyncratic bookishness well-turned for emotional resonance without relinquishing energy or wit

In Hex’s 34 minutes Mckiel ventures far and wide, but always brings you back to the strangeness of seeing something familiar in a new light, wondering at the possibilities.

“Fences” is a fine arrangement, with layered backing vocals and keyboards. While Houck often hews close to indie-rock, one of the best songs on Revelator is “All the Same,” a traditional sounding country ballad with pedal steel and a beery vocal. “Impossible House” also channels country of a more recent sort, and Houck’s often understated singing takes on a sense of urgency.

Deerhoof fans won’t be surprised by the sound here — it plays much like you’d expect a side project from the band to do — but they will likely be taken by Saunier’s multi-instrumental prowess and songwriting glee. .... He’s witty and funny and while some of these lyrics may push toward the absurd, there’s a deep seriousness running through the album.

“The Song Before the Song Comes Out” seems to be Keenan sketching a possibility with her voice and whatever device she had at hand. This kind of intimacy is evident on a number of the collection’s tracks.

DIIV have synthesized a bunch of fresh influences, including guitarist Andrew Bailey’s penchant for hip-hop, plus the band’s new-found fascination with sampling and tape loops, to craft their most diverse and perhaps finest album to date.

Though there’s no question that this is a wrenching record, Gibbons and co-producer James Ford have rendered a three-dimensional listening experience that is as immersive as it is forbidding.

This is for certain, no time is wasted listening, likely again and again, to Rosali’s compelling emotional journey on Bite Down.

There’s a pleasing friction between the grainy or otherwise affected samples and the polished music around them. Whether they air the frustrations of pioneering artistic transgressors like Dilla and Bruce on “Poor Cops,” or propel the bombastic “Joyrider” with an echo chamber of exclamations right out of Ye’s Rick James sample on “Runaway,” they give the album an imminent sense of cacophony, of a messy world that can’t but intrude on McMahon’s thoughts. It’s a collective sound, and a haunting one.

Final Summer is as sharp and exuberant and fierce as anything this band has ever done.

The trio skilfully carries the track ["Fyra"], and the record, towards a gentle dissolve into the clouds as the drums fade out entirely, leaving the dulcet bass and guitar tones to play off one another in the closing moments. Sublime.

There’s a light-footed joyfulness in these tracks that’s far from insubstantial, and in fact, borders on the profound.

Hey Panda is a rich, meaty stew combining all of O’Hagan’s influences and several sides of his persona: it’s witty, wise, humorous, quirky and adventurous. Often, it’s all these things at the same time.

Camera Obscura’s comeback album is a thing of real beauty. Campbell writes movingly about memory and friendship. Looking at what was rather than regretting what might have been with an honesty that goes directly to the heart of things. Look to the East, Look to the West is one of the most poignant albums of the year so far.

The album’s first half is its best half, a rollicking set of surf/rockabilly/garage rock ragers, all tied loosely to Powers’ awakening to gayness, to underground music, to drugs and to a very alternative lifestyle. .... After that, things get slow and weird and, honestly, a little dull, though there are spooky, mystical, reverb shrouded moments in “The Smoke Is the Ghost.”

There’s something very moving about Pupul’s attempt to understand his mother by vacuuming up the sights and sounds of Hong Kong and fitting them carefully into his Western-style DJ art. It works on a human level — we can all relate to losing people that we love — but also as music. Letter to Yu is poignant and powerful.

Time Is Glass is lovely music — that much should be no surprise to anyone — but beyond that, it taps into something invisible, deep and important. Is it too much to say that these songs manifest the divine? Maybe so, but let’s stipulate at least that they’re trying.

The organic feel and sense of Shabaka’s humility and vulnerability makes Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace a moving and impressive album.

It’s difficult to imagine the record being more fully-realized and immersive than it is, and it stands as a towering achievement in Toral’s formidable body of work.

White, who is deeply respected by his peers, makes some clever moves on All Hits: Memories which clear the way. The first move is to turn toward free jazz, where solo percussion is a bit more familiar than in indie rock. Without doubt he has the chops, too, shifting between groovy phrases and episodes that expand and branch rhizomatically.

The music, befitting the subject matter, is at turns somber and hopeful, developing slowly and deliberately and captivating from start to finish.

Drahla clearly knows their progenitors, but one needn’t focus on this legacy when listening to angeltape. It is a singular document by a distinctive and up-and-coming group.

Much like BC,NR’s magnificent Ants From Up There, the album feels like several potential closers have been strung together during the album’s final stretch, which could have been trimmed a little to maximize the impact of what’s left. Nevertheless, this is an extremely colorful, fun and addictive record that showcases the enviable talents of a young band with a bright future.

In short, the observations are sharp and the music cranks. Twenty-first century Brooklyn doesn’t sound like much fun, but Bodega does.